Thursday March 23rd 2017

The wind blew and the rain fell over night. This may be a desert, but there was water on the road in front of my RV this morning. It struggled to clear off and break 70 today.

I started slow this morning. There were not any interesting seminars at the Escapade this morning. I spent the morning slowly drinking my coffee while watching the morning TV shows. I had a hard time convincing myself that it was only Thursday morning. All of the activity with the Escapade had me thinking it was Friday or even Saturday morning. Around 1PM I left for Tucson and the closing ceremony of the 57th Escapade.

Picacho Peak. One of the sights on my commute topped with fluffy clouds.   

View out the side window near Picacho Peak.

I got there early for the 3PM event. Walking around the fairgrounds it was evident that many attendees had already hit the road for home or their next destination. The long rows of RVs now had large gaps where people had departed. Other people were working on readying their rigs for an early departure tomorrow. Some may have paid for an additional night or two to avoid the rush to the dumping station.

The other big difference today was the temperature. It was very windy and the thermometer was reading in the sixties. Jackets and long pants replaced short sleeve shirts and shorts. In the sun, sheltered from the wind, it was fine, but out in the open the wind chill was uncomfortable.

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More fluffy clouds over the fairgrounds. 

The closing ceremony got started on time at three. The attendance was announced as somewhere in the excess of 900 RVs and over 2500 people when weekly walk-ins like me and daily walk-ins were included. I didn’t take notes so the generalization will have to do. I didn’t win either of the big door prizes so my travel plans for the year don’t have to change. The prizes were attendance at an Adventure Caravans Mega rally and the Escapee’s Rose Parade HOP. The winners seem to be very happy.

The next Escapade was announced for May of 2018 in Missouri. The idea of a rally at a fairgrounds in the middle of Tornado Alley during the peak of the tornado season seems scary. I would like to fully attend an Escapade, but I’m not sure about the next one.

Commuting back and forth to the Escapade had its drawbacks. It wasn’t easy to get to the early morning events. I would have had to leave my camp at 7AM. When I stayed for the nighttime events I didn’t get home until almost 10 and that’s leaving early. The other issue is the downtime between events. Those staying on site could go back to their rigs for and hour or more. I had to find other ways to kill time. You can only walk around the grounds so many times. I also drove around the area east of Tucson a couple of days, but the desert is the desert.