Pre-Rally Fun

We’re really not rally people. Small groups are more our thing. So, we’re not sure how we cooked up the the idea of traveling to northern Iowa in July to park in a big soggy field with 1,500 other motorhomes for a couple of weeks. But, we’re glad we did.

We’re here for the Winnebago-Itasca Travelers Grand National Rally. The official stuff kicks off tonight and really gets rolling tomorrow. This past week has been the un-official pre-rally, and it’s been a lot of fun. When we arrived here Thursday afternoon there were a few hundred Winnies on the grounds, and they’ve been pulling in at a steady clip since.

We scored 50AMP electrical, which is a good thing. Daytime highs have been into the 90s and although the lows have made it to near 70, the humidity has stayed north of 75%. In this mug-fest our AC has been running constantly. And, for that we are thankful! We’re off the grid when it comes to water and sewer, though. So, this is the closest thing to boondocking for us! Once upon a time we had a couple layers of wood blocks under our leveling jacks. But, all that wood has sunk deep into this rich Iowa soil. They may just serve as permanent markers of our stay here!

It’s been a treat to reconnect with friends from our “home” Winnie club. Many rallygoers are parked in rows by their home state. We’re hanging with our friends in the California row. Of course, we’re sporting our Texas plates and flying our University of Kansas flag, so nobody is sure where we’re from. We love to keep them guessing!

We went in search of and found our Winnie friends we met in Austin last winter. It’s so great to see them again. They’re locals, so they’re helping us get oriented. Yep, they’re good folks to know!

We’ve met lots of new folks already. We stopped by and visited with the Kansas crew last night, and we checked in with the Texas clan this morning. Gotta keep all of our states covered! We’re looking forward to meeting members of the WIT 365 club. There are a lot of fulltimers in that group, so it would be great to get to know them, too.

A couple of our readers have asked us to keep an eye out for Don and Gloria Martin. We’d sure like to meet them. If anybody knows where they’re parked, let us know and we’ll go say hi! Meanwhile, we’re checking nametags like a couple of hawks.

Pre-rally week has been all about socializing. The real “learning” starts tomorrow. We never would have imagined we’d be so excited to sit in on seminars about slide-outs, levelers, generators, inverters, transmissions, diesel engines and our chassis. But, we can’t wait.

We’re going to stick around after the rally to have some warranty work done at the Winnebago factory. There’s nothing seriously the matter with our moose, of course. But, there’s no better place to have all the little stuff taken care of that the place where Bullwinkle was built.

The big finale of pre-rally week was Puckerbrush Days, Forest City’s annual Summer celebration. It’s like a small town Fourth of July just a couple of weeks late. The town saves their holiday party for GNR and shares it warmly with a couple thousand Winnie owners. Although we’ve never been to Forest City before, it felt like we were part of the community.

For not being rally people, we’re having a pretty good time! If you happen to be in the neighborhood, please stop in and say hi!

More later from Forest City.