Escapade Update

It’s Thursday, the last official day of Escapade and its raining so I’ve decided to kick back in the Hospitality building and get caught up on blogs.
We’ve really enjoyed the last few days.
As if we can’t find enough to eat at meals, the Amish have on ongoing bake sale set up at the center of the rally with a tempting variety of homemade pies, breads, and canned goods.

Because this number of motorhomes require quite a lot of space, they provide a tram to transport folks. Here one of our neighbor’s, Mark Hall, is taking his turn volunteering as tractor driver.

Every afternoon during social hour there is a lot of silliness going on on-stage.

At one of the social hours, Jenny and Don won a gift pack from Dollywood, including the darling little bear she is carrying. Dollywood comes to this event to look for Dollywood Work-Campers among the full-time RVers
After the event, some in the group surprised the newlyweds with a ‘honeymoon’ package which covered a day’s outing to go on an organized tour of Amish sites.

We made a trip over to Shipshewana for another enjoyable Amish meal at the Dutch Maid. As is the case in most parking lots in this area, you are sharing spaces with horse and buggies, and have to be careful when walking to be sure you are missing what they leave behind!!

Our dining friends at the Dutch Maid Diner included Jim and Dee, Jim and Ellie and Darrell and Judy.

I attended a presentation given on Amish history and traditions. I did not realize that the Amish came from the same portion of Germany as my mother’s ancestor’s, the Alsace-Lorraine territory. The language spoken by the Amish is Pennsylvania Dutch, which is actually a German dialect of this area. This now begins to make more sense to me as I recall being confused as a child when my father would mention my German relatives speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. It also explains why the Amish cooking seems like Sunday dinners at home!
Little Princess Sox has spent a great deal of time in the bedroom of the motorhome, waiting for Mom and Dad to show up between events to get a walk in. As usual she searches out the most comfortable point in the room. In this case between the bedroom pillows.

She and Ditka were very happy that they did have some events specially for furkids. They particularly enjoyed the agility training session. Both seemed keen on the fun of jumps and tunnels although it is obviously it takes at least as much people training. Ditka has been making an amazing recovery from surgery and showed no hesitation on the short jumps despite doing them with only muscle, not bone, connecting that left hind leg.

There have been two firsts for us this week. One was that after 4 years of RVing, I took my first shower in a public shower room. Ken marked that on the calendar! The second was that we had our first experience of having our tanks pumped out by a honey wagon. These poor guys had 2 hundred rigs to get through and at their fastest were only averaging about 7 rigs an hour.

One of my favorite parts of the last few days has been watching a movie over at Dee and Jim’s place. I’d heard that ‘In to the Wild’ was a really amazing movie. It was absolutely awesome. It is a true story and must be seen, probably a couple of times, to be truly appreciated. When it was over all I could say was ‘Wow!!’. It really hit home with me. Ken loved it as well. This was the third time Dee and Jim had watched and they say they enjoy it more every time. I think this is a movie for anyone that will have a wide audience of repeat viewers for years to come. I don’t often buy movies, but this will be one I want to keep.
We spent a little time inside with Jim and Ellie, getting the dime-tour of their Phaeton. While these are great rigs from the factory, Ellie and Jim have also made some really nice enhancements to make it an even better rig for fulltimers. We really love those motorhomes but, at least for now, because we have been so lucky without problems on ours, we will live without those added amenities rather than risk an upgrade. There’s just so many things that can go wrong on these moving houses that the common wisdom is that if you don’t have problems with the one you have, stick with it.
That doesn’t mean that we haven’t come away with lots of ideas (spelled $$$$) on how we could upgrade the coach we have in terms of cabinetry, furniture, window coverings and flooring. I’ve developed quite a wish list!
Well it’s about time for closing ceremonies and the rains seem to be giving us a break to move without getting soggy so its time to move on.
Hugs, C