August 8th we left Washington State behind and headed to Albany, OR. 176 miles and we were camped at Blue Ox campground, a place we last camped in March 2003 with the Dolphin.
Our neighbor was the Eastern Area Vice President for FMCA and was heading to the same place we were. We recommended they try Novak's Hungarian restaurant which we had already visited before talking to them. They really enjoyed the restaurant, especially since the father came out and talked to them for a while.
On the 10th we drove 138 miles to the FMCA convention in Redmond, OR. This is the same place the FMCA convention was in 2001 where we ordered the Dolphin. We were in advance crew and were parked next to Diane's parents:
The green box behind the motorhomes is a generator, we had electric power but it was not quiet.
We worked the welcome bags just like we did at the FMCA convention in Albuquerque in March. We were not as tired since everything was in the same place, but we still did not get out much.
On the 15th a storm came through and had a few of us worried, but mostly it was just interesting to watch:
Some of the FMCA convention while we were there:
During the convention we enjoyed eating at Madaline's Grill in Redmond and the Pine Tavern in Bend. We also had lunch with the Spartan Chassis International Chapter (SCIC) of FMCA and were signed up for the post rally in concert with the SOI chapter of FMCA.
On the 20th we drove 217 miles to Mountain View Trav-L-Park in Baker City, OR for the SOI/SCIC post rally. This is the same campground we stopped at in June, but didn't know we were coming here for a rally then. Here is our campsite:
We had a good time at the rally and got to visit with old friends and make new ones.
August 23rd was an all day outing to Joseph, OR, here are two pages of photos from that trip: Part 1, Part 2
After coming back from Joseph we met everyone at a restaurant, here are some photos:
We enjoyed this rally. Now it was time to get our solar panels installed.