April 23rd we drove 74 miles to the site of the Spring Escapade in Chico, CA. The "short" route was through some roads that were not a place to take a long and wide motorhome so we routed ourselves to Marysville, CA.
It took a long time before we were parked, it had rained the day before and much of the parking was wet so they had us sitting while they figured out where to put us. It had not rained where we were the day before, about 40 miles as the crow flies, but they had 0.62". Finally they directed us to one area and told Diane not to stop until told or she got stuck. The front wheels did sink, but the rear was solid:
This shows the front wheel dug in a bit:
We were dry camping and had just enough time to get setup before heading to the opening ceremony:
The next day we explored, here is "The Row", where the Escapees chapters, Co-ops and certified BOFs set up:
Other sights around the Escapade in the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds:
We met multiple times with the Boomers BOF at the Escapade, with lots of pictures..
Here are views of some friends at the evening door prizes. Ray is looking at the camera but most of his face is hidden behind a red hat:
Cindy noticed her picture was being taken and grinned, Kay is next to her:
April 26th we had lunch at IHOP with other members of Datastormusers.com, here are a couple of pictures.
Ham-A-Rama is always a highlight for the entertainment, these are Escapees entertaining us:
Here is our friend Ken getting ready to sing and play guitar:
This woman did a belly dance for us all:
At the end, all the entertainers sing a patriotic song together and that finishes Ham-A-Rama:
The parking crew at closing ceremonies:
Closing ceremonies:
One of the many CARE quilts being raffled off. Our friend Kay won one of them:
We visited, we shopped at Costco which was right next to the fairgrounds. Bill dropped Diane off and later picked her up to do laundry. We had dinner every night with friends, visited a lot and bought a few items from the vendors at the Escapade. Our solar did quite well and we had plenty of battery charge.
It got hot Wednesday and by the end of the day Thursday we ran the generator a couple hours to cool the motorhome down with the air conditioners. The ground was dry and some other RVs that were deeper in mud than us had already moved themselves, so we knew we could move on our own.
Friday morning, the 28th, Bill went off to his first Escapees Advisory Council meeting. The plan was to move the motorhome to a hookup site at lunch. Another Advisory Council spouse, Jan, had Diane move the CRV into a full hookup site in the morning and when Bill came to help Diane move the motorhome Diane had already moved it forward and had it all ready. All Bill had to do was find the crowbar and pry the blocks out of the hard ground. The full hookup site was tight, but we had 30AMP power and were ready for the night. Jan's motorhome was on our driver's side.
Bill went back to the meeting and Diane and Jan went out for lunch. A group of us went to dinner at an excellent Thai restaurant, Cocodine. The Advisory Council met again Saturday morning and decided that the second week of November was when they would meet for a full week in Livingston, TX.
