22nd Stop - Goshen, Indiana

We said good-bye to the people that we met at the Elkhart Campground at the Mandalay Travel Club rally and pulled out this morning for the short ride.  When I say short, Ed didn't even bother hooking up the car; I just followed behind him for the ride.

We're now staying at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds and there's a sea of Mandalay coaches and a few others made by Thor. 

The fairgrounds are really nice and occasionally we hear clop-clop-clop as the horse-drawn Amish buggies go up and down the street. 

On Sunday, all the coaches that were at the Mandalay Rally in Elkhart arrived and filled in some more sites here at the Fairgrounds for the opening day that included a social hour, chili cook-off competition (no...Ed didn't compete and everyone who knows ME understands why I didn't), a pot luck dinner where the food ran out pretty quick considering there's almost 200 people here at this rally.  After dinner, a blue grass band played.

Monday started off with a continental breakfast; in addition to the full hook-up campsite, four days of breakfasts and dinners are included along with the beer, wine, munchies for the social hour.  The days are filled with seminars on (to name a few):  RV electrical safety, Onan generator maintenance, Freightliner chassis, Blue Ox Tow Bars & Brake Systems, Tire Pressure Monitoring, Furnace & Water Heater Maintenance and a few I was interested in...shorten/weave t-shirts, digital camera.  The seminars are put on by the vendors who are here for the week in the big building where the social hours are held and Thor brought in 5 coaches to put on display.

The thing that Ed likes (besides the free wine and beer) is the fact that you can get a lot of work done while we're here.  Thor workers are here going around fixing problems on coaches and it doesn't matter if they're brand new and under warranty or not.  We fall under the NOT (under warranty) category so we have to pay for the parts and they never charged for the labor;  very convenient. 

Tuesday was Ed's birthday and it was announced at dinner (not sure how the speaker found out about it) and the crowd sang happy birthday to him.  I treated him to dinner (ok...so it was free but I gave him my extra piece of salisbury steak!!!).

Tonight there is a variety show after dinner and tomorrow there's a doo-wop dance since the theme of this rally is "Strolling Back in Time".  Friday, hopefully we'll have all the work done that Ed asked for, we'll be heading east towards NY.