Hello from York, NE

Hello from York, NE

Tuesday morning, July 22, 2008 (fourth travelogue of this trip)

We are currently in Wal Mart in York, NE on our way home.

In the last blog, I mentioned the weather and how is had been moderate. Well, as soon as we began setting up for the show, it turned hot and muggy. The vendors were in the cattle barn at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, and it is not air conditioned. They had moved in portable AC units, but they did not really help. We spent three very hot days in the booth (plus the two days of set-up). The vendors were fit to be tied and the customers were not in the best of moods. In addition to heat, our booths were not the full 10 feet depth. That is not an issue for us, but caused significant problems for some of the vendors.

We parked with the Converted Coach group and our location was very close to the cattle barn. We were not able to do much socializing with the group once the show started, as most of our time is consumed with vendor activities.

The show was bigger that we would have guessed. Years ago, there were often over 5,000 motorhomes in attendance. The past few shows, the count has been less than 2,500. We were guessing that the count would be less than 2,000 with the high fuel costs. The official count was 2437 family coaches and 150 exhibitor coaches. With the display coaches that gave a total of over 3000 coaches.

Our sales were OK. The best part of the show is that we made some great contacts with the higher end coach groups and their owners. This is our new target market and we were quite encouraged. My seminar had fairly good attendance (excellent audience participation). Pat did two of her sessions and both sold out very quickly. Her sales were quite good.

On Friday (10/18) we drove a short distance to Mystic Lake Casino (here). This is said to be the fourth largest Indian casino in the US. It is huge with great facilities. We went to a fancy steak restaurant with the Swaims and had great fillet mignons. On Saturday (my

birthday) I went to visit two bus conversion folks that I have corresponded with over the past few years. That was great fun. You can kind of guess what Pat did {grin}. That evening we went to the buffet at the casino. It was, perhaps, the best buffet we have experienced. We were in the campground with 50 amp service, so Pat did several loads of wash.

We obtained and installed an in-motion TV dome via some “horse trading”. That allows us have access to TV as we travel down the road. On Sunday I was able to record and listen to the Rolex Series race that a good friend races. It turns out that he won the race!

Sunday we traveled back to the Diamond Jo Casino just south of the Minnesota border on I-35. We stayed there previously on this trip. From there we traveled to York. We should be in the Denver area on Wednesday where we will camp at Chatfield Reservoir with our daughter and her family.

I have been meaning to mention the fun I have been having with my new bicycle Pat got me a great new bike for a combination father's day/birthday. This is the first quality bicycle that I have owned. It is great fun to ride. I have a computer that indicates that I have ridden well over 30 miles on this trip. That is just riding around the campgrounds and fairgrounds at the FMCA. It makes getting to customer coaches much easier.

Guess that is all for now.