On the road with Jim and Pat: Hello from Farmington, NM

Hello from Farmington, NM

Sunday morning October 19, 2008 (third travelogue of this trip)

After leaving McLean, TX we drove a bit less than 400 miles to our favorite little casino (Holywood Casino). This casino is located about 20 miles north of Albuquerque. This is a little hole-in-the-wall casino, but they only charge $10 per night for camping and Pat has a good time. We left McLean early and with the time change, we got to the casino around 2:00 PM. While Pat contributed to the economy, I reinstalled my the fire suppression system in the Eagle. I have had to rob parts from it several times and I kind of felt like the shoe makers kid who has no shoes. Only took a couple of hours and I did some other maintenance work.

Our drive from Springfield, MO to Albuquerque followed the route of the historic Route 66. We were able to see some of the old bridges, abandoned filling stations and old pavement including the concrete “curbs” (wow, those roads were narrow!). There are lots of websites detailing the history of “The Mother Road” Perhaps the best is: http://www.historic66.com/. I forgot to mention in our first post of this travelogue that we took some time in Elk City, TX to tour what was billed as the “official” Route 66 museum. I would suspect there are many Route 66 museums, but this one was a lot of fun and has some great historic displays including a very good farm implement museum.

Tuesday (10/14) we drove to Farmington (a bit less than 200 miles) and got settled in in the vendors parking area. We really lucked out and got a nice site with power and water right on the San Juan River (here).

Wednesday we set up the booth and the rally was Thursday through Saturday. Given the terrible economic situation right now, we really expected very low attendance and terrible sales. It turns out that our sales probably set a record for us (haven't had time to look at the sales book). We also had some very strong leads for future sales. And this is a very small FMCA rally (about 500 motorhomes). There is no way to predict what our sales will do. I have included a photo of the booth. For the small shows, were we represent SilverLeaf, we have a double booth. That sure makes it nice.

Pat did not do a seminar (they were booked up), but I did two seminars (our fire suppression system/tire pressure monitors and SilverLeaf electronics). We now represent SilverLeaf at the smaller shows. Both seminars were well attended and I had great audience participation.

Tomorrow we start home. We will travel up to Durango (about 40 miles) and then along US 160 to US 285. Our plan is to take two days (mapping program says we are about 360 miles from the house). If the weather holds, it should be a pretty trip.

Thats all for now.