Our 2006 Inaugural Bus Trip Part 4
Saturday March 19, 2016
I am posting two parts of this inaugural travelogue today. I am trying to get all of the posts done in the next two or three days (four more to go) so that I can get back to normal travelogues. I will be on the road for the next three weeks teaching and then Pat and I will be doing some traveling in the next few months.
In the post below I talk about being a vendor at the big FMCA convention. The photo below shows our booth at the show.
Hello from Pomona CA. Sunday evening March 19, 2006. Fourth travelogue of this trip.
We are now in Pomona for the huge FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association) International Convention. We left Sand Diego around 8:00 this morning and got here about 11:00. The convention is at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds. This is also the site of two big national drag racing events. I have been to at least 15 races at this track and Pat has been with me at about half of those races. Our bus is parked within 50 yards of the end of the strip where we spent most of the time. Now, the parking lot is a sea of expensive motorhomes. I would guess that there will be between 4,000 and 5,000 motorhomes at the event.
We went to the vendor area and looked at our location. It seems OK. We are members of a group of “professional” vendors and they get a reasonably good location for their members. I dropped a few large things in the booth, but we will spend some time tomorrow finishing setting it up. The show will run for three days (Tues-Thur). They have a ton of evening entertainment including Debbie Reynolds and Bobby Vinton.
After the show we will spend a couple of weeks of “down” time. During that time we will attend the national drag racing event in Las Vegas. The camping area overlooks the track, so it is a great race for us to attend. I suspect I can talk my friend at Gates out of a one or two one day tickets. The rest of the time, I will watch from the camping area.
Tonight we went to a great Mexican restaurant that all of the racers go to. We have been there a couple of times and it is a great local restaurant.
Now to catch up on the Cruise. We had quite a bit of fun is Cabo San Lucas. We went on a whale watching boat. We thought we would be skunked, but got to see a couple of hump back whales toward the end of the tour. We were a bit disappointed, but the trip was still fun. Of the three ports, we thought Cabo was the best. We still prefer Cancun, but this was still a fun trip.
We liked this trip, because there were less ports and more sea time. We thought that would give us a more relaxing trip – yeah right!! Almost every waking moment had something scheduled. If it wasn’t some ship activity, it was a Stampin’ UP! activity. We did manage to make it to the spa every day and that was great and very relaxing.
We disembarked about 10:30 Saturday and made a bee line for the Home Depot to get some items to work on the bus. I had ordered a replacement water manifold and it showed up the day before we left the ship – talk about timing! I installed it and we now have a fully functional water system. In fact, we are sitting here laughing, because the icemaker in the refrigerator seems to be going crazy making ice cubes.
I had mentioned that I had to back down the driveway from where the bus was parked in San Diego to the road. It is about a quarter of a mile of rather steep, twisting, narrow “trail”. I was able to back down with no problem. Pat drove the Durango ahead of me and we met down the road to hook it up.
We have both commented about how comfortable the bus is. The heater is absolutely great and we have needed it most nights, as it is fairly cool in the evening. The bed is very comfortable and we just plain feel cozy and secure. All of the systems seem to be working very well (now that the water system is fixed). Tonight we installed the curtains that Pat made for the bathroom and bedroom. Since we are parked very close to a ton of motorhomes, we thought it best not to be flashing everyone.
With the great generator, inverter (12V DC to 120V AC) and our two way satellite internet dish, we feel very self sufficient.