Rally at The Rock – Part 6

We got up this morning and said goodbye to Wayne and Marynelle. They left to get to Red Bay early before most of the Tiffin owners from the rally got there. Connie and Manuel will join them next Wednesday.


We then left for the Wyndham hotel for our rally breakfast. We had a 9:00am to 10:00am reservation, but we got there about 8:3am, and they let us in. That turned out to be a good thing because when we left about 9:00am, the line was down the hall and around the corner!!


After breakfast, we headed to the Riverfront Park to approve the colors and design for our shirts. Along the way, we took a picture at a bronze turtle in a park….

Patsy and I, as well as Connie and Manuel, were very pleased with the results. Here are some ‘in progress’ photos…… with the first one being the initial cut at it and the colors were off………..


Here is one of the shirts, with each of our individual logos that was sewn on………


We went to the Rally Hall and did some shopping. My buddy, Mark, called me when I was about 50 ft from the Pressure Pro booth and told me that he had lost a sensor……… So, I was able to pick him one up, and got it at a good price, since Manuel had just spent $600 with the guy yesterday!

On each day of the rally, they draw member’s FMCA numbers, and I checked the board. I waited until Patsy got there, and we needed to draw a prize number out of a bowl. Patsy drew, and won a hand-sewn quilt………….


Sunday evening, they had the final entertainment. The performer was a solo appearance by a lady named Wally Barbee from Branson. She did a great job, including several wardrobe changes. Here are some pictures…..


Earlier in the day, we noticed that a lot of rigs were leaving, I guess to avoid the Monday morning rush when we have to vacate. I talked to Manuel, and we found a better place to park………. Right next door to the evening’s entertainment!

We plan to leave about 8:00am on Monday morning. We will be heading to the Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis, AR……….. right on the Mississippi river where supposedly you can watch the traffic on the river. We expect to meet Mark and Sue Didelot and Greg and Mandy Faure there on Tuesday.

Rally at The Rock – Part 5

We got up early on Saturday morning, and went to the River Market ‘Farmer’s Market” in Little Rock, which opened at 7:00am. We purchased a few fruits and vegetables, and enjoyed just looking around. Here are some pictures:

We heard from one of the tram drivers that the rally had a little over 900 rigs attending. We had earlier in the week decided that we wanted to go across to Little Rock and try to go into one of the taller buildings and get a picture of the rally site. So, that is what we did after the River Market, and ended up on the 17th floor of the Peabody Hotel. This is the hotel that has the ducks that are paraded through the lobby. It turned out that 17 floors in the air was not high enough to get the photo that we wanted, but we got a few anyway……


Some of the pictures above show a good look at the Dickey Stephens ballpark where we attend the nightly entertainment. Our rigs are parked in the trees to the left of the bridge!

We then went to the North Little Rock Farmer’s Market. It was a lot smaller, and we did not find anything to buy, but we did look!


After checking with every farmer in Arkansas, we went to the rally hall and attended a couple of seminars, and shopped a few more vendors. Patsy had me buy her a black light so she could find all the ‘pee’ stains in the bathroom, and a bottle of ‘Urineoff’ to get rid of it!!

Later, we went back to the Riverfront Park area to check on our embroidered shirts, and found that they still weren’t ready. I did find a shirt design and I had to take a picture of it…… since it reminds me of conversations that I have with some of my friends and people that I meet on the road. I think that my buddy, Mark, can relate!!

After that, we went back to the rigs and had lunch. Patsy and Connie then went to a craft seminar, and I went to the local library for WIFI. At 3:00pm, we attended the ice cream social…………… and got an ice cream sandwich!!

Later we watched the Texas/Arkansas game that ended up being a blowout. In the evening, we had dinner with our daughter, Deanne and her friend. While at dinner, Alma, the shirt lady, called to say that our design was ready and that we needed to come by and approve the colors……… we will do that first thing on Sunday morning.

Rally at The Rock -- Part 4

On Thursday morning, Connie made us breakfast, and then we walked to the Alltel Center where they happened to be having a commercial Arkansas Marketing Fair. We picked up several goodies!

The rally really got into full swing later on Thursday, . In the afternoon, the opened the motorhome show with an 'open house'. They had several million dollar Plus Newell homes here, and the rumor is that two of them have sold already!! Here's Patsy with a Margarita, and Manuel with our friends Marynelle and Wayne at one of the coaches:

On Thursday night, the entertainment was an old group called Sonny Burgess and the Pacers. The venue was at the Dickey Stephens Ball Stadium, a new baseball park in North Little Rock. The played a lot of the oldies from the 60's, and were pretty good.

On Friday, the vendor section opened up. We went to the rally hall to see them, and then went back to the coach area to check on ordering some shirts with our Bus embroidered on them. While walking back to the rally hall, Patsy fell and cut her head with her glasses...... and messed up the glasses. I took the glasses and had them fixed, and we called our daughter, the surgeon to come to the Bus and patch up Patsy. It turned out that Patsy did not need stitches, but Deanne was recovering from a sprained ankle that she got while visiting Chicago earlier in the week. When I got back to the Bus with the repaired glasses, both of them were laying on a couch!!! Here's Deanne.........

After we confirmed that Patsy was OK, we went back to the rally hall, and Manuel purchased a "Pressure Pro" tire monitoring system for his Phaeton. Part of the deal was that they vendor was going to install it, so we went straight back to the rigs, and watched the installation. One of the sensors leaked, so Manuel and I had to borrow an air compressor to air up his tires! Here is some of the action....

Rally at The Rock -- Part 3

On Wednesday, we drove down to the Farmer's Market area in downtown Little Rock, only to find that it is only open on Tuesday and Saturday! Connie & Manuel and Marynelle & Wayne decided to visit the Clinton Library, while Patsy and I returned to the motorhome. We had already seen the library on a previous visit.

In the afternoon, we got with Connie and Manuel and decided to "ride the trolley". It is free with our rally passes, and we had heard that it gave a good downtown tour. It was nice and we got some good pictures.......... especially of the rally area as the trolley crossed the river bridge:


The following show some of the motorhomes along the riverfront:


I also got a couple of good pictures of the Arkansas Queen River boat and the docking area:

On Thursday morning, the rally began. We plan to attend some seminars, and look over the exhibits:

Rally at The Rock -- Part 2

On Tuesday, we mostly walked around the site to get acquainted with the layout. We also found a public library with WIFI...... which makes posting much easier than the hit and miss WIFI that we picked up at the rally.


Marynelle purchased a 'ship boarding' photo of the group and scanned it, so I thought I would post it here, along with a couple of picture that Connie shared with me:


On Tuesday night, we went out to a local restaurant that our daughter, Deanne, took us to on our last visit. It is called Mimi's, and the meal was excellent. Here is our group at dinner:

We signed up for "early" arrival, which meant that we could get here on Monday instead of Wednesday, and be parked when the masses showed up. However, I think most of them show up "early", but we will get to sit around and watch the regulars show up and get parked. Not much else to do, since the scheduled events don't start until Thursday.

Later.............

Rally at The Rock

We left Maumelle Park fairly early on Monday morning, and headed to the FMCA rally site. We got there about 8:30AM, and found the line empty but some confusion. The guy at the staging site said they had already parked a lot of RV's that morning, but were told to stop. So..... we waited. After a while, they moved us down the rode a bit, and .......... we waited. About 10:30AM, we finally got parked. Here we are in line, with Connie and Patsy looking at the line!! There were three of us together, Patsy and I, Connie andManuel, and Wayne and Marynelle:

The following pictures shows the area where we are parked.......... before and after we got parked. We are at the far left side of the picture:

Although there was a lot of confusion, we faired pretty well. Some people were still on the streets at 1:00PM, and some did not have electricity last night. It looks like it will turn out to be a nice rally.

During the day, we signed up for a dinner cruise on the Arkansas Queen, a paddle boat on the Arkansas River. I was a dinner with gospel music, and it turned out to be a very pleasant evening. The food was very good, and the entertainment was nice. Here are some pictures of us waiting along the riverfront for the dinner, some pictures on the boat, and pictures from the deck showing the RV's parked at the rally. The last two show our three 'Tiffins', and they are left to right..... Stampers, Esparzas, and ours.

This morning, we walked the area, and tonight, we plan to have dinner someplace in West Little Rock.