March 12th

Today we finished all of our paperwork and Ron & Juanita are going to take it back to the office for us.  That save's us postage and it gets their a lot faster.  Today at the closing session we gave away the grand prize of your choice:  Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta or one of the Four next Mega Rally's in the catalog. The prize is worth over $3900.00. Ron did the presentation and drawing.

Ron is thanking everyone for making Adventure Caravan what it is today, and thanked all of the Escapees that have traveled with us in the pass.

Here he is announcing the winner of this years winner, and they are Sharon & Don Del Rosario from Rapid City, SD.

They were happy to be this years grand prize winner.  We hope they enjoy their trip. 
Tomorrow morning we will leave bright and early so that we can arrive at North Ranch and just sit back and relax a little.  We are looking forward to catching up with some old friends Dwight & Sharon Tisdale.  We will get to spend a couple of days with them before we head out to our next show in Pahrump, NV
 

March 11th

Today was the last day of the vendor area at the Escapees Rally.  Tomorrow we give away the grand prize at the closing of the 55th Escapade Rally.  We are giving away the choose of the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, or one of the 4 upcoming Reunion Rally's in the next 4 years.
OK a little bit about my voice leaving me last Monday at the end of the day.  Woke up Tuesday morning and was afraid to say anything, because I had a seminar in less than 2 hours. So after doing the teeth cleaned throat gargled, it was time to try talking.  OK, it is a little better I should do OK.  We were lucky or unlucky, their was only about 70 plus people at the Guided RV Tour seminar.  It went great a lot of good questions which I like the best.  Now back to the booth and see how everyone is doing and taking our $500.00 Gift certificate winners picture.

   
She was very happy to win, Chris Davis just has to figure out where to go.
Back to my voice problem, yep by the end of Tuesday it was pretty much shot again, but not as bad as yesterday.  OK Cyndy no talking again to night so that I might get my voice back. She was happy I think.   OK, woke up this morning and voice is a little better and I made it through the day not bad off.  Now that the Rally is over my voice will get back to normal, I hope.
Today we had the final drawing from the both for another $500.00 Gift Certificate.  We finally got a hold of them about 7:30 PM and we will meet with them over in the hall tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM.  Hope to get a picture of her but the banners are all down, oh well.  Tomorrow we get to relax a little and finish up most of the paper work before we head out to North Ranch Friday morning.
 

March 9th

Boy, these last 3 days have just flew by.  First I need to talk about our new Mattress!!!!  It is great and we both just love it. The second night after getting the booth here at the Escapade Rally set up, we both looked at each other about 8:30 PM, and said that bed is calling us.  It was nice to just lay their and watch a little TV and relax.  I don't know why we waited so long.  Anyway we are really enjoying the confront that it supplies us.
Cyndy and I were busy Saturday getting the Adventure Caravans booth set up.  As always it seems to come together real easy and we both stand back and say I think we may know what we are doing.

We have a great booth, just inside the main entrance to the vendor area.
Sunday morning we opened up with a bang, we had 3 sales before noon.  I hope this keeps up.  Ron & Juanita Kohn  are here to help and they are doing a great job.  They are the co-founders of this great Caravan company.  They have been fun to work with and being a part of the Escapes for so many years they no a lot of people here.  Also it helps that we are the sponsors of the big entertainment for the first two nights.  Sunday nights entertainers were good friends Ron & Kay Rivoli.  They have been entertaining RVers for years and did another great show last night. 
Today they were at our booth selling there CD's and drawing a lot of people to our booth.

Ron & Kay even talking up Adventure Caravan, I think they can sell a trip real easy.

Yep, a lot of people stopping by and asking questions and taking catalogs.
Cyndy and I put on our first seminar "RVing to Alaska", we had over 250 people show up for this seminar.  We had a lot of good questions after our presentation. We had a lot of positive out of this seminar and a lot of great questions.  We had a drawing at this seminar and a couple won $500.00 Gift Certificate  for use on a trip of their choice.

There was just one small problem I had to do. Cyndy is very happy about it, I have just about lost my voice, so I am not talking much tonight because tomorrow I have another seminar bright and early in the morning.  I hope my voice finds me by then!!!
  

March 6th

Today we didn't do much but finish getting things ready for the 55th Escapade.  I have the seminars ready to go.  Cyndy has all the paperwork ready to go, and the table cloths all iron and ready to use.  Now all we have to do for the rest of the day is wait for FedEx to deliver our new Night Therapy Elite 12" MyGel® Ultimate Memory Foam Mattress - Queen.
OK, I checked at 11:00 AM and it was out for delivery, that's good we are going to get it today.  We are really looking forward to this new mattress, both Cyndy & I have been sleeping OK, but looking forward to a real good nights sleep.  So here we were waiting and waiting, and I thought I would check it to see where it was at, when I did I discovered it showed delivered.  I looked out side and it was not here.  So were did they deliver it too.
I called FedEx and they were able to track down the driver and get him to meet me at the front of our gate entry into the park.  You would not believe it, but it was the same driver that had come through the park about an hour ago and said no I don't have anything for Olsen.
We got the Mattress and now came the work.  First lets get the old one out.  You know how much room there is in one of these bed rooms to wrestle a mattress out of it.  After a little bit, no a lot of work we got it all the way out side.  Now for the fun one, did I tell you it weighed 90 LB's.  An it was in a box that measured 24" X 24" by 62" tall.  OK, it fit through the front door with no problem.  Now to get it through the bathroom and into the bedroom.  It fit through the door but that was it.  Now you can imagine Cyndy & I trying to get this through the bathroom. It will not go.  So back down into the main part of the coach and lets take the box off of it.  OK, removed box, now here we go through the bathroom and into the bedroom, all I got to say I am glad it was not a LB over 90.  We made it to the bed and got it unrolled and found out it was up side down.  Now two grow adults trying to wrestle a mattress over while it was growing, not a lot of fun. Now the mattress is right side up and there is two pooped adults.  But we still have some work to do, take the old mattress to goodwill and get rid of all the other stuff to the trash.  So off we went!!
We are looking forward to a good nights sleep, will let you know tomorrow after we get to the Escapade and get our booth set up!!!!

March 5th

What a great day today, went to the post office.  Sent all of our thank you cards out to the guest from the Copper Canyon Trip (Cyndy does a great job of writing them), and the tax's to the Accountant. Next on the list was to see why the 12 volt lights in the kitchen stopped working.  OK, after looking I found where they came disconnected from there contention. Got them hooked up and now they are working.  I like it when it is a fast fix.
This afternoon we meet with an old friend and guest from our Alaska trip in 2010.  Frank Kingman, we had talk to him a couple of days ago and he wanted to take us out and show us a little bit of Tucson and to dinner.  So here we go and he took us to the San Xavier Mission.

Cyndy always said Frank smelled good.  We walked around the mission for a while, Frank said he comes out here for Mass on Saturday.  They have done a lot of work to this Mission to restore it.

They still have the original doors on both the front and side.  These doors have to be at least 6 inches thick.

 This gofer was trying to pick some fruit of this cactus.  He just keep working at getting one of the fruit pods, and he didn't even mind us watching him. We spent a great afternoon with Frank and enjoyed see some of the spots here in Tuscon.
We had a great dinner and talked tell it was getting late and time for us to get back to our rig.  The next time we are in town we will look up Frank, Tomorrow we have a little bit of running around to finish up before heading to the Escapade Rally.  Looking forward to see a lot of old friends here.

March 4th

We arrived here at Voyager RV Resort on the 2nd.  What a big park and well organized when we got here. A guy came up to our rig after we went through the gate and said follow me to your site.  He watched us back in and said good job, my head got a little big, but Cyndy does all the hard work.  She is the one that gets me into the site with no problems, I guess after 9 years of backing into site we have it working pretty good.  After getting the rig set up we headed out to get some food, which our frig was empty after "The Rally in Phoenix".  We got back around 4:00 PM and fixed a small dinner then said lets wait tell tomorrow to get the paperwork done for the rally.  So all we did was sit back and relax after a busy 5 days.
The 3rd we buckled down and finished all the paperwork and got it mailed to the office, but as always we think we forgot to make a couple of copy's of some of the paper work.  Oh, well we will just ask them to e-mail us the copies we will need.  Now it is time to go for a ride back up to Apache Junction to pick up some mail that went to Toni's.  Our Daughter Janice sent it down and it is the last of our tax stuff we need to send to our Tax Accountant!!! That time of year and god for-bid if we are late in paying our tax's.  We stopped on the way back to Tucson for some dinner and got back just at dark.  Dinner was nothing to right home about but it did fill the hollow spot.  Another relaxing night, Cyndy has been felling a little under the weather the last few days.  So tomorrow I will let her sleep in and I will go and get some work done on the truck.
Woke up this morning with an appointment at Jim Click Ford Dealership to have the emergency brake fixed.  While in Mexico the brake cable broke so now it is time to get it fixed.  While I am here I might as well get the oil changed too.  I was there at 9:00 AM and they took the truck right in and started working on it.  They told me that the emergency brake assembly is shot and it need replaced.  So after they had everything done and I had paid for the work I walked out to the truck.  The first thing wrong was they never took the plastic cover off the seats and the paper on the floor mate.  So as always I check the oil, then checked to see if they had topped of the fluids.  The last thing I checked was if the had greased  all the fitting, none where done.  Now in my book when you take your vehicle in for oil change & service you check all the fluids and grease the rig.  Well I blew up at the service manager.  Next I am walking into the office after he brings the truck back out after greasing it and talking to the Service Director.  Now I feel that they should step up and make it right.  After venting a little no a lot, they gave my oil change for no cost.  I told the Service Director that I will not be back here ever again after the way your people took care of your customers.
Now by the time I got back to the coach I had settled down and Cyndy and I went to run some errands and look at coaches again.  While at the show we seen one that we kind of liked.  But they didn't have one that we wanted.  Oh well, we will keep looking.  You never know what we might do!!!!
Tomorrow we will mail our tax stuff off to the accountant and meet a hold friend from our 2010 Alaska trip that lives here in Tucson.

The End of The Good Sam Rally

We got here on February 24, and went right to work.  By the next day at noon we had the booth all set up and ready for the members of the rally to come by and find out about Adventure Caravan's Tours.

We have good office staff and they were able to get us a corner spot and it was outstanding.  It made for a lot of room and more of a chance to talk to people.  On the 25th at 1:00 PM we were giving our first seminar on "RVing to Alaska" we had over 250 people at our first seminar.  Everyone gave us great reviews.
The winner of the $500.00 Gift Certificate was Donna & Marcel Janssen.

As you can tell he was very happy for his wife winning the certificate.  From that point on we have been on a flat run.
We went thou over 17 cases of catalogs. and talked to a lot of people.  We did great on selling trips, we have been lucky and have 5 more couples going to Alaska next year with us.

 The weather has been just so, we have been told that first we were having rain Friday night and into Saturday.  Then it changed from Friday to Saturday.  Well here it is Sunday night and we have everything put away and no rain yet.  That's great because we got everything put away and none of it got wet.
Today we had a lot of pass guest stopping by to say good by.

You would of thought at one time we were having a reunion right here at the booth.
We had some guest draw here at the booth for the grand prize winner of a Mega Rally or Balloon Fiesta.

The winner was Marline & Jerry Killion they have decided to see the Balloon Fiesta we hope they enjoy this great rally

.It is amazing how hard we try to give away a wonderful trip like this in front of the Good Sam Rally but they don't have the time to let us stand up there for 1 or 2 minutes and give away great trip like this.  OK, that is all I am going to say, they were very happy to  win!!!!
Tomorrow we had to Tuscon for our next Rally with The Escapade  that starts next Saturday I think,