June 22, 2013 FMCA Rally, Gillette, WY

The final count of coaches is 2639 coaches. The cam-plex where we are  has 1725 hook up sites. The largest RV park west of the Mississippi. Good place for a rally.

One of the vendors had a booth with space saving devices, the best one was this collapsible tea kettle.  We had a horrible severe thunderstorm this afternoon.  Very high winds, hail and lots of heavy rain. I went out to retrieve our cutesy name thing quilt off the front and put down some awnings. I got soaking wet and thought I might blow over. I opened the door to come back in and the wind caught it. I was hanging on for dear life so it would not blow off and John had to pull me into the RV. The hail was so loud inside, I thought it would break windows and it felt like the wind was going to blow the coach over. Scared me to death. An RV is not a good place to be in during a bad storm. The coach and we survived unscathed.  A photo of hail on our ‘grass’.

I almost missed the Ladies social event. John gave me a ride in the car when the storm abated some. They had a comedy duo-Red and Bernie. They were hilarious. They also had cake, cookies , tea and door prizes.  Hail on the real grass after the social.

Of course a chaco shot in the hail. The flooding is pretty bad, this is a photo outside our door. We are on an island in the middle of the lake. We are also right next to the road, so we can get out ok.

The evening entertainment was Marty Stuart. John called it a really western western band. They could really wail on those strings. The rally ended on Sunday. We are staying another night to avoid all the traffic and let the ground dry out a little. It was a mess for everyone in our area trying to leave. They had built a trench here to drain some of the water off, but it clogged up, so these guys were out with the tools they had to clean it, a rake and hammer.

A tractor pulled up to drag the motorhomes out. We were right in the middle of the action.

It was very entertaining. But flip flops are not the best choice of footwear for sucky mud. They flipped mud all up my back.

At one point there was a tractor, backhoe and a tow truck working.

The last one towed out, we are the only ones left in the lot. We are going to move to a hook up space, away from the mud  soon. The new spot, we moved to the hook up area. Hook ups and grass. You can see by the tire tracks how close they had everyone here. It is nice and quiet now.

It is cloudy on the horizon, so this is a close as we got to the  super moon rise.