HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROXIE!  51 years old today!

We got up and rolling a bit earlier today because we wanted to hear Tom Schabarum talk about his books and read from one of them.  He talked about writing, what he goes through, a bit about what he has gone through that influences his writing.  He read a few poems with a travel theme that he has written and is compiling.  He gave us a bit of a back story about his novel Airstreaming.  Pretty appropriate to talk about a story that has an Airstream in it to a group of Airstreamers.  It was very insightful.  I have followed Tom’s blog and his Twitter for a while so it was nice to meet him in person.  He also offered his books for sale which was great because I have been meaning to get Airstreaming for a while now.  Here’s Tom:

Up next was a seminar on Solar power.  A company from Medford (can’t remember the name now) was there showing their Zamp Solar products.  They were talking about a portable unit that you can deploy when and where you like.  I do want to get solar but I think I will start with them mounted on the roof first.  I feel that is the best, for now.  Here is the solar talk:

Due to a schedule misread on my part we missed another seminar that I wanted to see.  But we got some downtime at the trailer.  During this time we had the windows open and  our Fantastic Fan going.  I found this on our fan:

What is this?  It is a fly.  However he is stuck to the fan because of the suction of the fan.  However his back is up against the screen.  His legs are dangling free and they were moving.  Very funny.  I turned off the fan and herded it outside.

Since it was Roxie’s birthday we had to take her out to eat.  Canyonville has a real dearth of good restaurants.  We found out that the ones at the Casino are NOT good.  We went to El Paraiso.  Roxie loves Mexican food so this was perfect.  The food was very good.

Back at the ranch (RV park) we walked around for ‘roving happy hour’.  We don’t drink any libations so we just roved and talked.  Roxie talked to one of the local Airstream salesman and let him know what she really felt about the issues with our trailer.  She was a bit wound up afterward.  The next thing was tribal drumming performed by members of the local tribe.  I enjoyed it, just sitting and listening.  Here is a shot:

The sun was going down and getting cool so we took off a bit before they were done.  We need to dress a bit warmer, odd to think about in August.

Tomorrow is another day.  Two to go!

Today we seemed like we were always chasing the clock.  We checked the schedule last night to see what was happening.  Aqua Zumba interested Roxie but I didn’t see anything until about 11am.  This removed the pressure from me.

Roxie was up around 7am.  I heard her messing around in the kitchen but I went right back to sleep.  We were up until midnight last night so we really were pretty tired.  Shortly after Roxie came back to bed.  She told me later that she wanted to go to the Zumba but just couldn’t make it.  I TOTALLY understand!

I finally woke up and saw it was 10:20!  We only had 40 minutes to get up and get over to the seminar.  We moved pretty fast and got there on time.  It was a seminar geared toward women hitching up the trailer and towing it.  Tom from George Sutton RV was the instructor on this as he was for the maintenance session yesterday.  After the instruction inside we were led outside to try this on a Dodge pickup towing a 30′ Bunkhouse model.  Any women that wanted to hop in and tow it could do so.  There were a few ‘interesting’ moments as the route they took was around the valet parking lot.  We then went to lunch.

After lunch was a seminar where each participant was put in a group that pertained to the region where they lived.  We were to come up with some places that we liked that others would also like.  The ‘report’ will be published electronically at the end of the rally.

There was the normal evening happy hour with beef jerky and vodka samples.  I don’t know if those go together or not…  Announcements were made and the roving happy hour began.  Roxie and I went to the weekly farmers market and realized how small the town was.  There were about 8 booths there.  At lunch the owner of the cafe where we ate asked us if we were just passing through.  I asked her how she could tell.  She said the town is only 1800 and she probably knows most of them.  It was true, like yesterday at Ace Hardware, she knew the names of everyone that came in, except us.

We had a quiet evening and are retiring as I type.

I didn’t get any photos but you can see some at this page: https://www.facebook.com/alumafandango?hc_location=stream