Sunday, August 6, 2016 – We arrived on Tuesday morning, August 2nd on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition, known locally as the Big E. The Big E is a massive place with several convention buildings all being used by the Family Motor Coach Association for this Convention which RVers know as a “Rally.”
The photos below are of the main expo center and several of the buildings along the Avenue of States that are not even on the aerial photograph of the Big E.
We helped Curtis set up our booth on Tuesday. Wednesday the convention started and we worked 1 pm to 5 pm. Thursday Friday and Saturday we worked 9 am to 5 pm. Ours was the “RVillage” booth. FMCA members are mostly older folks our age and much older. Most of them have not heard of RVillage. I can say that most all of them at the Rally know who we are and a lot have signed up to be RVillagers.
We smiled, introduced ourselves and shared the RVillage love all day every day. We truly loved every minute of it, mostly because we love RVillage. We are beyond exhausted right now (Saturday evening) since we just left the exposition hall for the last time and are now back, enjoying our wonderful Dora who hasn’t seen much of us these last few days!
Curtis and one of our RVillage Ambassadors Jim Hollis (Jim is the FMCA Chaplain). Jim and his wife Jan were delightful to visit with.
Curtis put on two RVillage seminars. I attended this one with him and operated the computer showing the attendees all about RVillage.com.
A tiny bit of the the main exposition building.
Our RVillage booth showing my boss Curtis in one photo, Roy in another and me in one!
One of the booths adjoining ours!
One night we went out to dinner on the convention center grounds in an area of old New England homes in Storrowtown Village. The restaurant was the Storrowtown Tavern. If you’re from Hammond the inside was similar to Jacmel Restaurant with the big fireplace and old wooden floors. I enjoyed Yankee Pot Roast and Roy enjoyed Fish (cod) and Chip. As we walked out the restaurant door we were surprised by some wonderful jazz music being played in the Storrowtown Square Gazebo. Everyone brings their lawn chairs and claps and taps along with the music.
RVillage was so well received that our booth stayed very busy through out the convention so we all needed to be there most of the time. Roy was able to attend two seminars, Catepillar Diesel maintenance seminar and the Cummins Onan Generator maintenance seminar. He learned an awful lot from these two seminars. The Spartan Chassis seminar was the main one Roy wanted to attend but it was scheduled at the same time the seminar Curtis and I did so Roy was needed at the RVillage booth and couldn’t go to that seminar.
Other than visiting the other booths we were also able to walk through dozens of new motor homes. FMCA is predominantly Class A motor home owners, so that is what was for sale here. The ones inside right by us were Entegra motor homes. The ones like ours (Fleetwood) and other brands were all around the grounds outside. I want to share with ya’ll what some of them look like but that will come next time. These are motor homes ranging from $200,000 to $675,000!
See ya’ll tomorrow! Ya’ll come back now ya’ hear!
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