September 15, 2004

September 15, 2004

DAY 90

 

 

Another sunny, hot day in Indiana. Every day that we've been in Indiana has been hot and sunny.

My first seminar this morning was with the DOVE BOF. Joanne attended a light hearted seminar on the folly of full time RV’ing. DOVE is the Disaster Operations Volunteer Escapees. They are a group of Escapees who are trained by the American Red Cross to respond to disaster relief operations. They're a valuable group to the Red Cross. They bring their homes with them. They usually aren't in a hurry to leave, because they usually don't have jobs to rush back to. They're very mobile. The DOVE group here will be leaving from here to head to Louisiana to provide disaster relief services after Hurricane Ivan, which should hit land tomorrow. This group knows before the disaster happens, that it's going to happen, and they'll be needed. By this weekend when they're leaving, the Red Cross will have advised them exactly where they should go, and where disaster relief headquarters will be set up. I'm quite interested in this group, but Joanne thinks we need to spend most of our first year of full time RV'ing just exploring, and shouldn't make too many commitments.

The second seminar we attended together. It was a motivational talk by Kay Peterson, Escapee no. 1, founder of the Escapees RV Club, along with her husband Joe, 26 years ago. She’s quite an elderly lady now, in her seventies. She gave a motivational speech on taking responsibility for your own happiness entitled “You don’t have to sleep in the rain”.

We had lunch, and I decided to take a nap while Joanne attended a seminar about all the parks in the Escapees system. There are 8 Escapees RV Parks and we intend to visit and stay at 7 of them within the next year. I thought having a nap was a good idea, so I wouldn’t feel too tired for my evening shift as a tram driver.

Our second afternoon seminar was a seminar on what to expect in the first year of full timing, conducted by a couple who have just completed their first year as full timers. Following that, it was time for the Amish Haystack dinner. We were eager for this, because that is what we missed Friday evening at the Goldenrod Benefit Auction because of the truck breakdown. It wasn’t quite as good as we had expected, but I guess it’s pretty difficult for just one large Amish family to prepare dinner for 2000 people. The components of a Haystack Dinner are piled on your plate, one atop another, looking like a haystack on your plate. First was a layer of crumbled soup crackers, then rice, seasoned ground beef in a sort of chili, diced vegetables, shredded lettuce, grated cheese, and I can’t remember what else. It seemed like a hybrid between a taco and shepherd’s pie and ...

We attended the nightly door prize drawings, which takes 45 minutes each evening, then we watched part of the amateur talent show before we had to begin our 9:00 to 10:30 shift as volunteer tram driver and conductor.

DSK