2010 FMCA International Rally in Albuquerque, NM, March 2010

[Betty Brewer]

It's always  a sad day when we depart from a rally.  The festivities are over, the frantic shopping is over, the entertainment is over and it's time to hit the  road.  There were a reported 1400 Family's at this rally and with venodrs and Commercial exhibits there were a total of 1800 coaches, way less than "Back in the Day."

I am amazed at how little traffic we have on departure.  Within 5 minutes on the Interstate we are so spread out we see hardly any other RV's.  We followed  Ken and Sheila and Jeff and Sue ( all with different departure times) as we had the common destination of Meteror Crater RV Park for our overnight stop before hitting our homes in AZ.

We fueled up at Dancing Eagle Travel  stop and  joined Jeff and Sue  at the casino for lunch.  Green chili soup and Indian Fry bread tacos concluded the New Mexican cuisine.

We hit every imaginable weather  in the 295 miles driven today.  We headed west on I40 and  had big head winds, sleet, slush,  snow, rain and a bit of hail.  We made one stop to ty-rap our slide awning into a stationery position. It was billowing in the wind and making quite a racket from inside.  Ditto what I said about big winds.  Sure cuts the fuel mileage.  We noticed several awnings lying along side the Interstate.  Sigh...............

Yes another FMCA Rally ends but Redmond awaits!


But we are now safe and secure at Meteror Crater RV Park.  Good electricity, empty tanks and just relaxing.
Betty

 

[Wendy]

We had a long trip from the balloon grounds to Sandia Casino, 5 whole miles....lots more motorhomes had the same idea so we're not alone. (Oh, Terry, someone IS parked in OUR spot !) Wind blew like crazy all afternoon. Even blew over 2 big-rig trucks down at Isleta. Bad news is that it's raining right now. Good news is, it's not snowing.

Had a great time at the rally.

And then there was one......

Wendy

 

[Jeff]

Wendy:

Your Sightseer sure looks lonely out there in the field. Like everyone else we enjoyed the rally if not the weather. Now it's back to Surprise to thaw out and start our construction project.

 

[BernieD]

Once again a lot of fun spending time with Framily. We enjoyed the parking at Balloon Fiesta Field and the vendors at Expo Fairgrounds, but hated the commute between. Got good service from Thetford and a few others, supported a couple of vendors and had some great happy hours.

We left heading south to Las Cruces for another rally. The winds on I-25 were fierce. Cars and trucks were being whipped back and forth by the sideways wind. It even lifted our windshield wipers a couple of inches off the windshield. I-25 was closed later in the afternoon to clear some wrecks caused by the wind.

Sitting in Las Cruces, we're finally able to warm up a bit with 70s and 80s forecasted. Staying at Hacienda which is a great resort.

 

[MikeCoke]

Stayed 2 nights at Sandia Casino so we could go see How to Train Your Dragon in 3D. Cute movie and the 3D was fantastic.

Got up this morning and got ready to leave then noticed that one of the rear tires was flat. Called Coach-Net and they sent a guy out who didn't have a working jack or the tools to change a tire on a motorhome. But between us, we got the tire off, got it to reseal (couldn't find a hole), refilled it and put it back on. Hopefully, we're good to go the 250 miles to home. Off to the Conoco in Bernalillo to dump then headed northwest.

Mike & Wendy