After we visited Graceland we stopped in at the home of Hershel and Eileen Siefert, some friends we made at Countryside RV park in Apache Junction, AZ. We couldn’t spend a lot of time with them, but it was really fun getting together. Something was wrong with the cards that my teammate Hershel and I had, because we seemed to always be on the losing end of Pegs and Jokers. In that the women cheated is a given, but we were not successful at catching them. Eloise wants to edit this, but I’d rather the truth be known.
E – We beat them fair and square!
We arrived in St Louis for a visit with youngest daughter and family, and pass the Arch on the way.
It was fun visiting with them. Notice how tall Sam is now, at 6’3” and still growing. This was taken inside the Allegro while we were camped at Babler State Park, about 15 minutes from their house. Jessica showed us her portfolio of art during the visit. She is some talent. In her art class at college they had to sketch a male nude, and one of the sketches had to be made in only around 30 seconds. (I could be wrong about the time…but close). According to her, she was happy she was sitting behind the “old guy” who was posing. The shot of the family and Eloise has John on tip toes, trying not to look so short next to Sam. 
The 2009 Escapee Escapade took place at Sedalia, MO., Called the Queen City of the Prairie. Sedalia was named by its founder, last name Smith. First name lost to my memory. Smith had two daughters, the one daughter’s name was put on Smiths boat, and the other daughter, whose nickname was Sed, was who the town of Sedalia was named after.
The first night we were positioned by the Awesome Parking Team (their choice of words) in the State Fair Grounds, on a large grassy area. We elected to be parked in the ‘generator’ area where there were no hook-ups.
Sunset the 1st night, before the rain started. Gary is putting the window shade up. We were all set for great weather, boy did we get fooled.
We took a little trip to a small town of Green Ridge where Gary bought this house when he returned from Holland and got stationed at Whiteman AFB when it was an ICBM missile base.
Main Street, Green Ridge, MO
Meanwhile, back at the Escapade: We attended seminars on diesel air brakes, Habitat for Humanity, Eloise attended a workshop on “Clothing our Wounded Soldiers”, about providing adaptive clothes for recovering military casualties. If anyone is interested in helping out just log into “sewforcomfort.org” I went to one about using LED lights in the RV, digital imaging, and ‘surviving life in your RV’. The SKP founders, Joe and Kay Peterson gave a hilarious talk titled: “They’re Having A Depression, And We’re Not Invited.”
Monday evening entertainment was by a group from Branson, MO, a group of really crazy guys who could play any instrument invented. Their name is “New Odyssey and the info say they play 30 different instruments.” They would be a show we would seek out the next time we were in Branson. Tuesday evening entertainment was the Brett Family, also from Branson. They were good and entertaining also.
Noon on Tuesday we heard all about the history of Sedalia and the area. Tuesday night we went to the square dance. Two squares were there, but only one could dance…the others had no experience or hadn’t danced in 15 to 20 years . We did some Angeling and got thru pretty well. The one square was able to dance to some plus calling, which was welcome.
Wednesday we heard from a Captain stationed at Whiteman AFB. He showed slides of the beautiful B-2 Bomber and explained it’s capabilities. I liked that one a lot!! The B-2 is the mission at Whitman now. We visited the base a few years ago, no more purple NCO club and all the pipes that used to run above ground and up over the street were gone. It looked like a “REAL” Air Force Base.
Each morning there was aerobics (ugh) and line dancing (yeah). Neither was mandatory! We line danced most mornings when there wasn’t a conflict. About 30 people out there doing their thing.
On Wednesday evening there was what is called in SKP lingo “Ham-O-Rama”. Call it follies, a talent show or whatever. It’s fellow SKPs entertaining. There were cowboy poets, pianists, singers, skits, instrumentalists, and more. It was a fun night.
One seminar I haven’t mentioned that was very informative was the one given on a ‘sport’ called Geocaching. You use a handheld GPS to aid in finding ‘caches’ placed all around the country. As you travel to these caches you are exposed to areas of the country you never knew existed. Besides being fun to find. There was a pot-luck party later that was another good opportunity for us to speak one-on-one with experienced geocachers. We haven’t bought a GPS yet, but it’s pretty high on my Xmas list!!
Well you can imagine there is a lot of stuff I haven’t mentioned that was going on. There was a large indoor vendor area, and some outside in spite of the weather. Yep, Eloise found some things we didn’t know we needed!
A personal disappointment with the rally was the lack of diesel topic seminars. With our new coach there are a lot of questions I would have liked to get answers on, and just generally hear about maintenance issues.
This is the first RV that needed to be winched out. The driver was a ‘solo’ who had arranged for her rig to be weighed. So she drove out of her slot to make sure she could move and get to the area to be weighed, and when she came back into the slot she got stuck! Going to skip a comment here. Notice how far away the tow vehicle is. It took every inch of his cable, and a long chain besides.
These are the holes left by the RV when it was pulled sort of sideways.
Our immediate neighbor is really prepared for more rain!
The motorhome 2nd from the right almost made it out, but got stuck just short of the pavement. He needed front wheel drive, they are on the blacktop.
Our neighbor’s red truck is mired at the fence where he was told to park. One 4wd pickup didn’t move it, so…
...so two 4wd trucks also tried but they didn’t budge it either. They had a different insurance and were still negotiating to be pulled out by the one that pulled us out. It was still there when we left.
Our neighbor the driver of the red truck is doing a jerking move on us before the ‘real’ tow truck came.
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