Safari Pre-Rally, Aguanga, and FMCA Convention Pomona, March 2003
After more than 4 months at home, we finally hit the road again March 11th for two weeks in Southern California. Our long home-bound period was forced by a bad break of Joy's arm, which eventually required surgery. We also bought a home in Eureka where we can park the RV off-street, and have been getting the Arcata place ready for sale.
First stop was a Safari International pre-rally at Rancho California in Aguanga from the 14-18th. The panorama below shows the 190 Safari coaches in attendance; if you click on it to see the full image be aware that it is huge, nearly 400K and 7629x1131 pixels! I compressed it rather severely, which makes it rather blocky. It would have been 1.4 megs in higher quality, too much for reasonable downloading.
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The pre-rally had lots of seminars, meals, happy hours, and general goings-on. We missed more than usual because we took this opportunity to trade up to a new motor home (look here for details); moving took one full day (see picture at far left) and another day was a complete rain-out.
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An installer whom I know well (but had never met - one of those common internet happenstances) was at the rally and was able to move my Datastorm internet dish for me. Bill is at top left with his wife Janet. She spent some anxious moments on the top of our coach feeding cables to Bill with lightning all around! On the bottom left is Joy with our salesmen from Paul Evert's RV in Fresno, Craig and Steve.
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On Tuesday the 18th, almost 100 coaches caravanned 100 miles north to Pomona. It took 2-1/2 hours to get us all formed up, and it was quite a sight with all those murals. We were coach number 84, and anywhere we travelled on a city street a handful or more people had gathered by the time we went by, to watch the art-on-parade.
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Some 3000 motorhome owners gathered at the Pomona Fairplex (the LA County fairgrounds), with several hundred more coaches on display by all of the major manufacturers.
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We gawked with the rest of the peons at the $million-plus palaces on wheels. These photos include a Newell and a couple of Prevost conversions.
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The later pictures of the bus with a wine rack was a $1.3m conversion by American Coach from Tehachapi. They do about 6 a year, with a 12-14 month waiting list.
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There were a couple of the latest new ideas on display. One was this mid-diesel coach from Travel Supreme that has a built in garage big enough for a Mini Cooper. That's a king-size bed above the garage.
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Another interesting concept was the roof patio on the Sky Deck coach by Airstream.
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Every morning at the rally we went to the Bonelli County Park just west of the fairgrounds so that Holly could get a good run. There wasn't anything but blacktop at the rally proper. Here she is enjoying a round of Chuckit.
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Our return home was uneventful, arriving on schedule on the 26th. We will be putting our old home up for sale during a 3+ week stay, and plan to leave again on April 19th.
 Comments? Send mail to donb@arcatapet.net
Snail Mail: Arcata Pet, 600 F Street, Arcata, CA 95521-6301 USA
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