Get Together - Spring 2018

Wow!  What a time we had at the Spring 2018 Winnebago Fuse Get Together.  I had a blast!   Sonya being the brains of the operation set up a great event.

We left Wednesday evening after work and made it from Tallahassee to just South of Troy, Alabama. About a 2-2.5 hour ride.   Stoped at a campground on the South side of town and everything was grand.  The Walnut CreeK RV Park. Nice folks checked us in.  Nice power/cable and a level campsite.  On grass mind you, but a nice site for the night.  This is mostly a permanent trailer setup for student housing at Troy State University.  We ate dinner and turned in for the night.  

The bad part came in the morning.  The bathrooms were horrendous.  They had not been cleaned in a while.  I might have been able to work around this but there was no hot water.  I aborted the shower attempt and did a sponge bath in the Fuse.

We left there and headed up the road through Montgomery,  Huntsville,  Nashville and our final stop at the Grand Ole RV Park.   We got there mid-afternoon on Thursday and 4 or 5 Fuses were already waiting on us. 

I have to give two big thumbs up to the service at the Grand Ole RV Park first.  Not only did they guide us to our campsite, but they offered to help hook up as well.  How can you beat that.

Oh, and after our previous stop I can happily report that the bathrooms at the Grand Ole RV park were spotless and had plenty of hot water.

We quickly got setup.   I had to get with our Fuse Family members.  We spent the rest of the day on the porch talking and welcoming the group arriving.  I think by the end of Thursday we had 10 or more of our Fuse Family at the park.  And there were two other Beagles and they both read the word sucker on my forehead.

We got up Friday morning  and got ready for the festivities starting that night.  We talked and laughed and just had a great time as I ran from coach to coach welcoming everyone to the fun.   

At 5:00 we started the pot luck.  More good food than you can imagine.  I think everyone got plenty.  The campground had live music starting at 7:00 and we sat around and listened until it finished.

We were blessed that Ford sent goodie bags promoting the power stroke diesel an the Transit platform.  How great is that.  Hats all around plus some other fabulous stuff.  We also followed the tradition of something Fuse branded.  This time, coffee cups.  Come through Tallahassee and I will give you one so long as they last.

The next morning started at 8:00am with a great breakfast furnished by Winnebago.  The campground catered the meal and I know I ate more that I should have.  We had people sitting inside and outside and everyone was just having a wonderful time.

At 9:00 our headline speaker from Winnebago started his talk.   A huge amount of great information and lots of questions and answers.  It was a great two way discussion with the man who designs the Fuse.   I will be writing up the tech talk notes in a separate post.

After the tech talk there was lunch and the tour of coaches.  Everyone showed off mods and asked each other for tips and techniques for doing things with our Fuses.

One thing that did stand out that we had not done before was Deb Mowers doing two sessions on how to use your convection microwave.  During the first session she packed 10 people into her 23T.  During the second session (which I attended) there were 7 students.  She showed us about convection baking and the grilling feature.  She used a can of crescent rolls to demonstrate the oven in operation.   I got some tips (have got to try toast in the microwave) and a recipe for beef and yellow rice in the instant pot.

At 6:00 on Saturday Night we had out good bye dinner.  In the past we had done pizza but since the Grand Ole RV Park was cooking, we had sloppy joe sandwich plates.  We listened to some more great music, said our good byes and hit the sack.

Sunday Morning a good number of people had left before we got moving.  Lots of sightseeing or long distances to head home.  Some people stayed around.    We decided to head home.  Lily got sick while we were there (she actually pinched a nerve in her neck) and we decided to get her home to the Vet to make sure she was ok. 

So when it was all finished up we had the following:

22 Winnebago Fuses

1 Coachman Orion (an honorary Fuser)

1 Fuse couple from California who flew in

2 Gonna Be Fusers 

1 Guest speaker who broke their Fuse on the way to TN. (Gasoline and Diesel are not interchangeable)

How did the beagle bus do on this trip?   I mostly ran at 65mph on US-231 between the small towns and ran at 72mph on I-10 and I-65.  For that I got a combined mileage of 15.8mpg.   I got as high as 18 mpg for one tank on US-231 and as low as 15.2mpg on I-65.  Not bad and shows that speed matters.