Six State Rally

Six State Rally is a rally of the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) members in the South Central Area (SCA) composed of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. While it is primarily for members in those states, other FMCA members are welcome to attend as well (other folks on our "street" were from New Mexico and Ohio).

For my IBM friends, this rally was kinda like IOD but with motorhomes!  We were told that there were about 400 "family" motorcoaches in attendance, plus vendor coaches. There was an Exhibit area with vendors who could talk with us about their products and had many of the items for sale. There was evening entertainment each night. There were seminars primarily on Wednesday and Thursday (I think 4 seminar times each day, each 1 hour and 15 minutes long). Dwayne and I selected separate seminars to attend so we could gather as much information as possible.

I mentioned that we were on the first "street" of parking. The 30 Amp parking was on a parking lot near the baseball stadium. For whatever reason, they started by parking the first coaches as far as possible from the area where the seminars and exhibit areas were. The 50 Amp parking was on the other side of another stadium, so those coaches were also a long ways away. There were trams that operated during the rally, and we could take the tram, but we also walked it a few times and we also drove the Jeep over to the area of the evening entertainment two nights. There was closer motorcoach parking for the volunteers and the folks who had requested handicapped parking.

Some thoughts about the Six State Rally:

• They had almost all the seminars scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday; one seminar was on Friday (it was the one on Fire Safety and it was GREAT), and there were no seminars on Saturday. When we went to the "first timers" get-together, someone asked why that was the case, and we were told that is what folks had requested... I need to figure out how to request something different!
• Many of the seminars were presented by the vendors. In most cases, they were good about providing a balanced view of what they were talking about, but obviously they knew what they were selling well and particularly shared about that.
• The entertainment was, uhm, targeted to a slightly older crowd, and, I found, a bit repetitive (similar acts and same songs done). However, more to my taste than, for example, what IOD has.

 Some information I learned at seminars:

• Insurance for RVs: while you can get insurance from your normal car/home insurer, they may not be the best choice either for price or for coverage. One thing the lady told us was that there are three age "hits" as you age: 70, 75, and 80 - and insurance rates for men go up more than for women. Like the insurance rates for adding a teenaged boy to your policy, this is due to the risk that the insurance companies see with claims by older drivers.
• Our household/auto insurer will NOT be able to insure us if/when we go fulltime.
• Did you know that picking up a TV signal with an antenna is called "off air"? (I kept on thinking he was talking about a network being out of service!) There are a lot of complexities about getting TV service while traveling; we're going to need to learn more before making any decisions on this.
• One of my favorite presenters was Janet, a lady from "Almost Heaven Microfiber", on cleaning the RV (inside and out). http://almostheavenproducts.com/home.php  She was very informative and fun to listen to.  One thing that she said was that there are a lot of different qualities of microfiber out there - and they have found that the ones made in South Korea are the best. She also is a fan of avoiding strong chemicals when cleaning - she recommended using mixtures of either rubbing alcohol + water, hydrogen peroxide + water, or white vinegar + water.
• For non-RVers, you may or may not be aware that "hooking up" at a campground involves plugging in for power (usually we use 50A, but we can do 30A as long as we don't run the AC and microwave at the same time), also known as "shore power", and fresh water ("city water"). We also have "dump" hoses to dump our grey and black water tanks, but it is generally accepted that it is better to wait until there is a bit of volume in the tanks before dumping, so we don't necessarily hook up our dump unless it is needed at this particular campground.
• Janet recommended having a spray bottle of vinegar+water in our wet bay to disinfect the fresh water controls and faucet before hooking up. She told of seeing a guy at a site finishing with dumping and putting his dump hose up to the fresh water faucet to run water through to clean it (eewuh). You never know who may have used the site you are in just before you.
• One of the other members of FCMA and part of the host team for this rally talked with us about "Selling your stuff" via online sites. He buys and sells booklet type books and talked with us about his various experiences with the different sites.
• There was a session on FMCAssist that I will address in another post, and one on FMCA Benefits. I really enjoyed the teaching technique used in the benefits topic - he had us split into 6 tables and each table had responsibility to study one of the 6 areas of benefits and then present on it. It was a good way to get us to "read the manual" and get educated ourselves!
• I was the spokesperson for our area of the benefits: Travel Benefits. One of the guys in the group asked me after the seminar if I had been a school teacher! I still love getting up in front of groups and teaching things!!!
• The other seminar that was really helpful was on Fire and Life Safety in your RV - I'll address it in another post also.

In addition to the seminars and inside exhibitors, there were new motorhomes on display that we could walk through and see what the newest things are that they are putting into the coaches. I enjoyed looking at the new motorhomes and seeing the features they had, but also appreciating features that our Trek has in comparison (the Trek is a very well appointed motorhome and, because of the "electromagic" bed, is relatively short and more maneuverable).

We also participated in morning devotions on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mornings, and helped out with greeting folks as they were coming in during the Friday devotions. The morning devotions were done by the Coaches for Christ chapter (we were going to a rally with them right after Six State).