Winnebago Grand Rally - Part III

Yes, it has been a month since our last post. The Biker is currently working 60 hour weeks and I'm walking dogs for folks on four different shifts. We will endeavor to get more posts up, but things are probably going to continue to be slow until Christmas!

Time to wrap up the Winnebago Rally, which was, um, July? Yeah, we're not very good bloggers.  One of the most exciting things that happened at the rally was Winnebago techs tracked down our electric gremlin affecting the 12 volt system. It turns out our coach had a frayed wire. It only cost $5 in parts, but three hours of labor. Ouch!  Oh, well. It's fixed and we now have 12 volt all the time, which is kind of important.

We also got to go on a long bike ride with the WIT riders.

After all the rain at the beginning of the rally, it was nice to  enjoy some great riding weather.

We headed up the road to a tiny town called Rock Falls.  The town was built by the falls at Shellrock river, and was originally called Shell Rock Falls. We couldn't an explanation of why the town folk decided to drop the "Shell".

In the 1960s, Rufus Wilkinson and his wife donated 19 acres for a park. Cerro Gordo County Conservation Board has worked to expand the park to 80 acres.

Wilkinson Pioneer Park is now a valuable nature trail, and home to many birds, from blue herons to bald eagles.

The park is best known for its  covered bridge. The bridge was built in 1969, was destroyed by fire in 1997, but was rebuilt the next year. 

After leaving the park, we grabbed gasm and stopped to see one of Iowa's Freedom Rocks.  Ray “Bubba” Sorensen II, a native of Greenfield, Iowm launched the project in 2013. He is placing a rock honoring veterans in each of Iowa's 99 counties!

We then headed to Lake Mills to grab lunch at Teluwut, which has really good food - although I would have liked a bit more seasoning on my fish.

The restaurant is the old Merchant's Bank, so we got to eat in the old bank vault - which was certainly cool enough to make up for the lack of seasoning!

After lunch, we strolled over to the town's Arlington Veterans memorial.

The park was created in 2004 to honor local Veterans.

It currently has 124 flags and honors 1,234 veterans.

Another Freedom Rock. The black granite on the top of the walls came from the same mine that provided the granite for the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

This stone honors the 22 local men who gave the ultimate sacrifice. Reading their names and remembering these brave souls seemed like the the best possible way to end to this great ride!

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Winnebago Grand Rally - Part II

 Thought we'd finish our coverage of the rally by answering some of the questions we had - and if you're wondering why we don't have many pictures of Puckerbush, somebody dropped and smashed their phone. Which had pictures of stuff like, you know, the parade. Oops!

A booklet of activities, along with a map, is provided in registration packet. The WIT club starts a new Facebook group for the Grand Rally each year, and its a good idea to join. That's where any announcements and last minute changes are posted. The rally also does have WiFi, but expect it be a little slow since the rally grounds will have 800 to 900 rigs!

There are people movers to get around the rally grounds and the schedule and route is also in the Rally booklet.

If you need to go anywhere in Forest City, there is a free shuttle service.

There are also plenty of golf carts to rent

There is a large red hall for vendors.  Most vendors will do installations at your campsite, but we didn't see many offering rally discounts. We did see a few products that had been marked up, though!

Next to the vendor hall are several tents. Most of the seminars are held in these tents - and there are seminars on pretty much anything!

There are also several restaurants on the rally grounds. We didn't get a chance to try everything, but the Flying W's spud buffet was pretty good.

Our favorite though was Scoopy's -

maybe because of the size of their "two scoops"? We recommend the cheesecake - before it runs out, of course!

The WIT Club and Museum is just across the street (and the train tracks) from the rally grounds. The shuttle makes regular runs, but its just as easy to walk over.

The WIT Club has a store with Winnebago stuff. The volunteers also run the plant tours. Make sure to sign up for the tours early - the tours fill up fast.

There is generally a few models parked in the parking lot, for people to check out. There are also more models parked near the red vendor barn. We'd been trying to check out the floor plan of the 22M for some time - and there was two 22Ms at the rally.  After we looked at it, we kind of liked the Fuse better. Maybe someday we can downsize?

The museum is free and has a lot of interesting memorabilia, as well as these two campers. The old trailer had an icebox instead of a fridge - and the Brave had no cruise control or GPS. Nice campers - but we'll keep our technology!

And finally, a quote from John Hanson. Can you tell he was a Midwest business man? 

Stay Tuned for Part III - Repairs and A (Minor) Emergency!

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Winnebago Grand Rally - Part I

All right, time to catch this blog up! 

Way, way back in July, we attended our first Winnebago Grand National Rally! But wait - what is the Grand Rally?  It's an annual get together of Winnebago RV owners in the home town of Winnebago - Forest City, Iowa.

Winnebago Industries was started by a group of business men because they were worried about the slumping economy in  Forest City.  This turned out to be a pretty good idea. Forest City only has a population of about 2,000, but Winnebago employs about 4,500 employees at several different facilities. 

The Grand Rally is a way for the Winnebago International Travelers' club (WIT) to have some fun and help local businesses. The rally takes place the last full week of July.  The town also holds its annual festival, Puckerbush Days, the week before Grand Rally. Nobody is sure what a puckerbush is anymore, but that doesn't get in the way of the fun!

Which brings us to something we found a bit confusing as newbies:

Puckerbush is from Thursday morning to Sunday morning (July 19 - July 22)

Grand Rally is from Sunday afternoon to Saturday morning (July 22 - July 29)

The rally grounds open at noon on the Tuesday before Puckerbush (July 17)

So - each day you stay before the Grand Rally is an additional $15, but the Sunday and Monday after the rally is free.

Let's talk about another thing that's confusing - the gates. Heritage Park has several gates, but you have to enter through the South Gate to pick up your registration package and pay extra days. The easiest way to find the South Gate is to find Chrysler of Forest City. You then turn onto 330th Street. and almost immediately turn onto Heritage Lane.

Heritage Lane is where everyone lines up to enter the hidden South Gate.

There are several places you can camp free at on at your way into Forest City - if you don't mind boondocking. Both Iowa and Minnesota have welcome centers on I-35, just up the road. Diamond Jo's Casino is also on I-35 and lets RVers stay overnight for free. Finally, you can camp overnight at the WIT Club and Museum in Forest City, which has about 12 spaces for RVs to park.

We like free, so we stayed at the Minnesota Welcome Center, then drove in early on July 17th. We'd been told that Tuesday and Sunday typically have the longest lines to get into the park, so we showed up at 9am - and still had about 15 rigs ahead of us. 

(It turned out to be a good thing we came in on Tuesday! It rained so much the next couple of days that they had to close the South Gate until things dried out.  We talked to quite a few people who had to camp elsewhere until the gates re-opened.)

While we're talking about the line, let's talk about those toads and trailers. If you have a toad, you will be asked to unhook it and park it temporarily out of the way.  Once you've been assigned a space for your rig, you can then move your car to one of the designated parking lots for toads.

If you have a trailer, you will enter the park first, and pick up your registration packet. You will then be directed down to the trailer lot, where you can drop the trailer before proceeding to your space. Trailers and cars are not allowed in the RV spaces, but you can have motorcycles, mopeds, and golf carts.

When you registered online, you were given a choice of  which row you want to camp at. There are rows for the different WIT clubs and chapters, like the Winnie B's and the MIL WIT. 

Thank you vets for your service!

There are also state rows. We choose Texas this year, but we're thinking we'll probably hang with the WIT Riders next year. If you need help parking, there are plenty of volunteers around to help. The ground was water-logged this year, so we saw several people really struggling to get their rigs in and leveled. Lets hope it doesn't rain so much next year😑

The sites have electric hook ups, but do not have a sewer connection. If you need to dump, you can buy a $30 ticket for the honey wagon. Water is available at either end of each row, and you will need to coordinate hooking up enough hoses to reach a spigot.

Finally, yes, there are showers! There are two shower buildings on the grounds, and this year, there were also shower trailers. The showers were very busy in the morning, but were almost empty in the afternoon. If you want to take a shower, we'd recommend waiting until just after lunch. 

Stay Tuned for Part II!

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Road Trip!

Yes, this post is a wee bit late. First we decided to spend time with relatives and friends, then we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves at the Winnebago National Rally in Iowa. I also dropped the phone we use for Facebook and Twitter last weekend, and it's now in itty bitty pieces. 

So much for being good and faithful bloggers!  Let's back up a couple of weeks, shall we? We pulled up anchor in Indiana, just after July 4th.

We packed up the animals and jumped onto to 30. After a year on the road, even the cats are fairly good about going into their crates - and Crockett loves it. I suspect he feels safer in his "den" when the house is rocking and rolling.

We headed west to Joliet, then turned north, asphalt-camping at a rest area. One of the trucks next to us was transporting a tail section of a plane. Talk about taking tail-gating to a whole other level!

We camped for a few days at Castle Rock, near the Wisconsin Dells, then headed west again. this time towards Black River Falls. The electric company in the area is putting in new towers.Instead of scenery, we got treated to lots and lots and lots of heavy machinery.

 

We stopped at a local rest area and discovered it had a scenic look out, so we went exploring

The half mile path is green and shady and smooth, but it's a bit steep in a few places.

There is a viewing deck at the end, with a lovely view of the tree tops 

We're not sure what was in the forests around this rest area, but the cats were very interested. Puppykat kept returning to the screen to get another whiff.

We then continue west and Wisconsin becomes more and more rural,

with a lot of twists and curves in the road. 

We camp for the weekend at a tiny park called Tourist Park in Mondovi.

We will NOT be reviewing this park. It may look pretty, but the flies and mosquitoes were horrible!

Our main reason for stopping was so we could meet a good friend in Menomonie. She lives in the suburbs of Minneapolis, so the cafe in Menomonie was a good half way point to catch up. We had a lot of fun - and our hubbies finally got to meet each other!

When we pulled in, there was a grandfather and his grandson pulling in with a 1979 Itasca Sundancer. Isn't this an adorable little rig?

Our friend brought us a special gift - a new chew for Crockett. Yum!

On Monday, we fled the mosquitoes. We turned south, camping at another rest area, then we rolled into the Forest City rally grounds the next morning at 8am.

The gates officially open at 12, but we heard parking can get a bit crazy the first day.

We were glad we showed up early! As we waited, the line behind us started getting longer and longer. Eventually, they opened the gates at 11am and we were directed over to our spot over in the Texas row.  Now if we can only post about the actual rally in a somewhat timely fashion....

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