We had rain for two days preceding the rally. This discouraged some people, but 11 hardy adventuring couples braved the rainy weather to bring their units to Amboy. The grounds were soggy, with up to 2 inches of standing water in some of our usual parking spots. People picked their sites carefully and many units parked close to the buildings on the gravel, without the benefit of water, rather than have the possibilities of getting stuck in the grass. Carol’s Friday dinner featured pork loin roasted in the Amboy oven and dessert cakes by Terry Chesnut.
The Executive board approved Carol Dixon’s trimmed down and balanced budget at their Friday evening meeting. The board also approved Wayne Kortum to be the Chairman of the Nominating Committee for 2010. Another item of discussion was the new membership flier.
For breakfast, Dwight and Lee Moyers prepared french toast to be served with sausage links. Seventeen more people decided to drive in Saturday to be with their friends. At the Saturday morning general meeting, we held the election for Carol, Terry, Anita, and Sue as the first item on the agenda. During an intermission, Bob Moyers, Region 5 President, officiated at the installation ceremony of the new officers. Carol Dixon, as our new president, resumed the meeting and presented a Unit Constitutional amendment to reduce the number of directors from 6 to 4. It passed. Carol showed the newly proposed Unit Membership Flier that will be designed and distributed to prospective members by Bob Koch, our long time Membership Chairman, and by members who wish to bring new people into our family.
After the meeting, we introduced our newest members, Deke and Tiffani Waters who paid their dues that morning. More about them later in the newsletter. We also served an Installation cake with a picture of an Airstream on it.
Dwight Dixon officiated at our shortened white elephant auction and raised almost $200 to help maintain our balanced budget. Kitchen preparation started immediately (led by Carol) for our Thanksgiving Banquet. Three turkeys were roasted this year in the Nesco’s. We had a total of 38 guests at the banquet. The food was great and abundant. Some of the homemade, “dishes to pass side” were amazing. Dwight brought in his newest acquisition, a commercial Soft Serve machine and people used it to make their pie a la mode. Six year old Christina Chesnut wanted hers in a large waffle cone. Some other members also opted for dishes or cones.
The evening entertainment included WBCCI DVD’s of the early Wally Byam Caravans using our new projector. Deke Waters saved the day when one of the DVD’s failed to load in the DVD player so Deke played it through his Apple Laptop to feed the signal to the projector. We watched one section of the, Vincent Price narrated, World Tour Caravan and the entire African Capetown to Cairo Caravan. It was very interesting and gave us a fresh perspective on their travels. Our little mud spots of the Lee County fairgrounds, this weekend, paled by comparison to the difficulties they encountered. They were a much hardier group than any of us.
Nancy Morrison conducted a short worship service Sunday morning followed by another luncheon buffet to finish up the left overs from yesterday’s feast. The weather had cleared by that time and the field had dried out. No one needed assistance to leave the grounds around 1:00.
Though out the weekend the hall was warm and filled with the sound of 42 people smiling, laughing, and holding conversations. A great time was had by all.