We have just spent a week in
Gillette, Wyoming at the Discovery Owner Association Inc. (DOAI) rally site at
the CAMPLEX at Gillette and it has been a good time for everyone here. There were 60 Discovery RV’s or Coaches in
attendance and they came from all over the country and even one from
Canada. Here is a picture taken from the
roof of our RV showing a few of the other RV’s and some of the complex
buildings in the background.
The Texas contingent was the
largest group but we had five coaches from our Mason Dixon Chapter, and two of
those folks as well as us are also members of a second DOAI chapter, the Blue
Ridge Discoverys. We even had coaches
from California, New York, Oregon and Washington as well as Florida and other
states. CAMPLEX can handle up to
almost 2,000 RV’s with full service, meaning water, electric and sewer
connections. I know of no other site in
the USA that can handle that many! They
have built several large buildings that contain many rooms and even a large
theater for productions. The CAMPLEX
also has a large race track and facilities for fairs etc. It is also one of the cleanest sites we have
ever seen.
Many folks took advantage of
bus trips, one day going to a very large Bison Ranch and on a second day going
to visit Devils Tower National Monument and the South Dakota town of
Deadwood. We had been to Devils Tower
and Deadwood before so did not take the tour but we did drive to Deadwood one
afternoon and visited a number of the small casinos the town is noted for. Very nearby Deadwood is also the town of Sturgis,
known for its very large motorcycle gatherings.
Gillette free tours of one of the largest open pit surface coal mines
in the country and many took advantage of the tours and were amazed at the size
of the machinery, and the average of 84 100 car trainloads of ultra-low sulfur
coal that is sent out from the local mines every day!
The Discovery Rally also held
classes on maintenance of our RVs, held a Tea for the ladies, had a golf outing,
which Dick participated in, had coffee, juice, fruit and donuts every morning
and had two very nice dinners for the group as well as having entertainment on Friday
and Saturday nights. The group raised
donations for a local charity and collected canned goods for the local food
bank. We raised $1,114 dollars from a
quilt raffle for a beautiful quilt made by some of the ladies who are DOAI
members. We donated 761 pounds of food
to the food bank. There were also
several vendors who were here and sold RV related merchandise and
services. We did have our coach washed
and pressure washed as you can see in the photo. It was really dirty having been driven in the
rain on several days.
The rally ended last night,
Saturday August 30th, and many of the coaches left for trips to other areas of
the country before going back to their homes.
We stayed at the CAMPLEX and Dick worked on the financial and banking
matters that he is responsible for as Treasurer for the national DOAI
organization. We had a very heavy
Thunderstorm this afternoon and then we went out to dinner with our friends,
Sonny and Helen Blackwell and Marilyn and Tom Hundley who are fellow Mason
Dixon’s. As we arrived back from dinner
we snapped this photo of the sunset over our coach.
Since it is Labor Day weekend we will stay
here on Monday also and then leave on Tuesday after doing some bank deposits
and hopefully picking up a package at the Gillette Post Office that should be
there by now awaiting our pick up under General Delivery.
Tuesday after the other tasks
are done we will leave Gillette headed north to Montana and toward Glacier
National Park that borders Canada toward the western end of Montana. The trip to the east entrance to Glacier NP
in St. Marys, MT is about 615 miles from Gillette, going through the cities of
Billings and Great Falls. It will take
us two days to reach St. Marys.
Here is a link to a Google
Map that will show our trip from here through Glacier, on to Spokane, WA then
to Portland, OR before going on south to see Pat’s brother Bob and his family
in Modesto, CA and finally to Hemet, CA for our next rally. https://goo.gl/maps/grouK
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