July 2 Ft. Wayne, Indiana

We drove north into Ft. Wayne with our destination being a city camping park right next to their coliseum. Sounded easy but we proceeded to get lost.

The last "Wing Ding" in Fort Wayne was in 2002. The city of Ft. Wayne is so excited to have this large gathering of Goldwing motorcycle fans return to their city for their rally that they had gone all out and put up lots of signs. First there were lit signs along the freeways coming in, welcoming us and telling other motorists to watch out for the large number of motorcycles that they expect to be converging. Once we got near the coliseum there were just too many well meaning signs and we just got confused. One just a motorcycle it would have been an adventure but when you pull a motorhome and trailer into a private school parking lot without room to turn around the "adventure" takes on new meaning. We finally called on our cell phone and one of the registration people came out and led us in. I noticed they changed some of the signs after that so maybe they agreed that they were originally a bit confusing.

We were glad to be in and parked as they day wore on and more and more people arrived.

By getting here early we are along the main campground road, in a long row of motor homes, near to the center of the action, a short walk to the bathrooms and showers. We are "dry camping" (for those non RVers that means no water, sewer or electric hookup) so we conserve use of our own facilities to keep from filling our holding tanks and having to move to pump them out. We run the generator a couple hours a day to keep the batteries charged and if we want to run the cofee pot, microwave or air conditioning. Really roughing it...huh?

We look at the motorcycle campers who fill the field below us and wonder how we ever handled that...most of the time in a tent on the ground and then later moving to a popup motorcycle trailer...I guess we were just paying our dues building up to now.