Saturday, March 3, 2018

Our trip to the Tiffin Rally Part 2 (2/17 - 2/23/2018)

One of the biggest drawbacks to our trip to the Tucson tiffin rally this year was many of the places we chose to stay did not have adequate Wi-Fi. More and more we are coming to the conclusion that at least one of our phones should be on the Verizon network. Many times we find ourselves in rural areas that have cell towers, but we have very pour signal. Our only conclusion is that we must be in a Verizon network area. We think the next time we hit the road and are going to an unfamiliar area; we will get a pay-as-you-go phone through Verizon, just to give it a try. After we left the Jurupa regional park, we headed to Alamo Lake which was North West of Phoenix.


 



We spent two nights at Alamo Lake which was a nice break. We went to explore some Saguaro cactus in the area of the lake, and to just explore the rest of the various campgrounds that are part of this large state park. As we were exploring the campsites, we came across a shorter version of our Allegro bus. We think the one we found was maybe a 35 or 38 foot rig. It looked to have one less set of bays than our rig.






Eric had an opportunity to take his drone for a series of prolonged flights. It was interesting that as Eric took the drone up to higher altitudes that it would view RV’ers who were not staying at the campgrounds, but were boon docking in the desert.


We Stayed at Alamo lake because there were no RV parks in Phoenix that we could find that would allow pit bull type dogs. In fact, most of the RV parks were senior parks that didn’t allow dogs over 25 pounds. After enjoying a couple nights at the Alamo Lake state park, we headed south to Tucson to experience our first Tiffin Rally at the Pima County Fairgrounds. The fairgrounds is south of Tucson. With the exception of the poor cell phone coverage, we found that most of our retail needs could be met in this area.




This was our first Tiffin Rally and we had heard a lot of great things about them, but had never experienced one first hand. What we experienced is great food; we had two meals catered to the over 600 attendees (300 rigs) every day of the rally.




The sessions were very informative. We got to meet and ask questions of factory representatives from Freightliner, Cummins, Allison and Tiffin. We learned more about our rig than we ever could have thought possible.




We got to check out some of the latest in Tiffin Motorhomes. We even had a chance to meet Bob Tiffin, the founder of the company.



Every evening, there was great entertainment from some sort of ‘Tribute band’. We had ‘Piano Men’ (for Billy Joel and Elton Jon) and ‘December 68’ for a tribute of a 60’s era pop group.

Before we started the trip, we thought we would have a chance for some side trips, but there was just too much going on at the rally to pass up on, so we only got one side trip. We got to the Saguaro National park which was a truly wonderful experience.




We had hoped to make it to the Pima Air museum, but unfortunately, we just didn’t have enough time to do that. Eric still had a few moments to fly his drone to see an overview of the rally goers.


We also had a visit from a pair of Tiffin technicians who were wonderful at making a few minor repairs and answering questions about our rig. The Tiffin Rally was a definite hit with both of us. The fairgrounds even had a dog park that we could let the dogs run a bit of energy off in. 



The trip to Tucson went off with out a hitch. We had a great time as always on the road, and the dogs were very well behaved as always.




Safe travels all!

Eric and Carol Anderson