{"id":3982,"date":"2016-08-08T14:36:45","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T18:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=3982"},"modified":"2016-08-08T14:36:45","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T18:36:45","slug":"56th-escapade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/08\/56th-escapade\/","title":{"rendered":"56th Escapade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"General<\/a>

General session<\/p><\/div>\n

When Jett and I first heard that the 2016 Escapade – the national convention for the Escapees RV Club<\/a> of full-time RVers – was to be held in 2016 in Vermont, we immediately resolved to be there. One of the reasons we accepted our summer jobs in South Hero, VT, was that we would be just 15 miles from the Escapade venue in Essex Junction, VT. We even made getting the week off a condition of our employment.<\/p>\n

So the Escapade, held July 23-29, is now history. We are glad we went, though Jett participated only minimally due to poor health (ongoing digestive issues – more on that in a subsequent post). It was a large event – over 1,200 people living in over 700 RVs (and we probably had the shortest trip of all as many traveled thousands of miles to get there). It was amazing to be surrounded by so many other people “living the dream” as they say. I attended many of the very informative seminars and learned a lot. As a side benefit, we got the RV in motion after several months of just sitting, which is always a good idea.<\/p>\n

The first amazing thing we observed was how efficiently the “parking team” got everyone situated in a water\/electric site. Though there was a constant stream of arrivals on both Saturday and Sunday, there was never a line of RVs waiting to get parked. We were parked within 5 minutes of arriving. It is almost like they have done this before. Or maybe they have done this 55 times before (this was the 56th Escapade).<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a>

One row of RVs<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Our<\/a>

Our site for the Escapade<\/p><\/div>\n

The seminars varied widely in topics. I attended one – surprisingly entertaining – on toilet odors and how to control them. I also sat in on two very interesting and informative genealogy seminars, one on how to do local research and another on how to photograph gravestones (which is harder than you would think). Other seminars included volunteering in federal parks and refuges and workamping in general. The general sessions were also interesting with the best one featuring Kay Peterson, co-founder (with her husband, now deceased) in 1978 of the Escapees organization. The success of her effort was demonstrated in the announcement that the most recent membership number was over 130,000. Jett, in one of her distressingly rare moments out of bed, sat with Kay and had a nice chat. Wonderful ladies both.<\/p>\n

\"Jett<\/a>

Jett with Kay<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The toilet odor talk<\/p><\/div>\n

Social events included a concert, an amateur talent show, a potluck supper, a fundraising chili cookoff (very successful – over $6,000 raised for charity), a pet parade and, on Friday morning, a “hitchup breakfast” to give everyone something to eat before they left. Jett volunteered for the potluck supper (with me filling in because she felt so lousy) and I volunteered for the hitchup breakfast (a breeze, except for getting there at 6:30am). We met some wonderful folks, all of whom planned to attend the 57th Escapade in April 2017 in Tuscon, AZ. We didn’t commit but would very much like to be there. Escapades are fun<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Chili<\/a>

Chili cookoff<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Pet<\/a>

Pet parade<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Pet<\/a>

Pet parade<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jett and I first heard that the 2016 Escapade – the national convention for the Escapees RV Club of full-time RVers – was to be held in 2016 in Vermont, we immediately resolved to be there. One of the reasons we accepted our summer jobs in South Hero, VT, was that we would be … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,54,4,27,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-genealogy","category-places","category-rv-living","category-vt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-12e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3982"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4001,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions\/4001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}