Our day began early as we had a fair distance to go to get to our destination at the fairgrounds in Redmond, Oregon. Also, we were scheduled to enter before noon, so we needed to get underway early enough to make it on time.

Our drive on highway 97 was routine until we were just south of Bend, Oregon. The FMCA entry instructions directed us to leave the main highway and follow back roads that would take our motorhomes around the city of Bend a few miles east of town. This was done to keep a large number of arriving motorhomes from clogging the streets of Bend and Redmond. This bypass route took us through the rural area in the high desert area that included an occasional volcanic feature such as a cinder-cone or an ancient lava flow.

A cinder cone seen while traveling on the FMCA convention entrance route

Even though our caravan consisted of six motorhomes, only five would be entering together. One motorhome would be going to the "electric hook-up" area while the rest of us would be taking our rigs into the "dry" camping area. We would find later that a seventh motorhome — belonging to friends from our RV club — had arrived a day before us.

Our small caravan enters the Deschutes County Fair and Expo Center

We made it during our assigned entry time which meant that we could drive right into the fairgrounds without having to go to the staging area first. The motorhomes in our caravan all had signs in the windshield that let the volunteers directing us to our parking area that we were all together. As a result, our group of motorhomes was kept together as we pulled into our parking/camping area. The parking crew was doing a much better job at getting us into place than the last time we attended a convention at this location.

Our caravan had a nice location in the parking lot. All of our motorhomes were on the edge of the lot so that we had a view of the desert through the windshield. This also meant that we had a nice area to put our chairs and tables together in front of our rigs.

Click on image below to view photos of the entire parking sequence Our group is directed into our campsites by FMCA volunteers

Usually, once our motorhomes are in place, we observed the people that came in behind us. It is interesting to see how all the motorhomes are maneuvered into place as a very large village of homes-on-wheels comes together for most of a week.

After the camping area was filled we had time to meet our neighbors and study the packet distributed by FMCA volunteers. When it was time for our evening meal, it was decided to have dinner in our respective motorhomes.

After dinner, we were visited by our two friends — Dick and Dorisdean — who had arrived the day before. Several in our group went into Larry's and Martie's motorhome to visit with the early arrivers. It was a very nice way to end our day.

The guys visit up front while the women are out of view to the left

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