4/21/09 - On to Texas!

Rv's started leaving on Monday, April 20th and the Rally wasn't officially over until Tuesday, April 21st. On Tuesday morning we heard RV's starting to leave as early as 4:30 AM and it was a steady mass exodus from then on. We pulled out about 9:30 headed to Amarillo. Saying goodbye to Albuquerque, it would be fun to come back for the big Balloon Festival. From a small gathering of 13 balloons in 1972, the Kodak Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta has grown to become hands-down the largest balloon event in the world. Held each year during the first week in October, the Balloon Fiesta has hundreds of balloons and over 1,000 pilots. After having the motorhome for 6 1/2 years we are finally going to get to Texas, if only the panhandle part.

Dinner at Pappadeaux the last night

These are the friends that we went to the Rally with. The first couple is Ralph & Carol Hedstrom. Pat and Ralph went to high school together in Casper and Carol was a year behind them. They have a home in Sun City West, AZ and live in their motorhome in Thayne, WY in the summer. The second couple are our "Alaska buddies" Richard and Karen Hugo who are originally from Oklahoma. They have lived full time in their Alfa for over 6 years. Over the past few years we have been to several rallies together and then spent four months together on our trip to Alaska. We shared a wonderful meal at Pappadeaux, which was a new restaurant for us! We will be heading to Amarillo, TX tomorrow morning (Tuesday, April 21st).

Rally Entertainment

There were 5 nights that they had entertainment at the Rally. Neil Sedaka put on an excellent show and looked like he was having a ball entertaining to our generation! The Osmonds (Jay, Merrill and Wayne) also put on great show. We didn't remember Wayne being so funny! Karen took these pictures.

Church at Sandia Baptist Church - Albuquerque

They were having a church service at the Balloon Park, but I was wanted to go to a digital scrapbooking seminar at 10:30 and couldn't make both so we decided to go to a church close to the Expo grounds.....was a great decision! We decided to wear jeans and hope we weren't to out of place. Well it turned out that it was their "Western Days" where almost everyone was in jeans. The pastor is in the hat in the picture, the front was decorated with straw bales, a saddle as well as other western decor. We heard an excellent sermon on "How much faith do you have" from Jonah!

The Rally - Albquerque, NM

We went into the Rally (4/15) two days before it began and were surprised how many RV's were there early. They parked all the RV's on a beautiful grassy area at the Balloon Festival Park. The Rally began on Friday with all the exhibits, seminars and new rigs at the New Mexico Expo .... basically the fairgrounds which was 12 miles from our camping site. On Friday it was really cold, rainy and then it turned to snow but not enough to stay on the ground, however the mountains all had snow down to the foothills of Albuqueraue. They announced that there were 3108 rigs there and 700 new units to look at. It was quite a sight to see that many RV's all in one camping area, it was like a city on the move!

We were in row 10 (of 16 rows) with each row being over 1/4 mile long!

Saying Goodbye is Hard to do!

We spent a wonderful Easter Sunday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus and then a special family time with the kids and grandkids . It was really hard to say goodbye to these SPECIAL little ones knowing that it will probably be 6 months before we see them and they will all have changed.