GOOD SAM RALLY

On July 9th, en-route to the Rally, we visited with cousins Debbie and Cliff in Portland.  Had a good visit and a great dinner.  Debbie also gave Susan a teddy bear that cousin Cathy had made, it was quite the emotional journey recounting how talented Cathy was especially in making such bears.

We left on the RV park on Sunday and arrived for The Good Sam Rally in Redmond, Oregon, where we set up in a field.  What a complete success this trip turned out to be!  We camped out with over 2700 RVs of all sizes, shapes and ages and enjoyed five full days of touring new and used RVs, over 500 vendors and display booths and great shows every evening.  We arrived on Sunday, got our orientation and were treated to a volunteers dinner that night where we were given our "assignments" for the Rally.  Kerry got to work in the sign shop where signs were designed and erected on the Rally site and Susan worked in the Radio room, the communications brain for all the workers on the site.

Of the many highlights we experienced the nightly shows took the cake.  The first night was a local band, Leroy and the Lugnuts who were very very good, the female singer received a standing ovation for her "Unchained melody by the Righteous Brothers.  The next night we were treated to Bobby Vinton who, at age 76 was terrific.  He got the whole crowd of over 2000 patrons singing his old songs, especially Mr. Lonely, Roses Are Red, etc..  His son is his bandleader and his daughter is his back up singer and soloist.  Bobby also captivated the audience with playing solos on his trumpet, saxaphone and then playing Rapsody in Blue on his clarinet.   Here's a picture of him and his daughter from our seats in row 10.

The next night we had a great time with Vince Gill.  Gill has sold more than 26 million albums. He has earned 18 CMA Awards, including Entertainer of the Year in 1993 and 1994. He is tied with George Strait for having won the most CMA Male Vocalist Awards (five), and is currently second only to Brooks and Dunn for accumulating the most CMA Awards in history. Gill is a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and has received 19 Grammy Awards to date, the most of any male Country artist.  It was a great show and we recognized almost every song he sang.  We had great seats for his show, centre isle, row 10 (again….) as the photo shows, 

Then on the fourth night we were treated to  Herman's Hermits.  Herman’s Hermits was an internationally successful 60s British band, from Manchester, England, formed in 1963. Part of the British Invasion, their trademark simple, non-threatening, clean-cut “boys next door” image made them easier to listen to and more accessible than other British Invasion bands.  Their first hit, “I’m Into Something Good" reached #1 in the UK (1963) and #13 in the US (1964). Other hits followed such as “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” (1965) and “I’m Henry VIII, I Am”. The original Herman, Peter Noone sang all the bands old hits and a variety of other hits from the bands of the same era.  He also has a tremendous sense of that dry british humour and had the audience laughing over and over.  His energy (at 63) was contagious and had all 2000 in the audience singing "I'm Henry the VIII"with him.

We left the Rally site on Sunday afternoon and made our was north to Hermiston, Oregon where we stayed overnight and then on to Spokane, where we stayed at the Spokane RV resort which is in the midst of a 18 hole golf course.  We then headed on into Montana where on Tuesday we stayed in a local RV resort in quite a small town, Deer Lodge.  We didn't realize until the next day that we were only a few miles from the site of The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand and, by the Indians involved, as the Battle of the Greasy Grass.  This was an armed engagement between combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho people against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. It occurred on June 25 and June 26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory, near what is now Crow Agency, Montana.   The highlight of this trip was to realize that not only in the land in Montana as flat as it claims but that the town casino is located in the back room of the Conoco gas station and comprises of 5 slot machines!


On Wednesday we arrived back into Canada and headed up to Lethbridge where we have been staying for five days at Bridgeview RV resort, a Holiday Trails Resort campsite.  The resort gets its name from the impressive bridge that is just across the valley.  This bridge is the largest railway structure in Canada.  It was built as part of a major diversion of the Crowsnest Pass route between Lethbridge and Fort Macleod. The river crossing was previously over a wooden trestle measuring 894 m (2,933 ft) long and 20 m (66 ft) high; an impressive structure in its own right.

We are heading out tomorrow for Drumheller and another Holiday Trails resort, Dinosaur Trail.   This is also the home of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, the world's largest dinosaur and a host of other attractions we are certainly not going to miss out on.