A fun afternoon visiting with other RV'ing bloggers

A few weeks back, I think we were in Mazatlan at the time, I read on somebody else's blog that there was going to be an "official" gathering of bloggers during the time of the Quartzsite RV show. The date was to be January 24th.

We were already planning on being in the area around that time, so decided we wanted to meet some of the folks we regularly read about.

But in the morning, we still had chores to do. I've been wanting to take some time to clean out and reorganize the lower storage bays, so I got that done. And, Sherman was a few miles overdue for an oil change, so I got that done as well. Happy Sherman! While I was doing that, Ruth baked up some gluten free chocolate chip cookies to take to the get together.

So, around 1:15pm we walked on over. We had purposely parked up close to where the event was taking place so that we could just walk. Sure enough, there were the yellow balloons they had advertised to get everyone together at the proper spot.

When you organize or attend something like this, you have no idea who's going to show up, or how many. And of course you hope that it's not going to be a bust! Well, it was certainly not a bust and in fact it was very well attended...in fact I can see this is probably going to become an annual event and we were happy to be taking part in the first one ever!

Mingling with people as they arrived.

Hey, there's Gaelyn from Geogypsy Traveler and Ivan from Roadtrip 06 and Paul from Where's Weaver.

Ruth, petting Sally from Eggrollings.

There's two of the organizers of the event. Jerri from Just Wanderin', and Sandie from Where are the Dixons Today

Gathering in the desert.

Everyone took a minute or two to stand up and introduce themselves and tell a little about themselves. We recognized quite a few people, and after the introductions it was pretty easy to get started talking to people and a lot of them came up and spoke to us as well. In fact, we were sad that time went by so quickly and there were some people we wanted to speak with a little more. 

Paul and Marsha Weaver (standing) from Where's Weaver and Nan Talley from Trippin with The Talleys

Sorry I missed the focus on this one! Here's Kenny and Angela from RV Life is Good.

Retired Rod from well, you guessed it... Retired Rod!

Fun to meet up with John and Sharon from On the Road of Retirement. We've been following their blog since before they bought their motorhome!

And Marianne, a fellow frugal RV'er! Her blog is at Frugal RV Travel, but she's also involved in the increasingly popular Boondockers Welcome and we're going to tell you more about that another day.

Finally got to meet Al and Kelly from The Bayfield Bunch. Oh, and of course their dog Pheebs was there to!

 I know there's a bunch of people we missed. We had fun talking with Judy from Travels with Emma and we're going to be seeing her again in the next week or two, so we're looking forward to that. And we said hello to Diana from Life on the Open Road, we've also been reading her blog for a very long time and we were happy to finally be able to say hi in person.

As I said, I know that there's some we missed and we feel bad about that. There simply wasn't enough time. I'm sure the event will grow next year and maybe more activities will take place over a longer period of time to allow a little more socializing. But for the first time, I'd say it was complete, resounding success!

There were even a few non-bloggers there, and a couple who want to start their own blog. We finally got to meet our own long time readers Pete and Fredrika who have been reading our blog for many years. They came back to Sherman for a longer chat, and we can definitely see keeping in touch with these two. 

Pete and Frederika.

We've heard nothing but good things about the RV holding tank treatment called "Happy Camper". We've seen it here for sale at the show, and I just wanted to remind everyone that the prices to buy it on Amazon.com are quite a bit cheaper. 

Happy Campers Organic RV Holding Tank Treatment - large 64oz tub (64-treatments) for RV