We missed you Matt. I was hoping we'd meet you there. I think you would have gone crazy doing a caravan with me driving the bus... I spent 4 hours drafting big rigs and going 60.
My son and I left around 1:30 and arrived in Richland at 5:30 or so. The Dairy Queen cruise-in was a nice little get-together, but we ended up leaving early to setup camp at the show. They allowed us to camp in our show spot (after paying $10). Once setup, I cleaned off the dead bugs and mingled with the locals a bit. Seems like bay window campers are pretty popular in the Tri-Cities.
I ended up having insomnia Friday night. Might have been the drive, or the fact that the camping was below a major interstate overpass, but I didn't crash until almost two... which was about the time the Bus Pilots from Idaho finished their game of outhouse bowling (with a ball made of hubcaps).
I woke around 6:30 - expecting to find a huge line of cars waiting... not the case. The MCVW volunteers were up and setting up the show for the day. Cars started showing up around 7:30 and trickled in for most of the morning. This was a VW and Euros show - there was a pretty good turnout of Euro imports... probably outnumbered the aircooled 2 to 1.
Overall - the show was very well organized. The thing I liked best was there were activities for the kids - not just a chalk bus/bug. They actually had volunteers dedicated to keeping the kids entertained. The Type 3 class was under-represented (only 2 of them showed up) - and the biggest shock was there there were NO early Type 2 entries in the show. There were however - 5 bay windows in the show. The Split/Oval class had one entry.
My 77 Camper Bus ended up bringing home some new hardware.... Best 68+ Type 2 Camper (by default of being the only entry) and the Overall Best Unrestored - which means much more to me, since I've been trying to resist the urge to fix up the bus. The feedback we got from people that really looked at our bus was great.
One last note - Joel (the Dubtober show coordinator) mentioned the state of VW shows in the Northwest. VolksFest in Yakima was down in attendence, Volks Fair in Spokane shutdown after 25 years, Dubtober was down this year. It may just be an indication of the economy, but we really do need to put more effort into supporting the smaller ones as much as we do the larger ones. I would challenge everyone next year to attend at least 2 smaller shows. Without our attendence - these small shows will die.
