Hi all,
Well the "Downunder" team survived the US Van Nationls and had an awesome time doing it. We met up with the Aussie team (Fres & Chrissy, Doug, Karen and Andrew, and Paul & Sue) in Chicago and headed off to the eVANt in 3 mini vans on Wednesday. Paul and I had booked 2 pop top campers and they were already installed and ready to go, including AC, when we arrived around 1pm. Fres and Doug were staying off site in motels. Dairyland Vanners, the host club, were great and helped us out with anything we needed. The Nats were at the local fairground at Elkhorn and swallowed up the 450 odd vans at the event. They had a tractor train bussing vanners around the site on a continuous loop, ice being delivered around the site, food vendors providing great food, on site T shirt printers, different live bands each night and plenty more.
We wandered around and met heaps of vanners we had only known on the net and checked out everything on site aand took heaps of photos. That night we partied with plenty of club at their sites, so much so that Fres ended up a bit crook the next day and didn't surface untill later on Thursday afternoon. Our neighbouring vanners were from Florida and they were great. Over the next few days we had aligator and moonshine with them. Too neat.
Thursday was clasification for the show, pub crawl, club games and general look around. More vans arrived and we managed to do some shoping in town. More partying that night. Mr Bill was the favorite place with heaps of blender drinks for free.
Friday was judging day and over 160 vans assembled in the main arena in rows determined by their judging clasification, ie early Chev, late Ford etc. Great photo ops there. That night was the bright and shine in the arena which was awesome and some very inventive light and laser displays. Judging didn't take too long and was all finished in about 4 hours. More partying.
Saturday was show day in town with a bit of a cruise. Any vans that arrived late and missed judging were judged there. Did I mention more partying.
Sunday was time to head off and due to distance, about half the site was empty by about 8 am. We left at pish and flew to LA from Chicago that afternoon.
All up an awesome weekend. Great vans, great people, great hosts and great to spend a bunch of time with the Aussie team. Well worth the money spent and will definately be returning, probably for the 45th in 2017. I see Fres has posted some photo's pics on the Southerncross website and I'll post some here if I can downsize them while we're here, otherwise it'll be when I get home in 4 weeks time. We're here in LA for this week then off to the desert before a week in Hawaii on the way home.
Talk to you all again soon.
Garry.
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