Welcome back to another great day at the Alpine SoCal Rally!  Today is Sunday the 24th (see agenda below) – our last official rally day here at the Alpine SoCal Rally at Newport Dunes RV Resort & Marina.  Some of the rally attendees are moving on tomorrow (Monday), however, I expect many to stay on for another couple days, as are we.  We’re paid up until the 28th when we’ll head on back to Phoenix.

Once again, today was basically a free day with no scheduled activities until our 5 PM “Social Hour” followed by a “catered Mexican Dinner” at 6.  But first, our rally hosts put on another stupendous breakfast spread to start the day.  Then some of our resident “comedians” had a little fun at Bill & Patti Figge’s expense.  While Bill and Patti were away from the park on some personal business, some of our members (whose names shall remain anonymous) used the opportunity to play a little joke on them (see picture below).

The “jokesters” put a for sale sign in the windshield of their Coach and liberally applied some blue masking tape pieces all over the front.  Bill intends to have his Coach painted soon and he already had a couple of the blue tape pieces stuck on his coach in order to mark areas that he intends to get touched up prior to painting.  Therefore, the “jokesters” just took the tape pieces to a whole new level 🙂

There were even some “offers” in response to the for sale signs that some of our members left pasted on their door…

A couple of our members were aware of Bill & Patti’s return time, so many of us hung around to watch them arrive back at the park.

Bill & Patti surveyed the “handiwork” with good humor.  Their good ‘sports’ and I think they enjoyed the friendly prank.  Everyone got a good laugh.

After the morning comedy session, we piled into the Silverado for a drive to Long Beach.  We thought we’d check out either the USS Iowa or the Queen Mary for a tour.  When we arrived in Long Beach after driving up Highway 1, we found out that we only had time to do one or the other.  So we opted to take the Queen Mary tour.  We purchased the First-Class Passport tickets which includes:

• A ticket to board The Queen Mary
• 4-D Theater screening – The ship’s newest attraction is a 121-seat theater offering a 3-D viewing experience with 4-D effects such as wind and scents.
• Audio Tour – Tour (1.5-2 hours) the Queen Mary at your own pace with our comprehensive Audio Tour. Learn the history of the Queen Mary while strolling the decks with our exclusive Queen Mary headset.
• Access to the new “Alcatraz: Life on the Rock” and “Alcatraz: The Last Day” exhibits.
• Access to the Ship Model Gallery
• Access to the Queen Mary Story, Museum & Historic Exhibits and two guided tours.

Our two guided tours consisted of The Glory Days Historical Tour (←link) and Haunted Encounters (←link).

Some of you folks that follow the blog may remember that Stilla and I visited here in March 2015 while attending the Pomona FMCA rally but didn’t take a tour because we had our dog with us.  Click (here) for a link to that posting if interested.

We thoroughly enjoyed the tour(s) and would recommend it to others.  Although a bit pricey.  Here’s a few pics:

Hope you enjoyed the tour pictures 🙂  Don’t forget to click the links to learn more about the Queen Mary.

A live concert was being held in the parking area next to the ship while we took our tour which made it difficult at times to hear the tour guide.  One tour guide told us that the bands consisted of “has-beens” and “one-hit wonders” from the ’90s.  We made the best of it and still enjoyed the tour(s).

We finished our two guided tour(s) just after 4 PM and I was worried we’d be late getting back to the RV Park in time for dinner.  But we made good time by taking an alternate freeway route back to Newport Beach and we even made it back in time for “Happy Hour”.

Bill was pouring some of his “famous” margaritas that I’ve posted about before.

After some fine margaritas, everyone walked over to the RV Park Community Room where our rally hosts had set up our catered Mexican Dinner.

Once again, everyone had a great meal with great company.  We also held our general membership meeting after dessert.

Another successful Alpine SoCal rally thanks to our wagon masters! Another A+ rally experience 🙂  Thanks from all of us!

On Monday (the 25th) we plan on visiting Disneyland.  Hopefully, we still have a large number of our Alpine friends still at the park when we return because (as I mentioned before) this is really just a weekend rally but many Alpiners reserved more time here… but not everyone.  Stay tuned…