Day 4 – Desert Rat Rally XV (Quartzsite, AZ)

Our rally day 4 was pretty much a free day with no major scheduled activities unless you play golf… which we don’t.

Today started out pretty much just like all the others so far… folks congregated and socialized over coffee and donuts on the sunny-side of the rally tent.

In addition to the donuts, we even had leftover pizza from yesterday evening’s meal. I’m not quite sure the pizza went over so well for breakfast 🙂

The first thing this morning, Dave from Dave’s Diesel Diagnostic Services came by to perform testing on the Urban Escape Vehicle.

You may recall from my post a couple days ago that Dave gave a presentation about engine diagnostics and the Cummins Insite™ program. I went ahead and signed up for his diagnostic evaluation when I saw him working on the neighbors Coach. Today was the third day he’s been performing this service on many of the Alpine Coaches here at the Rally.

The Urban Escape Vehicle checked out OK 🙂 Now I have a baseline of all engine performance parameters if something starts to go south. Dave printed out a multi-page report for me to keep on file.

While Dave was finishing up with the diagnostic testing, we got a visit from Bernd Hanselmann. Bernd is a freelance photographer and journalist from Germany. His business is called Photoproduction Hanselmann (←website link). He first contacted us yesterday to ask if he could do an interview.

We answered questions and shared information with Bernd for a possible story in a leading German automotive magazine. I assume our “story” will be combined with others regarding full-time RVing and the associated lifestyle, or we may possibly just end up as part of his research on the Quartzsite experience. He took numerous photos of us and the Coach and promised to email and share a link once his story is complete.

At one point during the day a couple of Entegra Coaches rolled in from one of the RV shows in town. I was told that someone in the Alpine Coach Association arranged for them to be brought by for us to walk thru.

The Coaches got quite a bit of attention but I didn’t hear about anyone putting down a deposit.

Lots of nice details in these Coaches, but as usual when we look at new rigs… we just come to appreciate the quality and engineering in our Alpines a little more.

This 44ft Anthem Entegra™ can be yours for only $471, 694.00

Or you can have the 40ft Entegra Aspire™ for a mere $373,000.

At 4PM or so, the Redlands Truck & RV representatives came by to share their latest ‘goodies’ specifically for our Alpines. They have a large service center tent set up near the “Big Tent” in town to service all the Coaches here for the big RV show.

After the Redlands RV Service tech presentation, we held an unofficial Alpine SoCal get-together in the rally tent since we had around 20+ of our members in attendance here at the Alpine Coach Association rally. As the newly elected SoCal president, I got up and said a few words. I thanked the members for placing their trust and confidence in me to lead the 70 member strong SoCal group into the future. We also used the opportunity to welcome two new couples to the group.