Winnebago Grand National Rally Forest City Iowa

 Well, we made it to the GNR in Forest City Iowa.

We boondocked across Wyoming, South Dakota and Minnesota ending up in the center of Iowa in Forest City, Home of Winnebago.

We had a few adventures along the way...

1.  The large wall slide failed.  This is the retractable room in the front.  It had a Schwintec mechanism which is notorious for failing in slides.  We braced it closed - it was trying to come out as we ran down the road and lived with it till we got to Forest City.  

2.  We learned that South Dakota does not permit staying in the rest areas more than 3 hours if you are a normal driver.  Commercial drivers are allowed 10 hours.  That is kind of tacky.

So we got into Forest City, got checked into the Rally Grounds.  Just the size of this place is kind of amazing

We are in the upper left, but all you can really see is the Smart Car because....

We were broken.  When we got to the Rally Grounds we bee-lined for the Factory Service Center across the street.  We got into the queue (Factory Service is a very popular option for Rally participants) and eagerly checked the list every morning.

For the first three days we were on the list!!.  We needed to have to coach across the street by 6AM, so we would get up early, take our showers, get the coach "road-ready" and drive it across the street.   We would then go back across the street for the morning coffee and donuts provided by Winnebago/WIT for the rally participants.

We would go to the plethora of seminars/demonstrations/talks that are at the rally, but we needed to be back at Factory Service everyday at 2:30.  

The folks at Factory Service know people are here at the Rally and don't have any other place to live so everyday at 2:30 - whether finished or not - they gave you your coach back.  In our case it took two days to get the Schwintecs replaced and an extra day on the drivers door seal we asked them to fix.  The drivers door seal was apparently a booger.  On day 3 they went up to bend down our antennas so they could get it out of the service bay and noted that the roof had some issues and needed caulking.   So we signed up for day 4 as a "standby customer".

We got the call at 9AM the next day and had 1/2 an hour to get the coach across the street.  But we did it and got repair work done.

We can't say enough about  Winnebago Factory Service.  They were more than accommodating,  the work was top notch and not all that pricey.  

We will stay until Saturday and then we think we head back to South Dakota to see Mt Rushmore before the Sturgis Motorcycle event - which don't want to get anywhere near.