This post may contain affiliate links.
With our Thanksgiving food barely digested, James and I got up at about 3am that night (that morning?) to start our journey east. What’s the proper way to say that…is 3am morning or night? Eskimos and Greeks probably have a word for it; those mid-undefinable hours when normal people are snoozing away. Nightning? Mornight? Whatever you call it, it was stupid.
We made a detour on our way to Kentucky and visited some family out east. That actually put us into Georgia (the pic above). What I most took away from our Georgian roadtrip is that Georgia people LOVE burning stuff in their yards. Maybe it’s because we live in the west, and, well, fires are banned, but this fascinated me. Every other house had a bonfire going, and the whole state smelled like camping. I was hungry for smoked meats that whole 2 days we were in Georgia.
And then we were finally in Louisville. The RVIA show started with a 7am kick-off breakfast sponsored by Truma.
7am, guys.
If you know anything about me and James, we aren’t nice people at that hour. But we knew that one of our favorite Winnebagans, Chad, was slated to speak at that thing. We wanted to be there to see him so we set 2 alarms, tried to get in bed before midnight (keyword was “tried”), and had good intentions. I’m pretty proud about this: we were only 30 minutes late.
And even better, Chad hadn’t taken the stage yet. So, as it always goes with us, everything worked out just fine. Except we missed the breakfast.
But turns out that was okay! We headed to the press room next, and they were great about keeping breakfast and lunch stocked for us throughout the show. And if you don’t follow our Facebook you probably didn’t know this, but opening day of the show:
WAS MY BIRTHDAY!
I wasn’t very subtle about the fact it was my birthday, being I was wearing a blinking crown that said “Birthday Girl” and forcing people to take selfies with me. Here’s Caroline (the pic above) with the Go RVing team, my first victim.
We’ve recently partnered with Go RVing, so it was fun to put faces to emails. Their booth was in a main traffic hall, so we walked by this about a billion times. Which brings me to all the walking. The Louisville exposition center is “L” shaped. Our buddies at Winnebago were at the bottom tip of the L, and our buddies at Truma were all the way at the very top tip of the L:
Miles, and lots of tangents, separated those two displays, both of which we frequented. I’m not sure how people out of shape survive a show like this.
When you walked into Winnebagoland, you knew it.
Fancy white carpets paved the way to see Winnebagos and their VIP lounge. When I saw those carpets, I caught myself thinking, “good luck keeping THOSE clean all show…” I swear James’ OCD is catchy. Weirdly, they stayed perfectly white and fabulous.
Here’s the view from the Winnebago Lounge…a VIP area where friends of WGO can load up on coffee, adult beverages, or fancy snacks. This is where we felt most at home during the show, and we continued to gravitate back here. We don’t work for Winnebago, but we’ve grown fond of many of the people who do. One of the things we’ve appreciated about them is that they have always encouraged us to keep doing what we do, keep spreading the Class B love and the fitness message. They want us to just be us. How can you not like these guys (and gals)?
Some of the faces of Winnebago. More of my birthday photo bomb victims!
Of course, it wasn’t all high school reunion goofiness…we actually did tour tons of RVs:
Did a bunch of interviews:
And got some good inside scoop:
But for me, some of the best parts of the show had nothing at all to do with RVs. Like Truma’s Christkindlmarkt event. Christkindlmarkt is a cherished German tradition that involves festive shopping, drinking, and celebrating around the holidays (they had me at “shopping”). And as if we’d expect anything less, these Germans had the Truma booth transformation down to a science. They had a pretty big display area:
And were able to completely change their booth around to make the Christkindlmarkt come to life in 20 minutes flat. Bring on the Gluhwein and German-cookie-thingies-whose-names-I-forgot!
This is what happens to Winnebagans when you serve them Gluhwein:
So, yeah. That about sums up our time at the show; a fantastic experience that made us even more excited about the RV world, if that’s possible. You’ll be seeing some videos we got from the show very soonly if you follow our YouTube channel.
But wouldn’t you know it, when it was time to head home, we once again found our 2 alarms simultaneously blaring at 3am in the mornight.
Must get up. James don’t you dare talk to me until there’s coffee. Another long day of travel awaits.
Still, it was DEFINITELY worth it.
Nice job covering everything! It was a great show indeed, and even better after meeting you guys!
We had a long chat with the lithium guys too, and after crawling under the Travato with one of them, they said it probably wouldn’t work in its current form unless we were prepared to give up a lot of space inside for the inverter, but they may have something smaller someday we can use. Fingers crossed! Hope to see you both again soon. 🙂
Outstanding! Always enjoy your posts and videos. Fun to read and watch while providing lots of good info. Keep up the good work!
Happy belated birthday Stef! Nice write up too. Must be so cool to see all the new stuff. You guys have been very busy. Time for a holiday… maybe to a semi-deserted island!
Thanks, guys! Yeah, it was pretty exciting seeing all the products on display and all the new innovations. That semi-deserted island sounds heavenly! When do things start picking up on the island? Which spring month is the best to visit?
July and August are kinda crazy here…but beautiful. We would want to get you out on the boat too for a tour and maybe we can catch a salmon or two. Lots of clams and oysters if you are into that. So May thru October would be good for all of those things. We can do the trail running 24/7 all year 🙂 If you have the luxury of picking months, our favourites are May / June and Sept / Oct. 😉
Boats! Clams! Oysters! Oh the fun we’d have! My wheels are spinning. We’ll be at a bike race in Durango over Mem Day weekend, and I’m not sure which other races fall in May/June. But I like that window for an island visit! Will start pestering James to work on our 2016 schedule. I REALLY hope we can make this work!