Our First Gypsy Journal Rally

We have been following Nick and Terry Russell’s travels for many years and have always wanted to attend one of their rallies but we were never on the right side of the country during the events, but this year we made a point of being west for the one in Yuma, Arizona.

We arrived as early birds on Sunday morning shortly after 8am and were instructed by very pleasant volunteers that we would not be able to get parked until after 1pm. We already knew this since we had been keeping up with Nick’s blog so we were happy to just hang out and meet others who had the same idea. The meet and greet didn’t take long to begin, groups of people were gathering everywhere and as usual our rig became a good meeting place.

We met new people and even met up with some we had met before. Bob & Cathy worked at the KOA on the Outer Banks of North Carolina the same time we were there and we did some catching up with one another.

Time flew by and we were parked and settled in by 1:30pm and met our new neighbors, Glenn & Marcia Shields who journal online every day. We also met John and Carol Herr from Our Trip Around The Sun, one of the blogs we follow. We met many more folks, many who didn’t have blogs or websites, but some who we just gave them our card and hopefully will send us their information. We absolutely love meeting new people and following their travels so if you were one of those folks, please comment on our blog so we can begin following your journeys.


We are not experts on rallies, this is actually our first, but we will be attending others now that we have gotten our feet wet. We plan to attend a larger one in our future so we can compare them to one another. The Gypsy Journal Rally is very small and in speaking with Nick, he wants to keep it that way. There were approximately 130 rigs and about 300 attendees daily, including the walkups that came just for the day but were not camped here. This makes it very quant but they have tons of seminars which will satisfy most palates.

Opening day was mostly introductions, meeting others and drawing door prizes. We won a $10 gift certificate from the local Applebee’s, we already have a $20 gift card so we hope to be able to stop while we are still in the area and have lunch or dinner.


On Tuesday we attended a few seminars and believe it or not we learned a few things…imagine that…we thought we knew it all! Not really, but it’s nice to keep an open mind and get more information from others even though we have a good grasp on how we like to do things.

We were most interested in learning more about Geocaching, we have been interested in this for some time and this was a great opportunity to learn about it and see if it was something we wanted to pursue. Even though the instructor was interesting, we now know that it is not for us.

The weather took a drastic turn on Wednesday, the wind was strong and brought some pretty chilly weather which was a little of a relief from the unseasonal heat that we were experiencing for the first few days. Since there weren’t many seminars that we were interested in, it was mostly a relax day for us. Later in the evening, we went to the Pizza Party and then the Cactus Queen Beauty Contest, what a hoot! Imagine all the things your mother warned you about and then times that by a thousand and that is what the contest is all about. Our guts are still hurting from all the laughter this contest bestowed upon us.

Five men , very masculine men who were secure enough in themselves to be able to dress up like ladies, well that term is used very loosely in this description, more like ladies of the night. But, anyway for them to be able to come out in front of hundreds of laughing hysterically people is just amazing to Jerry. He was asked several times to volunteer and each time he replied with a resounding, “NO”. These five were hilarious and we believe that there had to be a lot of Jack Daniels going on in the back for them to be able to do this so well. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera and since we were sitting way in the back my IPhone did not take very good photos, so none from this event from me.

Thursday was filled with some seminars that we were interested in, Smart Phones, writing a book, and working while RVing.


It was really nice to once again meet up with Jaimie Hall-Bruzenak who writes RV Lifestyle Experts and has interviewed us several times, including our very first year out here. We have kept in touch throughout the years by telephone, emails or just reading each other’s blogs but it has been a long time since we met up personally. She asked us to speak in her class about our adventures and we were glad to share a hint of our stories. The response was overwhelming, we received so many folks asking us for more information that we decided this just may be something for us to look further into. This has given us a push in the direction to begin publishing our books and then possibly get into giving seminars about living this lifestyle…stay tuned for more on this in the near future.

Writing about this rally cannot be complete without mentioning the constant noise from the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma located across from the Yuma County Fairgrounds. Nick made a great comment during introductions about this noise. He said to think of it as the sound of “Freedom”. Nice point but the constant noise from early in the morning all the way to after ten most nights and even as late as midnight on one of the nights just became very annoying to us. But as we have said so many times, it’s easy to live with things for a short amount of time as long as we are having fun and we enjoyed ourselves tremendously.


For more photos, check out our Picasa Web Albums.