Day 20 - April 12 Worlds Best Roadschooling Convention Day 3, Tucson

Today the road schooling convention wrapped up.

Another day of interesting presentations, especially with Mac the fire guy. Today was a bit more on fire safety with emphasis on escaping the burning RV. Mac had arranged for Lazy Daze to provide us a coach that we could use for a live demonstration of  how to crawl out an escape window. Both Susan and Leroy jumped at the chance to give it a try. Feet first out a window that had a comforter thrown over the top of the metal edging. Fortunately we had catchers on the outside to help us down. It was a worth while experience, it's just too bad not more of the participants choose to run the exercise. Five of us out of maybe 20 or so....

The day ended with a pizza party and dinner murder mystery put on by the volunteer attendees. This was well worth our time attending, kind of sorry to see it end, but a day or two of rest sounds good.

Getting his butt out of there

Day 19 - April 11 Worlds Best Roadschooling Convention Day 2, Tucson

Day 2 of the Roadschooling convention started off early, 10 am. That's early for use. But, we did manage to make it. More talks today, geocaching for the kids, lap books and RV fire safety for the adults.

The organizers were able to get Mac the Fire guy in. If you are in the RV circle you may had heard of him. His line is that "you have 20 seconds to get out". These coaches and trailers are marvelous adventures, but they are death traps in the event of a fire. When you sit and think about it a bit, it does make a lot of sense. Mac's talk was well worth the conference even if there were nothing else. Tomorrow he will lead us through getting out of those sorry excuse for fire escape windows.

We picked up some travel packets as our way of getting the toe wet so to speak. One of the organizers ( The Road School Teacher) sells information packets about some of the major areas they have been to. Local info, sites to see, history, etc. Seeing as we are planning to get to San Fran, we bought one for there, one for Tucson and another. A way to pay back for all the effort to put this convention on.

The day was wrapped up with a Chili cook off, Leroy came in third thank you very much. ( 3rd of 5 :o)  ). It was "Not Your Texas Chili chili". Probably should have called it Oklahoma chili. The pot was too small to call it a Texas crock pot, the chili had hamburger and beans, both a no no for Texas chili. Probably was not hot enough either. Hopefully the Texas citizen league will not find out and put me back on probation for not being a good Texas representative......

We ended the day with a bit of dancing to a local square dance band. The kids did most of the dancing, but the adults of the WeBeGone team did manage to get a couple waltzes in.

Great sun set

ready for the party

No pain, no fun

Day 18 - April 10 Worlds Best Road Schooling Convention, day 1

Today was the first day of the Worlds Best Roadschooling Convention.

Susan has been kicking around the idea of home schooling little Rose as a means of prolonging our adventures. While poking around the internet for info we ran across the Full Time Families web site. It turns out they had scheduled a get together or convention in Tucson just about the same time we had planned to pass through town. So, we altered our time table a bit and signed up to see what we could learn. Nothing like going directly to the experts.

We signed up for a couple of field trips and headed over to the gumbo fest as mentioned in previous posts. Today kicked off the three day event. They are holding some talks on various subjects for the educators as well as having something for the students (kids). Today was crafts and an egg drop for Rosalie, and book exchange, rig driving round table discussion and home tours for the adults.

The day was topped off with a dessert pot luck followed by a key note speaker. I think everyone in the crew thought it was a great and interesting day.

Rose's egg drop, in a yogurt container about half way down. It survived.

The farm scene

Pin the tail on who??

Day 17 - April 9 Pima Air and Space Musuem

Today was another field trip day. This time to the Tucson Pima Air and Space Museum.

They are just a few miles from the RV park just off of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base one the edge of Tucson. They bill themselves as "one of the world's largest non-government funded aerospace museums."
With over 80 acres and 300 aircraft, who's to argue.

I suspect they have an advantage over most air museums as they are located across the road from the "309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG)", sometimes known as the "bone yard".

Due to the extremely low humidity this is where surplus aircraft are stored, out doors of course. Planes come here to wait until they are needed again, to be salvaged for parts, or to get shredded when no longer needed. Those aircraft represent a whole lot of our dollars sitting there wasting away. I guess they claim to earn a few million dollars in cost savings by recycling, but that of course does not count the initial cost of these planes. They even had a row of planes that went directly from the manufacturing floor to this facility. Talk about a waste.

The web site: Tucson Pima Air and Space Museum

Pilot giving last minute direction

Day 16 - April 8 Miniature Time Machine

Today's event was heading off to the Tucson Miniature Time Machine Museum. This is a museum loaded with miniatures. Think doll houses to the extreme. Some pretty amazing intricate and fine work on a small scale. This field trip was arranged by the good folks associated with the Road Schooling convention. Fortunately we had met most of the folks last night at the gumbo fest.

We joined two other couples and their kids for a late lunch at Chili's, then headed out for our weekly Wal-mart grocery shopping fix. 

The Miniature Time Machine museum

Day 15 - April 7 Saguaro National Park

Today saw a quick trip to Camping world. We had three coupons burning a hole in our pocket. Besides we needed another sewer hose. Seems the Arizona campsite builders like to put the sewer connections at the back end of the site. Took the full 25 ft to make it. But, we did get our $45 worth of coupons disposed of.

Then it was off to Saguaro National Park, the US home of those funny looking tall cactus with arms. A bit of driving, hiking, and book work and Rosalie pocketed Jr Ranger badge # 9. We were feeling pretty good about that until we met on road school mother who happened to mention one of her sons had 22. It is a great way to get the younger kids involved in what they are seeing. The work booklets are very similar in structure, the animals, tracks, nature settings are geared toward the park in question.

The Park web site: Saguaro National Park

We ended the long arduous day by joining the Full Time Family's group for a gumbo get together at one of the members site where we mingled, talked, enjoyed some gumbo, lost a bowl, and generally had a great time.

Day 14 - April 6 Tucson bound

Today we headed off and of course arrived in Tucson for the Worlds Best Roadschooling Convention.

 Tucson was just a hop skip and a couple jumps from Tombstone. One of our shorter drive days, nice...

We stumbled across the convention when we were looking into the possibility of home schooling Rosalie at least through pre-school and perhaps kindergarten. Neither of the adults have much of a clue as to how this was done so we thought we would drop in on the experts and see what it's all about. So far we have three outings scheduled with the group in addition to the three days of the convention. We are looking forward to hopefully learning a few things.

Tomorrow we think we will head off to Camping world for some more sewer hose and a couple of other things (yippee) then off to Saguaro National park to see if we can see some cactus and earn another Jr Ranger badge....

Rose has arrived...