Every rally has an end, and today was the last official day of the Back To The Bricks Rally in Clio, Michigan.  One of the differences between larger national/area rallies and smaller chapter/SIG rallies is the ending.  Larger rallies often end with entertainment or an activity on the final evening.  There are no official/planned activities on departure day.  Attendees have generally come from a large geographic area and sometimes have long distances to travel upon departure, so RVs start leaving first thing the next morning, often as early as 6 AM.  Smaller rallies, by comparison, are often attended by people who are somewhat more local to the rally site, and are already acquainted with the other attendees.  The final day of the rally usually includes breakfast, after which there are still lots of conversations.  RVs start to leave based on personal commitments, but the departure is slower and a bit more spread out.  Some folks may even remain for another evening or so, depending on the rally site.

And so it was with the 2103 BTTB Rally.  Departure day was the fancy breakfast day.  We still had coffee, juice, muffins, Danish pastry, bagels, and fruit—just like we have had all week—but today there were also pancakes, scrambled eggs, and sausage.  (Not for us, of course, but they were enjoyed by most everyone else.)  Even as conversations continued all of us started putting the venue back in order.  Grills were loaded onto trailers, leftover food was divided up among those who wanted it, and we carried six or seven picnic tables from the pavilion back to the meeting building.

I left mid-morning in the car and drove back to the house to get Linda.  A few coaches had left before I did, and more were gone by the time we got back around 1 PM.  By mid-afternoon most of the attendees had departed and by dinner time there were only two coaches left; ours and the Lintners’.  Marty was still at the site dismantling the temporary power drops he had installed for the rally and we invited him and Pat to join all of us for dinner out.  We went back to Sullivan’s Black Forest restaurant in Frankenmuth and had a nice meal enhanced by good conversation.  The Linderman’s Framboise Lambic Belgian wheat ale was just as good tonight as it was this past Wednesday.

Marty dropped us back at our coach and he and Pat went on home.  Pat, Vicky, Graciella, Linda, and I sat outside and talked until it got dark and the mosquitoes started to bite.  Graciella came in our coach to play with our cats and chat for a while until her grandma decided it was time for her to come to their coach and settle in for the evening.  So ended the official last day of the rally for us.  Sometime tomorrow we will dump our holding tanks at a nearby RV business and then head back to our house; we just don’t know exactly when we will do that.