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| 2023 The Refuge on Roanoke Island |
Making the best of it! The Dogwood Rally at The Refuge on Roanoke Island was held for the second straight year Sept 22-24, 2023. Your hosts were Pace & JoAnn Mimms and Dave & Nanette Meyer. We had 19 members (10 coaches) in attendance. Unfortunately, we also had 1 uninvited guest – Tropical Storm Ophelia!
The rally officially started on Friday, but most everyone arrived Wednesday and Thursday. So, in pre-rally mode, 11 of us had a nice dinner Wednesday at the Landing Grill. Thursday was a “lazy day” for the most part with more coaches arriving and we had a beautiful day to set up the pavilion for the “planned” rally events. We enjoyed happy hour and a potluck dinner in the pavilion. Because the weather forecast wasn’t looking too great, we discussed alternative plans.
I have to say thanks to the attendees – everyone was flexible and agreed to make the best of it – whatever “it” was gonna be. We broke up around 8pm and most of us picked up our outdoor equipment.
On Friday, we started the day watching and wondering what the storm forecast was going to be – at this time it was still just a coastal storm. Anticipating heavy rain and strong winds, regardless of the storm’s designation, several of us brought our slides in. Well, the rain and wind started about 10am just as Pace & Dave headed out to get the shrimp. After Pace went back out to pick up the chicken, we decided to meet at the pavilion at 2:30pm and eat early.
By then it was raining pretty hard and the wind had picked up, but the tarps we put up did a great job of blocking the wind in the pavilion. We had happy hour and dinner together. We postponed the games we had planned. Everyone got their fill, and we packed up the leftovers and went back to our coaches. We then found out that the storm turned into Tropical Storm Ophelia at 2pm!! So, we hunkered down in our turtled-up coaches and rode it out. The wind was a bit crazy, and the coach rocked quite a bit, but we did ok! We watched TV, switching between the weather channel and a movie and finally turned it off around 11pm after the wind had mostly died down. And I will add that a few folks said they slept very well with the wind rocking the coach… HUH?
On Saturday – Honestly, we did sleep pretty well too!! So glad for that. It was still raining and windy and we knew the backside of the storm was still coming our way, so we decided to put our breakfast off until Sunday. Happy to report the tarps continued to hold up around the pavilion.
It remained pretty breezy all day, but we did put the slides back out mid-afternoon. We combined happy hour and dinner at the Sugar Creek restaurant. We had a great time, a good meal, and once again we enjoyed each other’s company.
We decided to put off the cake & ice cream to Sunday night as well, so we cut some pieces and for the Braggs and the Fishers because they were leaving after breakfast.
We met back at the pavilion for happy hour and dinner at 4pm. Everyone brought their leftovers back and we finally got our cake & ice cream dessert! Everyone enjoyed it! We didn’t do any of the games or the raffle…we were all tired and just enjoyed visiting with each other.
Most of us travelled home on Monday.
So, to sum it up – Nothing went as planned but we had a great group and a great time, despite the weather. Hopefully next time the weather will be better!
By the way - The campground facilities and staff were outstanding, and “Fun, Food, and Friendship” were definitely in abundance.
On behalf of your Hosts, we want to sincerely thank all of you for attending this rally, and special thanks to those who assisted us during the rally.
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