Pre-show Camping Conditions Report


Well I just got back from OSH for my trip over this year to secure my campsite and I got a bit of a surprise!

As those of you who were camping in 2010 can attest, that place was ALL MUD last year, with huge ruts, some of them probably 12" deep, from trucks and tractors.  I'm here to tell you that you wouldn't even know that today.  Surprisingly, they were able to smooth out and improve the grounds to such a degree that I really didn't notice any evidence of last years mess.  The grass is nice, and there is one more thing I don't remember from other years.  Many (most?) of the rows up where I've been camping seem to have trees, surprisingly maturing trees, on them.  I've attached a blurry (I was in a hurry) photo of the area near my sites.  I may have overlooked the trees in past years, but there are lots of them now, and I think in 2-5 years there's going to be a lot of great shade available for everyone.










At any rate, the grounds are in great shape, and there's a lot of activity, and things are pulling together quite well from the looks of it.

This year the sites seem to be filling a little faster than previous years, and it's filling in an odd way, where the sites are more shotgun scattered around the grounds.  So finding contiguous sites isn't quite as easy.  I arrived on the same day, near the same time, as always, and yet I'd have to say that there seemed to be a bunch more things staked out, further out from me, that I wouldn't have expected.  Perhaps folks are trying to make sure they get the high ground, but whatever it is, the place seems to be filling well.  There aren't that many actual campers there yet, but those will be coming in over the
next few days.

As usual too, on the way over I spent a bit of time in IMC, having an absolutely beautiful, soggy wet cloud trip.  Many of you may know, one of the things I love about living where I do is that we get awesome IMC conditions sometimes, and today was one of them.  Stable air masses, and cool clouds.  It's a blast.


   

The trip home wasn't quite as nice.  I knew when I left that I was running against time, as a big rainy mass of heavy rain was coming towards home.  Even with a fairly quick-turn, I wasn't able to totally beat it. There was a fair amount of lightning in some areas of the mass, but looking at the picture on WSI and comparing it to what was out the window...and, staying VFR with good 4000' ceilings, I could tell that I wasn't going to be too near the worst parts where there was lightning, so I pressed on into the rain and was able to make it home without getting anything worse than 5-7 mile vis and 3000' ceilings, and no bright flashes around me.  The ride was also almost perfectly smooth...so this was, at least on the forward half of it, just a large mass of rain.  The back side was
where all the action was, and I wasn't going there!





Also, the prepaid camping went fairly well.  It's something new they did this year, to allow you to pay for sites in advance.  You still need to stake them, but it did save a little data entry time at the camping tag booth.

Looking forward to another great week for OSH 2011!