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!