FMCA Tucson 2022: dry camping for driving lessons

We attended the FMCA “Sunsets + Saguaros” annual convention in Tucson, Arizona, but before that kicked off, we attend a couple of driving classes from the RV Driving School, on backing and driving skills. More on those later.

While doing those classes, we dry camped on the Pima County Fairgrounds, i.e. we parked the RV without any power, water, or sewer hookups. RVs are self-contained, so this isn’t a huge hassle; we just have to run our generator for a few hours each day (typically in the morning when making coffee, and in the evening for dinner etc), and try to minimize water usage.

Here’s our truck and coach, dry camping (they had cones spaced out to mark available place to park):

A rare picture of the tow bar connected, with the lights on (as the coach engine was still running while Jenn put out the slides):

The coach and truck were super dusty from driving over the dirt of the fairgrounds; so glad we just washed them a few days earlier:

Other RVs dry camping for the classes:

FMCA set up large generators and power outlets for convention attendees; initially mostly empty, but these filled up as the start date approached:

The fairgrounds, and especially the dirt we were dry camping on, was full of goatheads, nasty little spiky pods that snuck into our coach; this handful was collected from the mat in our cockpit. Trust me, they are not fun to step on!

More stuck to the bottom of my shoes:

A sunset:

The weather was mostly warm and sunny, but a couple of days in, the clouds rolled in:

And we experienced some rain and thunderstorms:

Once we finished the lessons, we moved our coach to the campsite for the convention. More on that later.