More than five hundred RVs and motor homes arrived in Redmond on Monday to attend the Family Motor Coach Association’s 109th International Convention and RV Expo at the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center. Several hundred more are on their way. The four-day international event, held Wednesday through Saturday, will feature outdoor RV displays, vendors, seminars, motor coach driving classes and social events, as well as the diverse scenery of Central Oregon for attendees to explore.
“The area itself is just a really beautiful place for folks to come and visit with a lot of things to see,” said Doug Uhlenbrock, Family Motor Coach Association director of events. “We make it a destination, so folks maybe who are in Texas or Missouri or the East Coast can come out here for (the expo), but they can make it an adventure beyond that.” The convention caters to Family Motor Coach Association members, but anyone in the community can purchase a day pass, whether they are seasoned motorhome owners living in Central Oregon or newcomers looking to learn more about the lifestyle, Uhlenbrock said.
“There’s so much information you can find when you come to one of these things,” Uhlenbrock told The Bulletin. “You can go on the internet and see some stuff, but you can’t talk to the representatives, you can’t talk to the people who actually make these things ..
. It gives folks a face to face opportunity in a lot of instances where they might not have that.” The last time Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center hosted the Family Motor Coach Association was in 2014.
The event that year drew 1,876 RVs, more than double this year’s expected attendance. Uhlenbrock partially credits the decline in attendance to the recent wildfires seen throughout Central Oregon. But parking the 700 RVs expected to attend still poses a logistical challenge for the fairgrounds and event organizers.
To help facilitate the large number of oversized vehicles arriving at the fairgrounds, Geoff Hinds, executive director of the fairgrounds, said precautions were put in place to avoid backups down Airport Way. Visitors arriving Monday received staggered arrival times, and were directed through an exterior gate where the motor homes could move more freely. “The good thing about the expo center is the size, and we can utilize our internal roadways to have a minimal impact on the community,” Hinds said.
Uhlenbrock agreed that Redmond and Bend should not be impacted by the event beyond the normal chaos of summer tourism. Most people who come to these conventions, he said, park their motorhomes and sightsee using their regular cars. Packing up should be equally uneventful.
“If we were going to have traffic, it would have happened Monday,” Uhlenbrock said. “Everybody’s parked, everybody’s happy ..
. and when you leave, everybody just kind of disappears. I don’t expect any kind of traffic problems in the next few days at all from us.
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