February 8

Sunday 8~~~The drive to Casa Grande was beautiful with the sky dark with rain clouds and so many of those beautiful cactus's all over. (Can you tell Sharon likes the desert?) We arrived at the Casa Grande Fair grounds where our Gypsy Journal Rally is held this year, after we set up camp with our friends John and Linda and Howie and Cyndy, we all registered for the activities starting tomorrow. There was quite a bit of confusion because of all the mud from the rain and the campers that were there taking up two spaces instead of one and not leaving room for anyone else to pull in with their rigs. It took awhile, but we made it OK, while Kent was hooking up the water, electricity and satellite it gave Sharon time to bake a pan of frosted brownies for dessert after dinner tonight for everyone. Next we registered, signed up to be pizza servers for Wednesday Pizza night and got all our information of all the classes and times to attend during the rally. The 6 of us decided to drive into town for dinner at the "Olive Garden", which turned out to be another long ordeal to deal with after an already long day. They seated us almost immediately, but forgot to come back and take our orders. After sitting there for 45 minutes watching people who came in after us, already eating salad and bread sticks, we requested a server, we got one who took our drink order, left and never came back. We again went up front and questioned where our drinks were and could we please order. They sent us a different server who who brought the drinks, opened the wrong bottle of wine, left with it and never came back. By now it was about and hour and fifteen minutes into our dinner and we were getting a little unhappy, we went up front again and they sent us waiter # 3 who brought us our drinks and the right bottle of wine for Cyndi and Howie, took our orders and left. We waited 10 minutes, we got no salad or bread sticks, so back to the front to see a manager who came to our table and said this mix up should not have happened and our dinner would be free. Kent and John said no we don't want it free, we just want to eat, the manager then said she would give us all free dessert when we finished and left. Still no salad and bread~~~ then someone across the way knocked a wine glass off a table and it flew through the air to our table, breaking and hitting the floor. We didn't know what the heck was going on at that point, when a waitress came over and picked up the big pieces and asked Cyndi and Sharon what we were doing!!!! We were so mad, the glass came flying across the room, hit our table and we were blamed???? Finally our salad and bread came for us six starving people (waiter 4)~~~ would you believe they gave us one bowl of salad and bread sticks for one apiece? Yes that is what he did, we requested more salad and bread and before it came here was our dinner. We were back to waiter #2 now, it was now just exactly 2 hours since they seated us in the room. We finished our meal and waited for them to take our dessert order, 15 minutes later the waiter left our tickets by our plates with no mention of how was your dinner??? or are you ready for dessert??? We changed our minds at that point and opted to go for the free meal the manager had offered, they didn't even argue, they gave it to us along with a $60 gift certificate and said they hoped to see us again. With us having 4 servers and some of them twice, they said they don't know who dropped the ball as they stated. What a long frustrating evening, we were too tired to even play cards that night. Are we going back there???? I DON'T THINK SOOOOOOOOO. But we do like the Olive Garden and will go back to other places where we travel.