REDMOND The third entrance to the Deschutes County Fairgrounds and Expo Center is paved and 80 more acres of parking is ready. Police have their assigned patrol spots, and planners have the caravans’ updated schedules in their hands detailing next week’s invasion of motor homes.

The city is as ready as it can be for the expected 11,000 members of the Family Motor Coach Association’s (FMCA) annual summer rally next week at the fairgrounds.

”They’re pretty much spread out from where they’re coming from,” said Redmond assistant engineer Chris Doty, describing the routes motor homes will take to the fairgrounds. ”People are coming from all over. They’re given a predetermined time to arrive at the site.”

From the west, RVs will travel from Highway 126 to Redmond’s Highland Avenue. Caravanners will bypass Sisters and take the detour route on Highway 20, usually used during Sister’s rodeo and quilt show, to keep its single downtown street from turning into a standstill of motor homes.

Motor-home enthusiasts traveling from the east into Central Oregon will also use Highway 126. Highway 97 will be the main route for RVs coming from both the north and the south, although there are some reroutes designed around Powell Butte for caravanners.

The fairgrounds are expected to be packed to capacity for the summer convention, beginning Aug. 14. And the trick is loading all the RVs into the fairgrounds site the weekend prior to the rally.

Only 4,200 motor homes can fit into the area and that space is already reserved. Extra rigs will park in other areas throughout Central Oregon, like the old fairgrounds site, nearby campgrounds and parking lots.

While they wait to enter through the fairground’s gates, FMCAers will wait at the ”holding” area the old fairgrounds off of Highway 97 beginning Aug. 10.

Then, Redmond police and volunteers will help guide the RVs Aug. 11 and 12 into the new fairgrounds by directing them across the highway, onto Sisters Avenue and along Airport Way.

Advocates for the convention predict caravanners will pump $30 million into the state’s economy this summer. Vendors will arrive Monday, only 24 hours after the county fair wraps up this weekend.

At least 1,900 of FMCA’s 5,000 RVs expected to arrive in Central Oregon these next few days will be in caravans that’s 33 groups traveling together in numbers between two and 300 motor homes. Hundreds of lone motor homes have already arrived in Redmond and other places in Central Oregon.

They’re coming from places like Newport, Madras, Portland, Salem, Anacortes, Wash., and Vail, Colo. Some caravan teams will join in on ”pre-rallies” across the state while others plan to meet, then hop on the highways leading toward Central Oregon.

The rally’s planners estimate they have to load one RV though the fairground’s gates every 60 seconds in order to get them all in within the weekend hours.

At about noon Aug. 12, residents waiting to cross Highway 97 will see FMCA’s biggest caravan roll into Redmond.

Three hundred Monaco motor coaches will line up for a three-hour commute at 8 a.m. that Sunday in Salem.

They will take Highway 22 in groups of 25 or so, said Rod Vessels, the caravan’s leader, from his cell phone in Salem. Then, the motor home groups will travel about 15 minutes apart just enough time for a frustrated automobile to get a bit of a head start. By the time the first Monaco RV arrives in Redmond, the last one will

leave Salem, organizers predict. The rigs, which average 35-feet long with a vehicle often attached to its rear, will travel at or below the 55 mph speed limit. They’ve planned a 20-minute break at Hoodoo Ski Area.

Vessels has ran the route through the Santiam pass four times, and he’s toured Redmond about three times to make sure his first trip across the mountains as a caravan leader runs as smooth as his RV home.

He said other drivers trying to pass the caravan must be careful and wait for a safe place to pass.

”I try to tell the people the caravaneers to maintain a distance and don’t crowd up,” he said. ”(But) I don’t really have any control over the group leaders once they take off.”

Traveling through the Santiam Pass is the safest route because it’s ”not as twisty and the turns aren’t so bad,” Vessels said.

And just in time for the FMCA rally, construction crews last week poured the first layer of asphalt at 19th Street the fairground’s third entrance for vendors’ use, said Doty, the city’s assistant engineer. The project will cost about $1 million, and the city will add a second layer and paint the lines after the convention.

The city’s biggest concern is the congestion the caravans are bound to cause the weekend before the rally, Doty said. ”We’re mostly concerned about the caravans because they’re the ones that will have the most impact. We anticipate learning a lot from this event, and we’ll put it in our toolbox until next time.”