|
Stories From The Current Issue Geocaching, The Perfect RV Hobby Some Of Our Favorite RV Web Sites Read What Others Have To Say About The Gypsy Journal From Our Archives - Stories From Past Issues You Can Bring Nick Russell To Your Campground, Dealership Or RV Event! Yes, You Can Make Money Writing Visit Our New Motorcycle Travel Website
|
Nick's Blog Friday, July 25, 2008 Someone wrote to
comment that I had been on a motorcycle ride, but they had not seen
anything on the blog about riding our new Trek Navigator bikes in a
while. That’s because following my surgery in early June, I was not
supposed to be on the bike for six weeks, which rolled around while we
were in But yesterday we took a three mile bike ride through the neighborhood surrounding the campground. I was a bit winded by the time we got back, but I need to work off those extra pounds I put on while we were gone. (Most of which are the direct result of cousin Carolyn force feeding me chocolate cake every day while we were in Kansas.) We didn’t ride the bikes yesterday, but we did do three fast laps around the campground in the evening, joined by the campground’s owners Bob and Gita Patel.
Someone asked if I was going to go the whole bike route and get a fluorescent spandex outfit to wear when riding the bike. Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how many of those little spandex critters you’d have to kill to make a suit big enough to fit me? Trust me folks, me in spandex would not be a pretty sight! A reader wrote to say that while I covered some of the safety hazards RVers face, including traffic accidents and fires, in a recent post, I did not talk about bad weather. In our 9+ years on the road, Terry and I have been in everything from ice and snow storms to torrential rain, to tornadoes. Dealing with ice and snow storms is a no brainier. Hunker down somewhere and wait it out, and as soon as the weather clears, head south. Or better yet, be far enough south to avoid that kind of weather before it hits. We deal with hard rain the same way we deal with snow and ice – we park it and stay parked until it is safe to travel. We’ve never been in a hurricane, because they give enough advance warning that we would be hundreds of miles away before they hit. We have had our share of tornado scares. Last October we were here in Since tornadoes can spring up quickly, about all you can do is familiarize yourself with whatever shelter the campground has to offer, frequently a sturdy bathhouse or laundry room, and pray real hard.
A weather radio is very handy to have, however, they have their drawbacks, the biggest of which is that they send alerts by county. Some times we have no idea what county we happen to be in. Several computer programs, including www.weatherbug.com, provide weather maps to help track a storm. That’s all well and good if you are sitting in front of your computer and if you have a reliable internet connection. But what if that is not the case? My pal Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour www.geeksontour.com, writing on the RV.Net blog, had a good post yesterday about a new alert service that sends weather reports directly to your cell phone. We all have our cell phones with us most of the time, so I think this is a valuable service. You can read Chris’ full post at http://blog.rv.net/2008/07/24/storm-warnings-on-your-cell-phone/. This is a service that could save your life! Thought For The Day – One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been. Thursday, July 24, 2008 I’m on a roll! As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, Tuesday evening the nice folks from the Ameri-Camp rally insisted that Miss Terry and I join them for their catered dinner before I gave a presentation to the group. Yesterday afternoon our pal Mac McCoy www.macthefireguy.com from Fire and Life Safety pulled into Elkhart Campground, and Mac took us out to dinner. If things keep on like this, I’ll save so much money on groceries that we won’t have to worry about high fuel prices! J Yesterday was a
perfect day here in northern I got some good
news yesterday. Or at least promises of good news. After waiting well
over four months for the manager of I also received a
call yesterday from the interim manager of the Pinal County Fairgrounds
in Sometimes I think people do not realize just how large an economic impact an RV rally, even a relatively small rally like ours, brings to a community. In addition to the many thousands of dollars we paid the fairgrounds the last two years for renting their facilities during our rally, we had quite a few RVers who came in a week or more early, and some that stayed on after the rally and paid for camping. That added up to several hundred extra dollars income for the fairgrounds. We also had people who stayed at local RV parks before and after the rally. Besides the money we paid to rent the fairgrounds in 2008, we spent hundreds of dollars on morning donuts, we paid over $1100 just to Dominos Pizza for our pizza party, and spent several hundred dollars more on incidentals such as paper plates and Styrofoam cups, door prize tickets and having copies made at local stores. This year we brought over 500 people to Casa Grande. People who shopped in the local stores, dined in the local restaurants, and purchased fuel at the local gas stations. We even had people who attended the rally that did not own RVs yet, who stayed in local hotels! That is a lot of money for any community, let alone a small town like Casa Grande! If I were a merchant in that community, I’d sure want that business to return again the next year. Wouldn’t you? Thought For The Day –
There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading; the few
who learn by observation; and the rest, who have to pee on the electric
fence and find out for themselves. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Wednesday, July 23, 2008 In yesterday’s
blog, I wrote about safety on the road, and stated that violent crime
against RVers is almost nonexistent, despite the urban myths and old
wives tales that someone heard from someone else who heard it from a guy
at a campground about somebody else. I immediately got a letter from a
reader asking me why I didn’t cite the case of the couple and their
three young children who were murdered in their sleep while camping at a
state park in the I had never heard of this incident, and wrote back to ask for further information. He said he didn’t know any of the details, but it was common knowledge, and several people had told him about it. Well, apparently that particular bit of knowledge isn’t all that common, because I have never heard about it, I cannot find anything about it on the internet, and a search of Illinois newspaper records doesn’t turn up any information on such a crime. It’s just one more wild story with no foundation of fact to support it. Folks, stop worrying about make believe hazards. There are too many real things in life to fret about without adding to your burden. I mentioned a few days ago that we are going to have some Gypsy Journal T-shirts made up, and got a lot of feedback from readers who want one. We’re working on a design now, and hope to have them to the screen printer soon. We also want to have special shirts made up for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, so if you are registered for the rally and want to order a shirt, let me know. Yesterday evening the nice folks from the Ameri-Camp rally insisted that Terry and I join them for their catered dinner, and then I presented my Highway History and Back Road Mystery seminar for them. It was a small crowd, maybe forty people at most, but they all seemed to enjoy the program, and afterward we had lots of nice comments from folks. Terry had some copies of my book by the same name available, and sold five books. Afterward, several people came over for a tour of the bus to see all of Terry’s handiwork. Just like everyone else, they were all impressed with what she has accomplished. But nobody is more impressed with my pretty lady than I am. After more than ten years of marriage she still takes my breath away with her beauty, and amazes me with her many talents. I am one very lucky guy. We have been
hitting it very hard and are almost caught up on the backlog of work we
were facing from our time away from the bus at Life on Wheels. Once that
is done, we’ll be working on the next issue of the paper, and we still
have to go up to Thought For The Day –
Don't get your knickers in a knot, it solves nothing and it makes you
walk funny. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Tuesday, July 22, 2008 I seldom teach a class at Life on Wheels or present a seminar at an RV rally about fulltime RV travel when the subject of personal safety doesn’t come up. Everybody seems to believe that there are roving bands of dope fiends and outlaws wandering the countryside just looking for hapless RVers to pounce upon. Nonsense. “Dope fiends” aren’t out wandering the back roads looking for prey, they stay in the cities where their dealers are, and where there are more than enough victims to go around. Likewise robbers and other thugs. Why would they spend their time hunting down RVers when there is a liquor store or Quick Stop on every corner just waiting to be held up? I have learned about only a couple of verifiable violent criminal acts that have happened to RVers in all of my time on the road and publishing the Gypsy Journal. There are a lot of old wives tales, but it always happened to the cousin’s next door neighbor of someone who was parked next to someone else in an RV park somewhere. Relax, folks, this is just not an issue to worry about if you use some basic common sense, like not dry camping in inner city parking lots, or not wandering around outside your rig when you are spending the night in a rest area or truck stop. There are real hazards out on the road that you need to be aware of that can happen to any of us at any time.
Do you have fire
extinguishers in your tow vehicle too? A few years ago,
driving down a back road in
As I have preached over and over in this blog, in the Gypsy Journal, and in my seminars, good driver training is essential for both partners in an RV. No matter how many miles you have logged in cars and pickups, these giant machines are a completely different animal. Taking a class at Dennis Hill’s RV Driving School www.rvschool.com should be high on every RVers’ “Must Do” list.
Speaking of tires, how are yours? Yes, they may have great tread on them, but how old are they? RV tires usually deteriorate from age and exposure to the elements long before they wear out. Do you know how to read the date code on your tires? Every tire
manufactured for sale in the And don’t forget to monitor your tire pressures! Properly inflated tires will last you longer and give you a safe ride. Over or under inflated tires can be a time bomb waiting to explode. Forget the cheap tire gauges sold at WalMart, go to a truck stop and get yourself a good trucker’s tire gauge, and check your tire pressures religiously before every trip. Or better yet, contact my pals Mike and Pat McFall at www.pressureprosystem.com for a great tire monitoring system that will do the job for you, and will alert you to a rise or drop in tire pressure while on the road. Thought For The Day –
Purpose is what gives life meaning. Monday, July 21, 2008 Over the weekend, a group of Ameri-Camp RVs arrived at the campground, and I will be doing my Meandering Down The Highway presentation for them on Tuesday evening. I have not done a seminar for this group before, and I am looking forward to it. It should be a lot of fun. Apparently even a
laid back place like Recently the
state switched to a new computer system for their Motor Vehicle
Department, and to say the transition has been smooth would be a gross
misstatement. From When Terry and I
changed our official domicile from When we were in South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds has promised that the situation will be resolved, and has ordered state employees to work around the clock seven days a week until the problems are solved. At the same time, Governor Rounds said going back to the old system, which worked, was not an option. Isn’t that typical of bureaucrats? They take something that isn’t broke, destroy it, and then can’t figure out how to fix it. But making the sensible decision and returning to a process that worked is not in their thought processes. Isn’t it great to see your tax dollars at work, folks? Meanwhile, back here at Elkhart Campground I think we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel from our own backlog of work that piled up while we were away for three weeks. I guess we’ll never be bureaucrats, right? J I have managed to recover most of the e-mails that were lost when Yahoo crashed our server while we were on the road, but several were garbled and the return e-mail addresses were also scrambled. One was from a blog reader asking for a link from our motorcycle website www.motorcycletravelonline.com to his motorcycle website. If you read this, please contact me again and I’ll get that link up for you. Another was from someone asking about a vendor space at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally. Again, if you are reading this, please contact me again. Anyone else who is waiting for a respnse to an e-mail, please resend it if you will, and I’ll get right back to you. Thought For The Day –
What if there is no PMS and this is just your personality? Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Sunday, July 20, 2008 This summer has been flying by! Remember when we were kids and summer lasted about seventeen months? Where did those days go? I want them back! A while back I posted a list of interesting websites for RVers. Here is another handy one to have, www.ushospitalfinder.com. Someone posted it on the Escapees forum www.escapees.com yesterday, and I immediately put it on my Favorites list on my computer. All you have to do is enter the name of the nearest town to your location and it will give you information on nearby hospitals, including a map showing how to get to them. My GPS will also show me nearby hospitals if I need one in an emergency, but this link can come in handy if I need to call for medical advice in a non-emergency situation. I spent much of yesterday tweaking our websites, and I was amazed at how many museums we have visited and done stories on for the Gypsy Journal. Museums are not just dusty collections of boring old stuff. We have visited some wonderful museums that have taught us much about our history and culture, and they have given us hours of pleasure browsing their interesting displays. Whatever you are interested in, there is a museum (or two or three) about it! Just in case you
haven’t read about some of our museum visits, I thought I’d tell you
about some of the neat museums just waiting to be discovered in every
corner of If you enjoy
music, don’t miss the Alabama
Music Hall of Fame in But before you leave Tuscumbia, be sure you stop at Ivy Green, the birthplace of Helen Keller. The home where the brave lady who overcame blindness and deafness to make her mark in the world is now a museum dedicated to perseverance. Having spent a
lot of my formative years living on or near the border, the Do you like
clowns? Then don’t miss an opportunity to visit the Circus
World Museum in If you are
interested in our nation’s military history, there are more museums
than you can ever visit dedicated to telling the stories of our wars and
the men and women who served our nation. Three of our favorites are the D
Day Museum in If you like
things that go fast, be sure to stop and check out the National
Corvette Museum in But if you prefer
to travel a bit more slowly, maybe floating among the clouds is more
your style. If so, you’ll enjoy a visit to the National
Balloon Museum in All this talk of
fast and slow transportation reminds me that there was a time when a
trip across the country was a life changing event. At the Oregon
Trail Interpretive Center near Baker City, A bit of whimsy is always fun, and at the Dorothy’s House Museum in Liberal, Kansas we spent an afternoon immersing ourselves in the world of the Wizard of Oz. Don’t leave Liberal without a visit to the Mid-America Air Museum, where you will see a fascinating collection of aircraft. We have also
visited museums in old lighthouses, like Marblehead
Light on Lake Erie; at author Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings Homestead near Thought For The Day –
The road to success has many tempting parking places. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Saturday, July 19, 2008 Our mail arrived, and most of yesterday was spent filling a ton of orders that had come in while we were on the road. We seem to spend a lot of time standing in line at the post office, and a while back I looked into buying our postage online from www.stamps.com. I asked here in the blog for feedback from readers, and got several positive comments, so we decided to take advantage of their free 30 day trial period. There was a short learning curve after I downloaded and installed the software, but overall I like the system so far. Once we had printed out the mailing labels and attached them to the envelopes, all that was required was to drop them in any post office box, or hand them to a clerk at the post office. Since it was our first time using the system, we still stood in line and gave them to a postal clerk, because I wanted to be sure they were going to go through okay. All was fine, and we were out of the post office quickly.
Back at Elkhart
Campground, faithful blog readers Earl and Susanne Warne from Cathy Emrick also
came by to visit the other day. Cathy and her hubby Jan have signed up
to attend our upcoming Gypsy Gathering rally in September. We have about
75 RVs registered for the rally in It looks like For quite a while now, Terry and I have talked about getting Gypsy Journal T-shirts made up, as well as shirts for our rallies. We stopped and looked at some samples of shirts yesterday, and I think we’ll be placing an order in the next week or so. So if you want to be the first on your block to have your very own Gypsy Journal shirt, let me know. For just a few bucks, you too could be a walking billboard! J Thought For The Day –
If the shoe fits, buy
one in every color. Friday, July 18, 2008 Yesterday was one of those frustrating days we all have to deal with sometimes. Back in February, after our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Casa Grande, we paid a deposit to the Pinal County Fairgrounds for next year’s rally. We were told we would receive the completed contract in the mail in a couple of weeks. We never received the contract, and I have made many, many calls to the fairgrounds. In the meantime, we learned that the fairgrounds director and some of his staff members had been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into financial improprieties. I called several more times, and was assured every time that things were still on track and that we would receive the contract soon. Yesterday I received not a contract, but a worksheet from the acting fairgrounds director. They raised the price on the buildings we rent by almost $5,000! Plus they increased the price per night for camping by 20% per RV. I called to ask why the price was not what we had paid before, and had agreed to before paying the deposit for the 2009 rally. The director’s response was that the former fairgrounds director was no longer with the county. So what? We had an agreement, we paid our deposit in good faith, and just because their employee has been dismissed or whatever happened with him, it is not my problem. The fact that they have internal problems that keep them from sending out a contract they promised months ago is also not my problem. If I went to an RV dealer, placed a deposit on a new coach and the sales manager later was fired, that does not give the dealership cause to raise the price I had contracted for? The fairgrounds director is supposed to talk to his boss and get back to me next week. Don’t you just love bureaucrats? We are also still waiting for the $404.36 reimbursement from GCR Tire in Tucson for the damages they did when they installed new tires on our bus back in March. For almost four months the manager has promised a refund, and now he will not take my calls. What ever happened to integrity? GCR is a nationwide company, but we will never do business with them again, and I strongly recommend you look elsewhere if you are shopping for tires. Back here in Elkhart, Bob Patel, the owner of Elkhart Campground, had parked my motorcycle in his garage while we were out of town for Life on Wheels. I wanted to get it out of his way, and the battery was almost dead. Somewhere I have a gizmo that plugs into the bike to charge the battery, but could not find it. Terry and I were going to push it back to the bus, but a couple of nice fellows saw us and came over and gave me a push to get it started. I need to either ride the bike more or sell it. The jury is still out on which will happen. Anyone want to make me an offer? Oh well, every day can’t be perfect, or life would get boring, wouldn’t it? Several readers
have asked how our Verizon air card coverage was on the trip to
Thought For The Day –
Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies
wake up crying every two hours? Thursday, July 17, 2008 As promised, here is an update on our last two days. Tuesday morning
we filled up at the Sam’s Club in It always amazed
us how much the terrain can change within just a couple of hours of
driving. Minnesota
was much greener than As we passed
through
Eons ago, The shortest
route, in terms of miles, is to take Interstate 90 straight through Chicago, but even in the van we don’t want anything to do with all of the
traffic in and around the Since my night
vision is terrible, Miss Terry reclaimed the wheel and drive the last
leg of the trip, dodging kamikaze truckers and psychotic commuters until
we pulled into By the time we lugged in what we needed to get through the night, I posted a quick blog, and we had our showers, it was after 2:30 a.m. by the time we got to bed. Yesterday we slept in late, and felt washed out all day long from the long trip. While Miss Terry unpacked, and then tried to make some headway with backed up paperwork, I answered a slew of backlogged e-mails and posted the tentative schedule for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally on the website. We still have a few seminar slots to fill, but if you click the link above and scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll see we have a great lineup of seminars and events. Late in the afternoon we realized that we were famished, but there was not a lot to eat in the bus, because we had not stocked up the larder before our trip west. We went out for pizza, stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few items, and then went back to the bus to enjoy the air conditioning. We spent the evening filling a big stack of orders that had come in from our website while we were on the road. We noticed that gas here in Thought For The Day –
Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself. Wednesday, July 16, 2008 We left Thought For The Day –
Make the mistakes of yesterday your lessons for today. Tuesday, July 15, 2008 RV shopping is fun, even if you already have an RV and no intention of changing. I always enjoy seeing the new offerings, and it’s fun to see just how clueless many RV salesmen are. One of our reasons for stopping in Sioux Falls was to meet with Terry’s cousin Carolyn and her husband Mel to check out a new Heartland Landmark fifth wheel they were considering buying. I’m glad we did, and I think they are too. Even though I am a big fan of the Heartland products, and Heartland is the only RV manufacturer we have ever accepted advertising from, we spotted some potentially serious problems with this particular trailer.
After we left the dealer’s lot, we drove downtown to take care of some business. We recently realized that technically, I have been driving illegally for the last few months. Before my eye surgery last October, my driver’s license had a restriction requiring me to wear corrective lenses. I no longer need glasses or contacts, but the restriction was still on my license. So I explained the situation to the folks at the driver’s license office, took an eye test, paid them a $6 fee and was issued a new license minus the restriction. While we were headed to
Life on Wheels, I had called the Minnihaha County Sheriff’s Office to
inquire about getting a concealed weapons permit. Even though I have a
non-resident Arizona CCW permit, we thought it would be a good idea to
get permits from our home state of The nice lady at the
Sheriff’s Office faxed the forms to our hotel in
Today we’ll be back on
the road, headed east across southern Thought For The Day – Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than it did to get tired. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Monday, July 14, 2008 Yesterday was just another long day on the road, putting as many miles behind us as we could. Days like that make me glad I’m not a professional truck driver. We left What we do like are the
many herds of antelope we always see around Gillette, and all of A couple of miles east of Gillette we passed the huge open pit coal mine that provides local jobs and a source of power for much of the nation. We saw long trains loaded with coal headed in every direction during our trip. I know I’m getting
older, because I don’t have anywhere near the stamina I once
possessed. By the time we crossed the We crossed the wide There was apparently a big car show somewhere in the area, because all across South Dakota we passed beautiful classic rides, from a gorgeous 1956 Mercury to a 1963 Pontiac Bonneville, Mustangs, Thunderbirds, and several other models that had me drooling all over the steering wheel. Whenever Terry and I pass someplace where we have dry camped overnight, we always say “Hey, we lived there once!” As we passed the Cabela’s Outfitters in Mitchell, we noticed a couple of fifth wheels in their RV parking area and said “Hey, we used to live there!” We have stopped overnight in this RV friendly business’ parking lot several times in the past. We arrived in Thought For The Day –
God does not propose to judge a man until he is dead. So why should you?
Sunday, July 13, 2008
A couple of miles before
we crossed the Montana state line a large mule deer doe was standing
alongside the road, and another was waiting to welcome us to Montana. A
few miles outside of The long week of teaching, and the fact that the folks in the room above us must have been practicing break dancing all night long two nights in a row had left me worn out. I only made it the first 70 miles or so, and then asked Miss Terry to take the wheel. She drove the next 500 miles, and we arrived in Billings just after 8 p.m. It was a long day on the
road, and we’ll have an even longer one today, because we hope to make
it to Sioux Falls, Several people have
invited us to stop and say hello as we pass through Montana
and Thought For The Day –
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars. We’ll be on the road
today, headed east, and not a minute too soon. We miss our bus, we’re
tired from our long week of teaching, and we’ve gagged down as much of
the stinky air from the pulp mill, here in Lewiston, Gaylord Maxwell is
negotiating with Lewis Clark State College now for next year’s Life on
Wheels (LOW) conference, and it may be held a month earlier, in June. If
so, that could work out well for Terry and I if we decide to go to Though some folks have argued that we could save a bit of time by taking U.S. Highway 95 north to Coeur d’Alene and then going west on Interstate 90 to Missoula, Montana, we will retrace our route of a week ago west along the more scenic U.S. Highway 12 to Missoula. It is shorter in miles, but probably will take a little bit longer because it is such a twisty route. We’ll be on the super slab all of the way back to Indiana, so we want to enjoy the two lane roads as much as we can first. This will be a fast trip,
at least as far as Sioux Falls, I forgot to mention
earlier that before we left I have some good news on
our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally. Our
dear friends Ron and Brenda Speidel have agreed to come and present some
excellent seminars, including one on maintaining and cleaning your RV
the natural green way, and another on ways to refurbish your RV to fit
your needs and lifestyle instead of trading it in for something new. Ron
and Brenda have done an excellent job of upgrading their Winnebago
coach, so they know the subject well. Brenda will also be moderating a
special roundtable discussion for lady RVers. I hope you’ll register
soon and join us in Friday, July 11, 2008 It has been a busy week teaching at Life on Wheels (LOW), and the time has flown by. Today is the last day of the conference, and I’ll be teaching my Boondocking Tips seminar during the first class period, and then my personal favorite of all of my seminars, Highway History and Back Road Mystery. That will be the last of our thirteen 90 minute seminars for this conference. Then Terry and I will take part in the Lifestyles Panel, during which the students can ask several instructors any questions that were not covered in the many seminars offered during the week. That will be followed by the closing ceremony, and then everybody will head off to the four points of the compass. As always when a LOW conference ends, I am footsore, have a stiff back, and my vocal cords have taken a beating. But overall, it has been a great experience. Though Terry and I come away from a conference physically worn out, we also come away with our batteries recharged, because we seem to absorb so much energy from the enthusiasm the students exude. We have met some wonderful new RVers whom we hope to cross paths with somewhere down the road. Having the opportunity to get together with our fellow instructors is also important to us. The amount of combined knowledge between the Life on Wheels teaching staff astounds me. During the week we have been able to spend time with our pal Mike Steffen, who is well known for his columns and articles in RV publications and his blog on www.rv.net. We’ve known Mike a long time, and I learn something (usually a lot of things) new every time I talk to him. Mike has forgotten more about the RV lifestyle than I can ever hope to know. Another expert we had dinner with the other night is Greg Holder, president of AM Solar www.amsolar.com, and his pretty wife Deb. Greg is the world’s recognized expert in RV solar electric. We have his panels and charge controllers on our bus conversion and love them. Yet another recognized expert in his field is Bob Difley, another RV Net blogger. Bob’s travel and nature articles and photography are familiar to readers of magazines including Motor Home, Trailer Life, Highways, Coast to Coast, Western RV News, and RV Journal. Al Cohoe comes down from Another technical expert here with us is Joe Green, who can teach you more about an RV than you ever knew there was to know. Besides being a great teacher, Joe has a beautiful Peterbilt truck that I’d be proud to own. While I have written a few books, my output pales in comparison to husband and wife authors Mike and Terri Church, whose books on RVing in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe have helped literally thousands of RVers enjoy and get the most from their travels. And the list goes on and on. Bob Marx is a jack of all trades who teaches classes on everything from map reading to the latest gizmos and gadgets. Russell Maxwell is not only a super nice person, his seminars on awning care are always popular and highly rated. Jerry Ray teaches RV driving for the RV School www.rvschool.com, and anyone climbing behind the wheel will be a better and safer driving after an hour or two of Jerry’s tutelage. And then, of course, we have our boss, Life on Wheels founder Gaylord Maxwell, the Grand Old Man of RVing. With over 50 years of RV experience, Gaylord has seen and done it all. If by now you are
realizing just how much you missed by not being here with us in Thursday, July 10, 2008 It is hotter than blazes
here in While I appreciate the
air conditioned classrooms here at Lewis Clark State College, I’m not
all that impressed with the city of Yesterday, I had a conversation with one of the LOW students who attended my Work Your Way Across the USA seminar and was interested in desktop publishing as a way to earn some extra money on the road. She has an extensive background in financial management, estate planning, and investment counseling, and wanted my opinion on the possibilities of being able to put together some type of newsletter, book, or guides to help RVers handle their financial needs on the road. I referred her to my self-publishing website www.publishing4profit.com and also encouraged her to consider starting a blog and earning money from it with the Google AdSense program. (There is information on Blogging For Bucks on my publishing website.) After our conversation, I
was reminded just how diverse the backgrounds of the folks who share the
fulltime RV lifestyle are. One evening, while sitting around a campfire
at John Palmer’s www.palmerenergysystems.com
place in Thought For The Day –
If a 911 operator has a heart attack, who do they call? Wednesday, July 9, 2008
We got to meet a very
nice couple here whose reputation has preceded them; Robert and Barbara
Henderson, from Henderson’s Line-Up www.hendersonslineup.com
in Grants Pass, A blog reader wrote to
ask me how things have worked out with our van on the trip west. Just
before we left However, it was so bloody
hot that we only slept in the van on the first night of our trip to I also have to apologize
to anyone who has sent me an e-mail lately and not received a reply. As I wrote
last week, the yahoos at Yahoo had my business e-mail account goofed up
and I could not access my mailbox for several days. I thought the
problem had been resolved, but apparently not, since I have received
messages from several people asking why I had not replied to earlier
e-mails. Rather than call Yahoo’s tech support again and wait on hold
forever while their geeks finish the sunset ceremony or whatever else
they do in their part of the world before they can answer the telephone,
I think I’ll write a note, stick it in a bottle, and throw it in the Thought For The Day –
The smallest good deed is greater than the grandest intention. Tuesday, July 8, 2008 Since its inception, the main Life on Wheels www.rvlifeonwheels.com
conference has been held in July of every year at the This year the conference moved down to Lewis Clark
State College in This is the smallest number of students ever for We taught two classes yesterday afternoon, and then met up with Mike Steffen and drove over to the local fairgrounds, where our friends Tom and Diane are parked with their truck conversion and car hauler trailer. This was the first time we’ve seen the truck and its custom trailer opened up and with the slides out, and even though the Good Book says it’s a sin, I will admit that I had lust in my heart. Oh, what the heck, let’s be perfectly honest, I was jealous as hell! This is one beautiful rig, and we are thrilled for Tom and Diane. Tom even let me blow the air horn, and boy, do I want one of those! If I did, the next time some obnoxious jerk pulled up next to me with one of those booming car stereos playing so loud it makes your teeth hurt, I’d give him a blast on the air horn that would blow him right out of his seat! J After we had inspected every inch of their rig, and I confirmed once again that yes, Tom likes me a whole bunch, but no, not enough to give me his truck, we all headed to a local restaurant for dinner. We had a great time visiting over our meal, and there was a lot of laugher. At one point a little boy of about four or five years old poked his eyes and nose over the top of the booth behind us to see what the fuss was all about, and I quickly turned around and I poked my nose and eyes over the booth and peeked back at him. I guess I scared the little guy, because he quickly retreated to hide under his mother’s arms, away from that crazy fat guy in the booth next door. Tom and I figured I set that kid up for years of expensive therapy in his future. I may not be able to buy my own fancy truck conversion, but I’ll darned sure make it easy for some psychiatrist down the road to afford one someday! Thought For The Day –
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. Monday, July 7, 2008 It is hot, here in The other day I saw some folks skinny dipping, but if I do that, the appropriate term is chunky dunking. Poor Miss Terry always dreamed of a man who was tall, dark, and handsome, but instead ended up with me – short, pale, and pudgy. Can you tell that I’ve blown my diet in the last week? L Anyone who knows me knows that I love to laugh and have a good time. Life is too short to be grouchy and upset all the time. I have to tell you a story that a couple of Life on Wheels students told us yesterday that had me laughing so hard that I had tears running down my cheeks. They are new RVers, and apparently they have very
different tastes in music. The husband likes old time country, while his
wife prefers 80s rock and roll. While they were on their way to A few miles down the road, they pulled into a rest area, and while the wife went to the rear of their coach to use the bathroom, the husband went outside and did a walk around to be sure everything was okay with the RV and dinghy. He also retrieved his CDs from the car. Apparently while he was walking back up the driver’s side of the RV, his wife finished her business and decided to go get his CDs to appease him. They were not in the car’s front console, so she crawled into the backseat to see if they were in a box of things riding there. Can you see this coming? Hubby goes back into the RV, assumes his bride is still in the potty, and pulls back onto the highway! She said when those brake lights came on and the rig started pulling away, she screamed to stop, but he was oblivious. So there she was, riding in the backseat of the towed car as he cruised blissfully down Interstate 90 listening to I Walk The Line. She said it was darned terrifying, and I bet it was! Her cell phone was still in the RV, so all she could do was ride, scream, and cuss, and she said she did a lot of the latter two. She said she frantically waved at people in passing cars, hoping they would get her husband's attention, but the few that noticed her just waved back. Hubby said that at first when his wife didn’t come back to her seat, he assumed she was still mad at him about the argument and was pouting. But after 15 or 20 minutes, he began to worry that maybe she was ill or something, and began yelling back toward the bathroom to ask if she was okay. When that didn’t get any response, as soon as he could find a safe place to pull over, he did so and went back to knock on the bathroom door, then opened it to find it, and the rest of the RV, empty. He said that was an eerie feeling. The mystery was solved quickly, because about that time his wife crawled out of the car, made her shaky way to the door of the motorhome, and began beating on it with her fist, screaming “Let me in, you damned idiot!” If the husband thought she was mad before, he had no clue. She set new records once she got inside the coach! Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall and seen that argument! Sunday, July 6, 2008 Terry and I have found something to love about
every corner of this grand country of ours, from the bayous of Louisiana
to the Texas Hill Country, from the emerald forests of the Pacific
Northwest to the sandy beaches of
In yesterday’s blog, I wrote about us crossing
paths with our friends Tom and Diane in their gorgeous truck conversion.
Before we set off down the Lolo Trail yesterday, we stopped at a WalMart
in Missoula, Montana to pick up a couple of items, and as we were
walking back to our van I spotted them again, driving past us on U.S.
Highway 12. A half hour or so later we saw them yet again, off the side
of the road in a large pullout. We stopped to be sure they were okay,
and they had just stopped for a snack before starting the 200+ miles of
winding mountain road between
As I wrote before, Highway 12 between When we arrived in Today we’ll be busy greeting the incoming Life on Wheels students and getting ready for our week of teaching. We’ll be doing thirteen seminars, but it will be stretched out over five days, instead of our usual ten classes in 2½ days at the shorter Life on Wheels venues, so hopefully it will not be as hard on me as Tucson and Bowling Green were earlier this year. Thought For The Day –
Peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the ability to cope
with it. Saturday, July 5, 2008
Unfortunately, yesterday we had to forsake the two
lane roads for the interstate because we had a long way to go and a
short time to get there. After spending the night in We stopped in the tiny town of As it turns out, the late rodeo star turned country musician Chris LeDoux married a local girl and lived in Kaycee before his untimely death from cancer in 2005. The folks in Kaycee are raising funds to build a park in town to honor their favorite son. Our next stop was in We crossed into
I called them on the cell phone, and about 30 miles
west of |
We
have never had a violent encounter with anyone as RVers. But we have had two fires in our bus. Terry and I have sat through Mac McCoy’s
fire safety class several times, and in both fires Miss Terry reacted
quickly, put her training to use, and had the fires out quickly and with
little damage. RV fires are terrible things, and we have seen some
horrific blazes. Do you have fire extinguishers in your RV? Are they the
proper kind? Do you know know to use properly them?
Traffic
accidents are a constant threat. You can be the world’s best driver,
you can exercise every caution known to man, and a drunk driver can
still take you out on a simple trip to the grocery store. The photo on
the right was an
accident I was almost a part of in 
You never know
when something you learn at a driving school that you thought you had
complexly forgotten will come back to save your life in an emergency.
I’ve been through several driving schools in and out of the military,
and one lesson I was taught was that in a front end blowout, keep your
foot off the brake pedal, and if you start to lose control, downshift
and stomp on the accelerator. I don’t know where I picked up that
particular piece of advice, but last year when we had a high speed
blowout on a front tire in our bus, I found the nose swinging toward the
ditch at 60 miles an hour. Instinctively I did as instructed many years
ago, and sure enough, the front end came back around and I was able to
control it and ease off the throttle and coast to a safe stop alongside
the road.
The
terrain changed again, from relatively flat farmland to steep bluffs as
we neared the 
We
noticed a lot of rust on the frame and undercarriage of the trailer,
which I have never seen in any other fifth wheel from any manufacturer,
let alone a quality rig like the Landmark. Once we pointed it out to
Mel, he looked under another Landmark on the dealer’s lot, which was
not showing any rust. The rig is supposed to be a brand new 2009, and we
also found a support bracket on one side that was unattached and a
couple of other things that left us feeling uneasy about the fiver. Miss
Terry even climbed up on the roof to take a look at things up there. I
think Mel and Carolyn probably will end up buying a Heartland fifth
wheel, but not the one they were looking at. Something about the trailer
left all four of us feeling very uneasy. It almost looked to me like the
bottom of it had been in a flood or something. When a deal makes you
feel that bad going in, our motto is to walk away and shop another day.
We
also stopped in to say hello to Paul Eidsness at Alternative Resources 
Yesterday
was a day for seeing wildlife and some of the best scenery in the 
This
is no Sunday drive through the park. The area is home to mule deer,
moose, elk, mountain lion, coyotes, bobcats, and a wide variety of
smaller animals. The rivers teem with wild trout, and birds of prey own
the sky. U.S. 12 is a good two lane route, but it is not a fast highway.
That’s fine with us, because even though we have a long way to go, who
wants to rush past so much natural beauty?
One
of the best things about teaching at Life on Wheels, and the RV
lifestyle in general, is the wonderful people we meet. We have gotten to
know so many great people, many of whom have become close friends, that
we feel truly blessed.
Miss
Terry has the sharpest eyes of anyone I have ever known, and she is able
to spot
wildlife everywhere we travel. On this trip she has pointed out deer,
antelope, hawks, and prairie dogs to me that I would have never seen. At
one point yesterday she spotted this handsome bald eagle in western 
Tom
and Diane’s truck is impressive indeed, but for some folks, smaller is
better. At the Missoula WalMart we saw this unique RV, made from a 1961
Corvair van. It had solar panels, a satellite TV dish, and all the
comforts of home, just on a smaller scale. It was impressive, but I’m
keeping a close eye on Tom and Diane’s rig. If they ever leave the
keys in it, I just may take it on a 60 month joy ride. 
our favorite routes anywhere. Yesterday was no exception. A lot of white
water rafters were on the river, one mountain vista after another took
our breath away, and at one place I even spotted a couple skinny dipping
in the river! There is nothing like naked people to break up the
monotony of a long day behind the wheel.
You
just never know what you’re going to find along the back roads of 
Not
ten minutes later we spotted a big truck conversion up ahead, and I said
to Terry “It can’t be, can it?” We pulled alongside, and sure
enough, it was them!