In a conversation with a new fulltimer the other day, he mentioned that the one thing he knows he’ll miss is his gardening hobby. Apparently he had a greenhouse at his former home and is well known for his roses, which have won ribbons in the county fair for years. He asked me what hobbies best fit into the RV lifestyle.

I guess growing prize winning roses might be difficult in an RV, but there are many hobbies that fit perfectly with the RV lifestyle. We have known many fulltime RVers with interesting hobbies, and many have customized their RVs to accommodate their hobbies and special interests.

Some of our personal hobbies include geocaching, reading, kayaking, crocheting and cooking (Terry), and target shooting. We know other fulltime RVers who are into woodcarving, bird watching, fishing, playing music, bicycling, volkswalking, photography, making stained glass, and quilting, to name just a few.

The RV lifestyle makes it easy to enjoy your hobbies and special interests. If you enjoy bird watching, you can travel to some of the best birding spots in the nation. RVing geocachers can hunt for caches at highway rest areas, as well as any place they visit, since caches can be found in every corner of America.

Musicians can take part in jam sessions at RV parks, and follow the blue grass festival circuit as they travel. There are woodcarving events all over the country that can be participated in, including an annual gathering at the Escapees North Ranch RV park in Congress, Arizona.

If golf is your thing, the RV lifestyle is perfect for you. Unlike golfers in northern climates, RVers can play any time of year, because they are (hopefully) not stuck someplace where it snows.

Genealogy is another hobby that is perfect for RVers. It is one thing to know that your great great uncle Angus is buried in a family plot on land he farmed in Missouri, and quite another to be able to travel to the old family farm and actually walk the land your ancestors tilled, and pay your respects in person at their gravesites.

Even though we cannot actively participate in some of the hobbies we enjoyed in our former lives, that doesn’t mean we can’t still have some involvement. I was into classic cars before we hit the road, and sold my four old cars when we became fulltimers. But every once in a while, we’ll see a car show and I can relive memories of my days behind the wheel of my old Corvette or one of my Mustangs.

So what are some of the hobbies and activities that you enjoy as you travel around this great land of ours, and how do they fit into the RV lifestyle?

Thought For The Day – Middle age is having a choice of two temptations and choosing the one that will get you home earlier.

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With summer in full swing, and gas prices way down from this time last year, a lot of RVs are on the go. We’re expecting a full house here at Elkhart Campground next weekend for the 4^th of July holiday.

As fulltimers, we learned early on that campgrounds fill up fast on holiday weekends during the summer. So we always try to find a place to settle in during the middle of the week and stay put until the next Tuesday or so, to let all of the weekend warriors do their thing and then get back home.

Every once in a while when I complain about weekend campers, someone thinks I am looking down on people who are still living in sticks and bricks houses and can only do their camping on weekends and vacations.

Not at all! We have met many, many wonderful RVers who are not fulltimers or extended time travelers. They have made fine campground neighbors. My problem is with jerks that make noise after hours, allow their kids and dogs to run wild, don’t know how to build a campfire that is not a smudge pot, and ruin the experience for everybody around them.

There are plenty of clods in the fulltime lifestyle too, unfortunately. I remember a group of Bluebird owners in Quartzsite, Arizona two years ago who felt it necessary to blow their musical horns over and over again, serenading everybody around them, whether we wanted to listen or not. And we have had more than our share of fulltimer neighbors with yappy little mutts they think they are just precious and that everybody wants to hear their never ending barking. Bad manners are bad manners, and jerks are jerks, whether they live in RVs or traditional houses.

With the new issue of the Gypsy Journal in the mail, Terry and I have some slack time, but we always find plenty of ways to keep busy. The heat wave has abated a bit, so we may find some place to put our kayaks in the water and do some paddling.

Speaking of the high temperatures that have baked much of the nation, longtime Gypsy Journal reader Richard Prevallet suggested I mention a laser thermometer as a valuable tool to have in any RV. I’ve used one for years. They come in handy to check RV tires and wheel hubs when traveling to alert you to a possible problem before it gets out of hand.

Now that I have a PressurePro system to monitor my tires, I don’t use the laser thermometer as much for that, but I still shoot my wheel hubs when we pull into a rest stop. I also use it to check the surface temperature on our twin radiators. You can get a good quality laser thermometer for $50 or less at Sears, Harbor Freight and any other tool outlet.

Digital laser thermometers, also called laser guns, are simple to use. All you have to do is point the red laser dot at what you want to measure and push the button, and then read the digital display. It’s so simple even I can do it!

Thought For The Day – I am a nutritional overachiever.

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Thanks to everyone who posted comments to the blog or sent e-mails with suggestions of replacement laptop computers for Terry. And thanks especially to our pal Jim Guld from Geeks on Tour. I was on the phone several times with Jim yesterday trying to resolve the issues with Terry’s Compaq, and then again as we shopped for a replacement.

Following Jim’s directions, we actually got the Compaq running for a short time. He told us to remove the battery and unplug the AC power, and then to hold the power button down for about 10 seconds, and then plug the computer back in. I did all of that, and the darned thing booted right up! I thought our problems were over. A message popped up on the screen saying the NVIDIA software had been updated and the computer was going to reboot automatically. It shut itself down and no matter what we did after that, it just would not work. It was dead.

I had decided we should buy Terry a Dell laptop to replace her Compaq, but several readers wrote to suggest a Toshiba instead. We drove over to Best Buy in Mishawaka, a few miles west of Elkhart, and looked at the Dells, and also the comparable Toshiba. Terry liked the Toshiba much better, so I was back on the phone again with Jim Guld, asking his opinion. After I read him the specs on both units, Jim gave his blessing on the Toshiba, and that’s what we bought.

These days computers are a very important part of many RVers’ lives, ours included. Not only do we keep in touch with our friends and family by e-mail, as well as cruising the internet, we also use them daily in our business. Just as a good mechanic needs quality tools, we need computers we can rely on.

Yesterday, new friends Dan and Martha Widmeyer, from Short Hills, New Jersey stopped by to say hello. I met them Friday when I stopped into the office here at Elkhart Campground to pick up our mail, and they were there checking in. They had a couple of questions about local RV factory tours, and I suggested they check out the Heartland factory, since they are one of our favorite RV manufacturers.

We had a nice conversation, I gave them a sample copy of the Gypsy Journal, and they said they were looking forward to reading it. Once they did, they said they knew they had to subscribe, and to meet Miss Terry as well. What a nice couple! We look forward to crossing their path again in our travels. You meet the nicest people in an RV!

If you are traveling in eastern Ohio or Western Pennsylvania, I want to give you a lead on a neat place to visit that reader Levi Patton suggested. Noah’s Lost Ark in Berlin Center is a non-profit rescue sanctuary for abused and neglected exotic animals. After I spent some time exploring their website, it’s very high on our travel plans. Check it out, I think you’ll be impressed. We were!

Thought For The Day – Never be afraid to say what you feel. You can only die once.

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Gee, I miss one day of watching the evening news and I miss everything! The war on terrorism is over, the economy is no longer in the toilet, fuel prices are down, stock prices are up, and all of the illegal aliens have gone back south of the border.  It must be true, because every newscast I have seen for two days now doesn’t talk about anything but the death of Michael Jackson.  

I find it interesting that while there is so much discussion of the singer’s grand career, in which they call him the King of Pop music, we hear very little about the other side of his life; the repeated accusations of child molestation, his bizarre behavior, his prescription drug use, and his financial troubles.

No, let’s just glorify the King. I’m sorry, he wasn’t a king to me, or even an interesting performer. He was just a freak wacko that had been idolized and coddled since he was a little boy, had been allowed to do things that society would not tolerate from the rest of us, and never had to live in the real world. All because he was an “artist.” Let’s get on with life.

I reported in yesterday’s blog that a couple of subscribers to our digital edition of the Gypsy Journal had to download a newer version of Adobe Reader to access the file. We have also discovered that some users of the Firefox web browser cannot access the file, unless they use Internet Explorer to do so.

While Terry was busy stuffing envelopes with the new issue of the Gypsy Journal yesterday, I spent the afternoon working on a new seminar called 100 Miles From Here for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally. The seminar will highlight dozens of interesting places to visit within a 100 mile drive of the rally site.

No matter where we go in this country, we find interesting places to explore, from historic sites, to oddball museums, to the homes and graves of notable people. I created this new seminar to illustrate how, wherever you are traveling, there is plenty to see and do.

Miss Terry has been dealing with computer problems for quite a while now, and yesterday evening her Compaq laptop died. When she turns it on, whether on battery power or plugged into an AC outlet, the power light comes on, but that’s it. No fan, no screen, it doesn’t even begin to boot up. We have taken the battery out and put it back in, it’s fully charged, and we’ve tried every fix we could find online.

The laptop is less than two years old, but these days the quality of HP and Compaq products seems to be pretty bad. We’ll give Jim from Geeks on Tour a call today to see if he has any ideas, but I think we should just buy her a Dell and be done with it.

Thought For The Day – Don’t be afraid to fail. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing.

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It is still incredibly hot here in northern Indiana, and it looks like the heat wave will hang on for several more days, at least.

I love the classic looks of Airstream travel trailers, and even though one would not work for our lifestyle, I can’t pass one without giving it a second look. We enjoyed touring the Airstream factory in Jackson Center, Ohio last year after our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally with our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel, and we were impressed with the way they build them.

Ron is also a big fan of those shiny round topped trailers, and Miss Terry and Brenda kept a careful eye on us all the while we were there to be sure we didn’t sign any purchase contracts.

So when RV Hall of Fame Museum historian Al Hesselbart called yesterday to tell me that a vintage Airstream club had caravanned from the company headquarters in Jackson Center to the museum here in Elkhart, and suggested it might be a good photo opportunity for the Gypsy Journal, I jumped all over it.

The club had originally planned to dry camp overnight in the museum’s parking lot after their tour. But Airstreams do not come with generators to run their air conditioners, and with temperatures in the 90s again they changed their plans and came over to Elkhart Campground to have hookups. So I got to take some pictures of them at the museum and again at the campground.

We drove back up to Michigan to pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal yesterday, and the next few days we will be busy getting it stuffed into envelopes and mailed out.

Back at the bus, I kicked off my shoes and took a quick nap. Soon after I woke up, Frank and Debbie Likert from Searcy, Arkansas stopped in to say hello. Debbie is a dedicated blog reader, and it was nice to get to know them and visit for a while.

After our guests left, I sent out the link to the new digital edition of the Gypsy Journal to the folks who subscribed to it, and a couple of e-mails bounced back, so if you subscribed and did not get the link, please contact me. I did get several e-mails from digital subscribers, and they all were very pleased with the new issue. If you have not seen a sample of our digital edition, click this link and check it out http://gypsyjournal.net/blog/digital-edition/.

A couple of readers reported that they could not open the file, and we are working to resolve those issues. In one case it was because he was using an old version of Adobe Reader, and after downloading an updated version from www.adobe.com he had no further problems.

Thought For The Day – When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

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