As most of my regular blog readers know, we have been looking for an RV to replace our faithful old MCI bus conversion. We have lived in the bus for 8 years and loved it, but our needs have changed and we needed something different.

Our criteria was a 38 to 40 foot diesel pusher, with at least a 330 horsepower engine, and a living room slide. As many of you know, I have long been a critic of many production RVs, but I have always said that there are a handful of manufacturers whose RVs we would be comfortable owning. If we had been shopping for a fifth wheel, our search would have begun and ended with Heartland. Unfortunately, they don’t make motorized RVs, only towables.

Of the production model diesel pushers, our top three manufacturers of choice were (in no particular order) Allegro, Winnebago, and Newmar. 

We did a lot of internet research, and looked at a lot of used RVs over the past six months, and almost bought a couple, but either we couldn’t quite get together on the price, or we couldn’t arrange the financing in time and someone snatched them out from under us.

Of all the rigs we looked at, the ones that really stuck out in our minds were the Winnebago Ultimate series, which was the top of the Winnebago line from 1998 to 2004, but every one we saw was out of our price range.

In early June we drove past a car dealer’s lot in Goshen, Indiana, and at the last minute out of the corner of my eye, I  spotted a beautiful 2002 Winnebago Ultimate Advantage. We made a quick U-turn and checked it out, and though it was everything we wanted in a new home on wheels, we knew it was out of our price range. We looked at a couple of other RVs since then, but our minds kept going back to the Winnebago, and after a couple of visits and calls to the dealership, we were finally able to get them to negotiate a price we could live with.

Our goods friends Ron and Brenda Speidel are longtime Winnebago owners, and they are even on the company’s Consumer Research Panel, so they know their Winnebago’s. Added to that, Ron is one of the most technical guys I know, and he has always wanted an Ultimate Advantage, so we asked them to go with us to check the rig out.

I told Ron I wanted him to go over it with a fine tooth comb, with the mindset that Brenda wanted to buy it, and his job was to talk her out of it. After crawling over, under, around, and through every square inch of the rig, Ron had just one thing to say – “If you don’t buy it, I will.”

So yesterday we took delivery of our new home on wheels, and we are ecstatic! It has two slides, a 350 horsepower Cummins turbo diesel engine, six speed Allison automatic transmission, 7500 watt Onan Quiet Diesel generator, and every option we could ever want or need. Things like an automatic satellite TV dish on the roof, four door Norcold refrigerator, central vacuum system, and more. The rig has been babied, only 33,000 miles on it, all service done at the Cummins/Onan dealer here in Elkhart, and it lived inside a heated garage all its life.

It drives like a dream, and has more power than I know what to do with. In fact, when we were driving back to Elkhart Campground from the dealership, Ron and Brenda were following us, and had to call Terry on the cell phone to tell her to tell me to slow down. I thought I was doing about 35 and it was closer to 55!

We have the new motorhome parked next to the bus, and can’t wait to start moving in. Unfortunately, today we have to drive to Michigan to pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal from our printer, and then it will take several days to get it stuffed into envelopes and mailed out. And next week, we are supposed to be vending at the Carriage rally in Goshen, Indiana. But maybe we’ll at least sneak next door and just go sit in our new motorhome and grin at each other for a while.  

Thought For The Day – When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

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More than once someone has asked me how they can get a press pass that will gain them free admittance to attractions, concerts, or whatever else they want to see. In the last month alone I have had three different people who have RV blogs ask me how they can get a press pass.

One lady who wrote recently said she just started fulltiming and launched her RV blog last week. She said she wanted a press pass so she could “Stay free at campgrounds, get free meals at restaurants, and have RV manufacturers give her rigs to try out, because she’ll be writing about them.” I replied and told her that I had no idea how to get such a golden pass, but I wanted one!

This lady needs a reality check. In truth, there is no one universal “press pass” that will gain you free passage to wherever you want to go. Many publications, television, and radio stations issue press passes to their reporters as a means of identification. All this does is tell the world that yes, you do work for such and such magazine or whatever. But nobody is required to honor the pass.

When I was in the community newspaper business, some police departments issued myself and my reporters press passes that allowed us access to crime and accident scenes to cover a story, but that was only at the discretion of the senior officer at the scene. If he (or she) felt that our presence was unsafe, or would hinder their investigation or jeopardize a criminal case, they could (and sometimes did) tell us we had to step back. I always respected this and had a very good working relationship with the authorities because of that.

As far as a press pass for an RV blog, forget it. These days everybody and his grandmother has a blog about something, and unless you can show that you have many thousands of daily readers, and can convince them that exposure in your blog will benefit an attraction or a company, they aren’t going to give you a thing. Otherwise, they would be overwhelmed with requests for freebies.

We do get free admission to most of the places we write about, and we don’t even have a press pass. What we do have is a very long track record, lists of references from other places we have written about, a website and blog, and sample copies of the Gypsy Journal to demonstrate that we are indeed members of the working press, and that we can tell thousands of readers about their company or organization. Even then, we sometimes have to jump through some hoops before we can arrange admission to some places, and we get told no sometimes.

When it comes to free camping, free meals, and RVs to test drive, in our experience that seldom happens. I think over the years, two or three RV park owners who have read the Gypsy Journal and liked it have invited us to stop by for a night or two as their guests, and a couple of equipment manufacturers have given us things to test and write about. Part of that may be because when they have contacted us, I always tell them right up front that if their product is good, I’ll tell the world. However, if I feel it is crap, I’ll tell our readers that too. You’d be surprised by how fast many conversations end after that!

As for those RVs to test out, I’m still waiting to hear from any company who wants us to hit the road in one of their units, but the phone hasn’t rung yet.    

Thought For The Day – Life isn’t supposed to be fair. It’s just supposed to be life.

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My dad always told me that the older you get, the faster the time goes by. He was full of little bits of wisdom like that, and because I was a teenager and already knew everything there was to know in the world, I just figured the old guy had been out in the sun too long again. But I’ll tell you what, an amazing thing happened! About the time I hit 25 years old, my dad had really wised up a whole lot, and the older I get, the smarter he seems to have been!

I sure know what he meant about time speeding up. It seems like no matter how hard I work, lately I’m always running behind. In fact, I need about 12 more hours in a day just to get caught up!

I blame a lot of this on Miss Terry, because she really pulled the rug out from under me a couple of weeks ago, and I have been disoriented ever since. Someone asked me how old I am, and I said I would turn 56 on October 15^th. Terry corrected me and said I would be 57. Huh? I lost an entire year? Where the heck did it go? I want it back! I had plans for that year! Now I’ll never get everything done I have on my list! That was the year I was going to lose 50 pounds! Now I’m stuck with this huge spare tire? It’s not fair!

At least the new issue of the Gypsy Journal is finally done, and we’ll take it to our printer today. I’m sure glad to have that out of the way. It seems like with this issue, there was one delay after another. In fact, yesterday afternoon Russ and Patty Frady stopped over to say hello, and I had to cut the visit short because I was rushing to get finished. They were very gracious and understood, and hopefully we’ll be able to get together for a visit in the next few days.

I really don’t understand this problem with deadlines. For much of my working life I published small town weekly newspapers, and even a daily for a while. Compared to that, having a deadline every two months should be a cakewalk. I must be getting lazy (or lazier) in my old age.

Normally when we get the paper off to the printer, we have a few days to catch our breath before we pick the job up and start the mad rush to get everything stuffed into envelopes and off to the mail service. But right now we have some other irons in the fire, so I don’t think we’ll be letting much grass grow under our feet anytime soon.

I know, I know, my friend Jerry LeRoy keeps telling me I’m supposed to stop and smell the roses. But the last time I did that, a bumblebee stung me right on the end of my nose!

Thought For The Day – I was tired yesterday and I’m tired today so I must be retired.

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Sometime early Monday morning the sky above us broke open and rain began to pour down on northern Indiana in torrential amounts. One news report said that four inches of rain fell before 6 a.m. and then it was averaging an inch an hour for the rest of the morning. The roads here in Elkhart Campground looked like small lakes, and the ground is just saturated. And we’re supposed to get more rain all week long! Would somebody please turn off the water!

At some point early yesterday afternoon, when we had a short break in the deluge we waded next door to Ron and Brenda Speidel’s motorhome and I suggested to Ron that maybe we should all take our kayaks out and get some paddling in, right here in the campground!

Dennis and Carol Hill, from the RV Driving School, were supposed to leave yesterday for an RV park in Howe, Indiana, but they took one look at the weather and decided to sit tight for another day. And yet, as nasty as it was, yesterday morning we watched a bunch of RVs pulling out and hitting the road, and later in the day, during another nasty storm, more RVs were pulling in.

Why in the world would anyone choose to travel in terrible weather like this? It just doesn’t make sense when you’re safe and sound in a comfortable campground already. We have wheels under our homes so we can pick up and go when we want to, but we also have brains in our heads that should tell us “not today” sometimes.

I had been rushing to get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal ready to take to the printer today, and falling further behind with every knock at the door, when our printer called yesterday and said they had some production problems that put them behind schedule, and could we wait to bring it in until Wednesday afternoon? Whew, a break I very much needed! I told them no problem at all, happy to oblige.

A couple of notes on our upcoming RV rallies in Ohio and Arizona – if you are planning to attend the Geeks on Tour pre-rally computer boot camp before the Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, you will need to pay the Mercer County Fairgrounds directly for your camping during the boot camp. Also, even though you have arrived early and are already parked, you will probably have to move on Sunday when the registered Earlybirds start arriving. The fairgrounds only has a few full hookup RV sites, and we need to reserve them for handicapped rally attendees. This was a problem for a couple of folks last year, and they got their feelings hurt because they believed it was first come, first serve.

At the Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma next March, we will not be able to accommodate Earlybird arrivals. The fairgrounds has another RV rally going on that will end the day ours starts, and they don’t have room for us to arrive before our scheduled starting date.

Gee, it’s raining again! Go figure.

Thought For The Day – People never lie so much as after fishing, during a war, or before an election.

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Yesterday afternoon we had a delicious meal, courtesy of Dennis and Carol Hill from the RV Driving School. Dennis and Carol have been here at Elkhart Campground for a couple of days, after a summer RV trip to Alaska, and they invited us over for a cookout. The main course was deep fried halibut cheeks. Did you know that the cheek is the best tasting meat to be found on many fish? I know that now. Yummy!

Bill Joyce and Diane Melde joined us in the feast, and our good friends Ron and Brenda Speidel pulled into the campground about the time Dennis was taking the first round of halibut out of his deep fryer. Dennis told me to invite them to join us too, so as soon as they got their beautiful Winnebago diesel coach parked next to our bus and ran their leveling jacks down and their slides out, they came down.

There was so much food that I think that even though we all stuffed ourselves, there were more leftovers than we actually consumed. Thanks for the delicious meal and for your hospitality, Dennis and Carol!

I have to share this picture with you, which I took in the parking lot of the gun show in Shipshewana. This cool canine was relaxing in the seat of a Stallion, which is a very upscale trike style motorcycle, while his owner was inside shopping for goodies.

The dog seemed friendly as several people stopped to admire him and take his picture, but when one guy decided to check out the bike and got a little too close, the dog let him know that he needed to back off right now! Once he stepped away, it was all doggy smiles again.

I had hoped to get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal finished over the weekend, but between a lot of visitors and a fair amount of goofing off on my part the last few days, I still have a ways to go. But I’ll have it to the printer in time for them to do their thing this week.

The way registrations are coming in, Terry and I think this year’s Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally will be a lot bigger than last year’s event! Every day we get new reservations by mail or coming in online. And we are already starting to see several folks registering for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally next March! We have had some new vendors register for the Ohio rally, as well as several returning who were there last year. Once we get this new issue of the paper out, we’ll be concentrating on all of the final details that have to be handled to have a successful rally. It’s always a lot of work, but it’s always a lot of fun too!

Thought For The Day – Memory is more indelible than ink.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally