Today is a very special day. 28 years ago today, my daughter Tiffany was born, and my world has been a much brighter place since then.

Of course, being my daughter, Tiffany had to make her entrance into the world in a memorable way. I owned a weekly newspaper in Grays Harbor, Washington at the time, and Tiffany’s mom had been admitted to the hospital the night before, scheduled for a C-section.

Soon after Tiffany’s mom was wheeled into the operating room,  unbeknownst to me, my secretary was in a car accident and got banged up a little bit. She was in the emergency room, and asked one of the nurses to call me upstairs to let me know about the accident. When they paged me, I was told to go downstairs to the ER.  I did, and the charge nurse said “Okay, there’s nothing to worry about. She’s got some cuts and bruises, and we’re gong to take some x-rays, just to be sure.”

Now remember, the only person I knew was in the hospital was my wife and my soon to be born daughter, so I asked “What the hell did you people do, drop her off a gurney or something?” The nurse said no, it happened in the car accident. “Car accident? Did she go for a joy ride?” We eventually got things sorted out, and I got back upstairs just in time to hold my beautiful new little girl.

Today Tiffany is a mommy to two little girls herself, and has grown into a beautiful woman. I’m proud to say that she is not only my daughter, but also my friend.

Being a great wife and mother apparently wasn’t enough of an accomplishment for Tiffany, so a year ago she took on a new challenge, losing over 85 pounds! Here is a picture of Tiffany with husband Jim, oldest daughter Hailey, and little Destiny last year at Sea World, a few weeks before she started her diet and exercise program.

This picture was taken last November, and Tiffany is well on her way to her goal.

And here she is now. What an accomplishment! I sure wish I had her willpower.

Tiffany has been empowered by her weight loss, and is now back in school, working on a degree. Can you tell that I’m a very proud dad?

Happy birthday, Tiffany. I love you very much, and I am so very, very honored to have you as my daughter.

Thought For The Day – A daughter may outgrow your lap, but she will never outgrow your heart.

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Every time we come back to our old hometown of Show Low, Arizona to visit my daughter Tiffany and her family, poor Terry suffers from terrible allergies. When we lived here it wasn’t as much of a problem, but having been gone for almost eleven years, she has lost  whatever immunity she had to the local pollen. So her eyes are red and itchy, she is sneezing and coughing, and she’d surely shoot me if I tried to take her picture right now.

We’re at 6500 feet here, and a few miles up the road, Pinetop-Lakeside is over 7000 feet, so we both feel the effects of the altitude quite a bit. I keep telling Tiffany that she’d be much happier living somewhere else like, oh, say Aransas Pass or Rockport, Texas, and that we’d visit her much more often there.

Yesterday was another windy day, and since Miss Terry was feeling under the weather, we stayed home and I spent the day working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal. This will be our Eleventh Anniversary Issue, how time flies! The brainchild I conceived sitting at our kitchen table when we were trying to decide if we could earn a living on the road has grown every year, thanks to the support of so many of our loyal readers. We feel very blessed to be able to make our living in such a fun way.

Except for a potty break or two, and stepping outside to show the propane delivery guy where our LP tank is, I was at my desk all day, until it was time for dinner.

In the evening, my cousin Rocky Frees sent me a link to a newspaper obituary for my uncle Charles Saxton, who was killed in action during World War II. Rocky had found the link on a Google News Archive search, and if he wasn’t almost 1800 miles away in Muskegon, Michigan, I’d kiss Rocky right on his face! My genealogical research on my dad’s side of the family has been nearly impossible, but within just a few minutes of searching on the website, I found my grandfather’s death notice, as well as those for two of my dad’s sisters and one of my brothers, and a ton of other information. I knew I should have been working on the paper, but I couldn’t resist logging onto Ancestry.com and inputting all of this new information, which in turn led me to even more data! I could have stayed at it for hours, but I had a blog to write.

After I wrote in yesterday’s blog that I would be sponsoring people to join the Elkhart, Indiana Moose lodge during our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, I had a couple of e-mails from ladies asking if the Elks and Moose will accept women as members. Yes, I have sponsored several women to both organizations.

Today I’ll be back at it, but if Terry feels any better we may sneak away for an hour or two to go into town and visit Tiffany. I have grandkids to snuggle with, and I haven’t been near a Dairy Queen in weeks.

Thought For The Day – Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

As I reported in a previous blog entry Caught In A Dust Storm, on Monday of last week we drove from Williams, Arizona to Juniper Ridge RV Resort  in Show Low, Arizona. On Interstate 40, between Meteor Crater and Winslow, we ran into the worst dust storm I had ever been in. Soon after we came through, the Highway Patrol closed the highway for several hours.

Yesterday, one week to the day later, another dust storm closed the same section of highway for several hours. Welcome to spring in northern Arizona. Fortunately for us, this time around we were safely nestled into Tim and Sue Daughtery’s site here at Juniper Ridge. The wind rocked our motorhome all day long, but since we stayed home and waded through a mound of paperwork, we just ignored it.

Driving a high profile vehicle in strong winds is not only nerve wracking, it can be downright dangerous. In my days running small town newspapers in this area, I covered quite a few stories of big motorhomes, and even eighteen wheelers, that were blown off the highway and ended up on their sides or upside down at the bottom of a ravine. 

When I reported in Saturday’s blog that we had opened registration for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally, we had 80 50 amp full hookup RV sites available at Elkhart Campground. As of last night, we have 50 left. We also have received reservations for several of the 30 amp full hookup, and the 30 amp water and electric sites. We now have a total of 45 registrations in.  That’s not bad for three days!

Membership in the Elks and Moose organizations opens up many overnight parking opportunities for RVers. In our travels, we have stayed at Elks and Moose lodges all over the country. Some just have a parking lot where you can dry camp overnight, while others have full hookup RV parks, with very reasonable rates. But membership in both organizations is about much more than just having a place to park overnight. Both do a tremendous amount of good work in their communities and on a national basis, especially for children and veterans.

I belong to the Gila Bend, Arizona Elks Lodge, and the Elkhart, Indiana Moose Lodge. I have sponsored quite a few new members for the Elkhart Moose Lodge,and if you would like to join, I’ll be happy to sponsor you while we’re at the rally. It’s a quick and easy process, and costs less than $100 to join, including your first year’s dues. If you are interested in joining at the rally, send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and I’ll be sure to have enrollment forms available for you.

Our RV travels have taken us to a lot of small town festivals all around the country, but one we missed was the Texas Sandfest, which was held in Port Aransas, Texas this past weekend. As longtime readers know, Terry and I love the Texas Gulf Coast, from Rockport to Port Aransas, and we’re sorry we missed this event.

But our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel were there, and they sent us several photos they took of some of the creations. Here are a few of my favorites. Isn’t it amazing what they can do with sand?

Now that I have conquered the paperwork that was covering my desk, it’s time to start putting together the next issue of the Gypsy Journal. Maybe, by the time I get it finished in a few days, the wind will have blown out of the area. But I’m not holding my breath.

Thought For The Day – Quarrels end, but words, once spoken, never die.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

I received an e-mail yesterday from a couple who are investigating the fulltime RV lifestyle. They will both be retiring within the next eighteen months, and though they have never owned an RV, they camped in tents when their kids were little, and they said they love traveling. They are looking at different types of RVs, and are favoring a diesel pusher in the 40 foot range. Their question was, how many fulltime RVers jumped right into the lifestyle with both feet, never having owned an RV before?

We know fulltimers who have done just that, and we know others whose evolution into fulltiming was a long process, starting with tents or tent campers, and moving up through the ranks with small Class C motorhomes or travel trailers, and up to larger Class A motorhomes or fifth wheel trailers. We all seem to have taken our own path on the journey to fulltiming.

In our case, I started out with a sleeping bag thrown into a bare bones camper shell mounted on the back of a pickup truck, moved up to a larger pickup camper, then a small Class C motorhome, and a conversion van somewhere along the way. These were all during my working and child raising years, when money and time were both hard to come by. They were used just for weekend outings and a couple of short trips lasting a week or so.

When Miss Terry’s kids were tiny, she took them camping a few times, and owned a Volkswagen camper van for a while. Her folks own a Class A motorhome and fulltimed for several years, but Terry never traveled with them in it.

We started fulltiming in a Class A gas motorhome, then built our own MCI bus conversion, and last year we upgraded to a Winnebago Ultimate Advantage diesel pusher.

Our friends Orv and Nancy Hazelton started out tent camping on their honeymoon, and then had a small Class C motorhome for years. They are currently fulltiming in an Allegro Class A motorhome, and have a brand new Tiffin diesel pusher on order.

Dennis and Carol Hill, from the RV Driving School, have owned everything from pull behinds to motorhomes, in just about every configuration you can imagine. They currently live and travel in a Tiffin Phaeton diesel pusher.

Greg and Jan White, on the other hand, had never traveled in an RV before they rented a Class C for a three week trip in early 2007 that included attending Life on Wheels in Tucson, Arizona. A few months later they purchased an American Eagle diesel pusher and hit the road.

As you can see, there is no one right way to start out. My advice to these folks was to attend the RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green Kentucky June 3-6, our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally in Elkhart, Indiana August 30 to September 3, and the Escapees Boot Camp for new and wannabe RVers, followed by the Escapade Rally September 12-17. Between all of the seminars offered at these events, and the opportunity to interact with both new and veteran RVers,  they will come away with a darned good foundation upon which to build their new fulltiming life.

So, how about you? Was your evolution into fulltime RVing or extended RV traveling a slow process, as you worked your way through a series of RVs, or did you jump right in with both feet, buying a rig and hitting the road?

Thought For The Day -  Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

After telling you in yesterday’s blog that I had uploaded the registration page for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, we had a great response. By yesterday evening we had 25 reservations come in, the greatest majority of them for 50 amp full hookup sites.

I guess a lot of folks are quite happy to pay more for a rally at a campground.  Keeping in mind that we only had 80 of the 50 amp full hookup sites to begin with, available on a first come basis, I wouldn’t want to wait too long to register if I absolutely had to have one. Once they are gone, they’re gone.

To hopefully meet the needs of rally attendees who prefer limited services at a lower price, yesterday I called Bob Patel at Elkhart Campground, and was able to negotiate some basic RV sites with 20 amp electric and water at a discounted rate. For more information, check out on the Rally Registration Page.

At past rallies, we have had Early Bird arrivals, and also a lot of people that just show up at the last minute without pre-registering. That has not been a real problem at fairgrounds, where we have lots of space.  Due to the Escapees RV Club Escapade rally two weeks after our event, a lot of people will be arriving in Elkhart early. I cannot guarantee that we can accommodate last minute arrivals who have not preregistered, because once the campground is full, we won’t have a place to put you.

If you want to arrive early or stay at the campground after the rally, you can call Elkhart Campground at (574) 264-2914  and register for those days. Reservations for the rally dates have to be made through us to get the rally rate.

I spent much of yesterday trying to wade through a big backlog of paperwork that I had allowed to stack up. It’s the least favorite part of my job, so I tend to put it off until I can’t see the top of my desk any longer, and then I force myself to deal with it.

Sometime in mid-afternoon, just about the time when I really needed a break, my daughter Tiffany, her husband Jim, and our two granddaughters came by for a visit. They had not seen our Winnebago motorhome yet, and they all loved it. In fact, Tiffany suggested that with all this extra room, it would be perfect for taking the little ones on a trip. Grandpa quickly nixed that idea. Our motorhome seats six, but only sleeps two!

I know a lot of RVers who love taking their grandkids on trips with them, but I’m just not sure I could handle that at this stage in my life. Those two little ones have more energy than a boxful of kittens! I prefer to visit them at their house, feed them junk food, wrestle with them and get them bouncing off the walls, and then retreat back to my home on wheels and leave their parents to deal with them. Hey Tiffany, it’s payback for those sleepless nights you gave me, sweetie!

Actually, my daughter was never a problem child, and she has grown up to be a fine young woman whom I am very proud of. (I have to say that, or she’ll drop off her kids and keep right on going!)

While I was working, and then snuggling up with those little girls, Bad Nick was busy writing a new Bad Nick Blog titled One Extreme To The Other. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!