We spent the day yesterday with our friends Jim and Shar Lewis, who had invited us to their beautiful home in Pinetop for dinner and a visit. It was a great day, with the comfort that old friends of many years just naturally share.

There are two or three men in this world that I consider to be my true brothers, and Jim is one of them. We’ve shared a lot of good times and bad over the decades, and I know there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me, or I for him.

Today Jim owns a small used book store here in the mountains, but when I met him a lifetime ago he was a guard at the Arizona State Prison. His resume also includes being a decorated Vietnam med-evac helicopter pilot, aerial surveyor, pilot for logging operations in the Pacific Northwest, fighting forest fires by helicopter, and massage therapist, of all things. Besides that, he’s a fine guitarist and cowboy singer! So he always has a lot of great tales to tell.

Jim and Shar have been talking about hitting the road, either as fulltime or extended travel RVers, so they had a lot of questions about our travels and RVing in general. We love sharing all of the great things about fulltime RVing, and they seemed to love hearing about it. Do we have some new converts to the RV lifestyle? I guess only time will tell.

We had planned on a two or three hour visit, but the time went by so fast that eight hours had passed before we finally said our goodbyes and headed home. When we arrived back at the Elks campground in Show Low, we noticed a couple more RVs had arrived in our absence.

Today we are going to spend some time with daughter Tiffany and her family, and maybe throw some steaks on the grill. I also hope to get some more work done on the schedule for our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally.

I hope that whatever you are doing today, you take a few moments to remember the reason for this holiday, and the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can live in peace and enjoy the freedoms we have.  Our country has a lot of problems, but it’s still the greatest place on earth to live, and we can thank our veterans and those who died for all of us for that.

Thought For The Day – A veteran, whether active duty, retired, National Guard, or Reserve, is someone who, at one point in his or her life wrote a blank check made payable to The United States of America for an amount of ‘up to and including my life.’

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We can tell it’s a holiday weekend, because the traffic is terrible in this little mountain community as people escape the heat of the desert and come up here to cool off. Up until now, besides the campground host, we have usually been sharing the Elks campground with only  one or two other RVs.

But beginning yesterday, we have seen one RV after another pulling into the campground. We have a Class C Grayhawk parked two sites over from us, a beautiful new Newmar diesel pusher is behind us, another motorhome and a big fifth wheel are a few sites down on the other side, and there are a few others scattered around.

Compared to commercial RV parks, we still have lots of room and privacy, but it has been interesting to see so many new arrivals. I don’t know how many are here for extended stays, and how many are just here for the holiday weekend, but since they all seem to be retired, I don’t think they have to be anywhere in a hurry.

I seem to find a way to get into mischief everywhere I go. Case in point, Friday I went up to the Elks lodge to extend our stay. As with every other lodge we have been to, registration is done at the bar, and there was an older lady there registering for a campsite at the same time. I have never met a stranger, so while they were completing our paperwork, I said hello and asked where she was coming in from. She said Tucson, and I mentioned that it must be getting pretty hot down there by now. She must have thought I was trying to pick her up, despite the 15 or 20 year age difference between us, because she said “Look, I’m married, okay?”

Ouch! And here I thought I had my very own cougar! When I got back to our Winnebago and told Terry and my daughter about the incident, they both had a good laugh at my expense.

Hoping to avoid all of the holiday traffic, yesterday we hung around the motorhome all day. I dumped our black tank, and spent most of the day doing genealogical research online. I was surprised to learn about a daredevil in my family tree. On the Genealogy Bank website, I discovered an 1889 newspaper article reporting that my grandfather, Joseph Russell, then a 16 year old boy, had jumped 110 feet into the Ohio River from a railroad bridge in Cincinnati, on a bet. The story said he was uninjured, and I had to laugh as I remembered my mom saying things like “If so and so jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” If I had known this back then, I could have shot back “Why not, Grandpa did!” On second thought, maybe not. My mom was little, but she was feisty. She may have thrown me off a bridge for smarting off to her!

While I was goofing off, Miss Terry was hard at work, hanging this Levolor blind in the window over her workstation. The three windows in the front of the motorhome are much larger than the ones she already did in the bedroom and bathroom, and the first one was a learning experience. Hanging the blinds is not as easy as the folks at Lowes would have you believe.

But Terry loves a challenge, and she’s so darned stubborn that she never gives up. So even though she had to do some physical contortions to get to everything, and she had to back up and attack the problem from a different angle a time or two, the result came out great, don’t you think?

We are really pleased with the new look they give our Winnebago. Terry has two more windows to go, and she said the lessons she learned on this one will make those a little easier. 

I may not have accomplished much yesterday, but Bad Nick was working just as hard as Terry, pounding out a new Bad Nick Blog titled It Wasn’t About Slavery. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Rehab is for quitters!

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Like most fulltime RVers, we always say that our plans are written in Jello, because, while we may think we know where and when we’ll be going someplace, we never know when something will come up to change our minds at the last minute.

We had planned to leave Show Low on Tuesday and take a trip up through the northeastern corner of Arizona, including Canyon de Chelly National Monument, the Four Corners Monument, and maybe Monument Valley, since I have never been to any of those places, even though we lived in northeastern Arizona for years before we hit the road. We planned to spend a few days, maybe a week, on the road, and then come back here to get the next issue of the Gypsy Journal ready to print.

But, in researching RV parks along our intended route, we began to have second thoughts. There doesn’t seem to be much to choose from, and what we found had some pretty dismal reviews. I also discovered that Four corners Monument, where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah come together, is currently closed except on weekends. Hmmm…. this wasn’t coming together at all like we had planned!

So we stirred up the Jello and rewrote our plans. I extended our stay here at the Elks campground for two more weeks, and instead of taking the motorhome, we’ll do some day trips up north in the van. We may even make an overnight trip if time runs short.

Sometime about mid-June, once we get the new issue finished, we plan (keeping that old Jello thing in mind) to wander over toward the central California coast. We honeymooned in Morro Bay, and we love that area between Pismo Beach and Cambria. Then we will move a bit further north to the Morgan Hill Thousand Trails preserve, where we will do some exploring and sit out the Fourth of July holiday.

As most fulltimers do, we try to plan ahead to be settled into a campsite well before summer holidays arrive and we stay put until all of the weekend warriors go back home to their schedules and their responsibilities. Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day are the three times we always try to have reservations ahead of time, because we learned in our first summer on the road that if we try to find something at the last minute, it isn’t going to happen.

We also have reservations for mid-July at a campground in Colorado, because Terry’s son Casey is getting married July 18 in Vail. That is one commitment we can’t miss, so that is written in concrete instead of Jello.

Then we have to make a beeline for the Midwest, with a stop in Traverse City, Michigan for Terry’s annual oncologist checkup, and then on to Elkhart Campground in Indiana to get things rolling for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally August 30 to September 3, another commitment written in concrete. After the rally we’ll have just over a week before we have to be in Hershey, Pennsylvania for the big PRVCA RV Show.

As you can see, we have a lot of traveling planned for this summer. But who knows what might happen if we stir the Jello again?

Thought For The Day – It’s lonely at the top, but you eat better.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

That old Boy Scout motto comes in handy in the RV lifestyle, just as it does in the rest of the world.

Early one morning this week, the campground host here at the Show Low Elks campground came to our door to tell us that a construction crew had broken a sewer line near the campground, and city workers had asked that nobody flush their toilets or use their sinks until repairs were made, which could be up to four hours.

Not a problem for us, we had lots of room in our black tank, and since we are in a full hookup RV site, I had the valve to our gray tank open, so it was empty. I closed the valve and we were just fine. I don’t know what the folks in the houses near the campground did, but for us life went on like normal.

We’re not survivalists, but we always try to be prepared for whatever happens, so that things that cause inconveniences to others aren’t even a speed bump for us. We keep our fresh water tank at least half full, even in a full hookup campground, because we’ve had the water shut off for repairs more than once. We keep our fuel tank close to full, even when sitting still for a few weeks, because if the electricity goes out, our generator can supply all the power we need.

We try to be prepared for the unexpected when we’re on the road too. We very seldom make advance campground reservations, because we like the freedom of not having to be on a schedule, but we usually have a general idea of where we plan to spend the night. Before we pull onto the highway, I also have an idea of alternate stops, usually every 50 miles or so apart, along the way that we can get into if bad weather, traffic delays, or mechanical problems delay us. These may be truck stops or RV friendly businesses, a city park or fairgrounds that allows RV parking, or an Elks or Moose lodge.  That way we’re never pushed to drive into inclement weather or past dark to get someplace.

We are also aware of what is happening around us as we travel. If we see traffic starting to slow down, we monitor the CB radio to find out if there is an accident or bad weather ahead, so we can find an alternate route or get off the road into a safe place until the crisis has passed.

As RVers, we usually have the ability to avoid or drive away from areas where bad weather threatens us. But if we happen to find ourselves in some ungodly place like Tornado Alley, a good weather radio will alert us to approaching storms. If we are in a campground that is new to us, we always find out where the storm shelters are, and if we happen to be in a Wal-Mart parking lot or some such, we try to scope out a secure building we can hide out in if things get out of hand.

It doesn’t take much to be prepared, and when you are, it can negate ordinary inconveniences, and help us avoid or survive potential emergencies.

Of course, Bad Nick is always prepared, at least to give us things to ponder. Check out his new Bad Nick Blog post titled You Can’t Make This Stuff Up! and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Make it idiot proof, and someone will make a better idiot.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Rick Lang from Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) called me yesterday morning to tell me that he and Joyce plan to be on hand at Elkhart Campground on August 29th to greet anybody arriving early for our Gypsy Gathering Rally so they can weigh their RVs if they want it done.

If you have not had your rig weighed before, or if it’s been a while, you should seriously consider having it done. The RVSEF crew are specially trained to weigh RVs, which is not the same as pulling onto a truck scale somewhere and calling it good. Rick and Joyce weigh each axle individually and you get a report that tells you not only your RV’s total weight, but also if you are too heavy on any corner of your RV. This is important information to know, and will help you adjust your load for the safest ride and longer tire life.

Speaking of RVSEF, there is still time to sign up for their excellent RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky June 3-6. This is your opportunity to learn about RV technical issues and lifestyle experiences from some of the top experts in the industry. You can find out more about this great program at the RVSEF website.

I also got a call from Too Crazy Ladies yesterday, confirming that they will be at our rally, making custom name badges for the attendees. Red and Beth are regular vendors at many RV events, and they have built up a huge following of loyal customers over the years.

I have had a lot of people asking if Elkhart Campground has WiFi service available. Yes they do, and it’s free, so you will be able to get online and surf the internet to your heart’s content.

There has been some confusion about the rally dates. The rally starts with RV parking, registration, and welcome on Monday, August 30th, and ends with hitch up coffee and donuts Friday morning, September 3rd. The rally fee covers camping Monday through Thursday night, but if you want to arrive early or stay later, Bob and Gita at Elkhart Campground assure me they will have plenty of room.

Terry and I plan to arrive in Elkhart about the first of August, so we can get all of the pre-rally work done. Then we’ll hang around for a few days afterwards, before we leave for Hershey, Pennsylvania, where we will be vendors and I will be speaking at the Pennsylvania Recreational Vehicle Show September 15 – 19. We won’t be able to make it to the Escapees 50th Escapade, which is September 12 – 17 in Goshen, Indiana. We’ll miss being with our Escapees family, but the Hershey show drew over 37,000 attendees last year, and we can’t miss the opportunity to introduce the Gypsy Journal to so many RVers who have never seen it before.

I have to say a belated Happy Birthday to my son-in-law, Jim Robinson, who turned 29 yesterday. Jim’s a fine young man, and yesterday we took him and Tiffany and the girls out to dinner to celebrate his special day. Of course, somebody let it slip to the waitress that it was Jim’s birthday, and they did the typical thing where several of the waitresses bring out a cupcake with a candle on it and everybody sang Happy Birthday. Jim is a low profile kind of guy, so the rest of us had fun watching him squirm as the center of attention.

Hey Jim, it only goes faster from here on out.

Thought For The Day -Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!