Yesterday was our last full day in Virginia, and like much of our time here, it started out gray and chilly. We drove into Gloucester Courthouse and picked up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal from the printer and got it loaded into the van. They did a pretty good job, and we’ll use them again when we’re back in this area.

Since it was my birthday, I decided we needed a treat. So we had lunch at Anna’s Pizza, a few blocks from the newspaper office. It was an above average pizza, and the price was very reasonable. Another one to put on our list of places we’d go back to again.

By the time we picked up the new issue, finished lunch, and drove back to the Thousand Trails campground, it was about 3 p.m., and the rain had stopped.

It has been almost two years since we’ve done any geocaching, and I really can’t tell you why we have gotten away from it, since we always enjoyed it so much. Yesterday I was looking at the Geocaching.com website, and noticed that there was a cache hidden right at the entrance of the Thousand Trails campground, so we decided to go find it.

It was an easy find, in fact it was mostly uncovered. The lid had not been secured properly, so there was water inside. I didn’t take any of the goodies inside the cache, I just signed the log book, poured out the water, and hid it for the next cacher to find.

Terry and I agree that we need to to get back into geocaching. It’s the perfect RV hobby, as I wrote in a story about geocaching for RVers. I’m too lazy to go for a walk, but if you tell me there’s a Tupperware container hidden in the woods someplace and stick a GPS in my hand, I’ll walk ten miles to find it.

After we found the geocache, we drove to Urbanna to drop off a bundle of sample papers at Bethpage Camping Resort. But along the way, we stopped to take a picture of this old abandoned house. There are places like this on the back roads, all over this area.

Bethpage is a huge place, and it was packed. They have hundreds of sites that will handle any size RV, and a fleet of rental golf carts that would put Hertz or Avis to shame. It’s not our kind of place, we prefer quieter surroundings, but I’m sure families love it.

Urbanna was settled in the late 1600s, so there is a lot of history there. At one time it as a major tobacco shipping port, but today tourism seems to be the big activity.

Driving back to the Thousand Trails, we stopped to take more pictures from the more recent past.

We have enjoyed our stay in this part of Virginia, even though the combination of bad weather and getting the new issue ready to print have not allowed us to do as much exploring as we would have liked to. We’ll definitely return some day.

Today we’re headed west toward Lexington, Kentucky. It’s about 560 miles from here to Kentucky Horse Park, so we’ll make it a two day trip. I’m not sure where we’ll spend the night, but there’s always something along the way. It may be an Elks or Moose lodge, an RV friendly WalMart or truck stop, or wherever we find ourselves when we’re tired of traveling for the day.

Bad Nick had a few things to say before we hit the road, so he posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled Bubba For President! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Without geography, you’re nowhere.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

It started raining early yesterday morning, and by about 4 a.m. it was really coming down hard. The storm lasted all day; sometimes the rain would ease up to just a sprinkle for a while, and then it would start pouring all over again. It was a good day to stay home and get caught up on paperwork.

I’d like to say that we’ve been so busy the last three months that I just haven’t had time to keep up, but the truth is that I’ve been lazy. And now I had a big stack of new and renewal subscriptions to put in our mailing list, as well as receivables to log in.

Since I couldn’t think of a good excuse to do anything else, and since I needed to send our updated mailing list to the mail service we’ll be using in Lexington for the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, I tackled that first. Like most tasks, once I got going, it actually went pretty fast, and I had the mailing list updated by early afternoon, then e-mailed it to Lexington.  

I’ve noticed a couple of interesting trends in our subscription base. We have added new subscribers every year, but where and how they get their papers has changed.

A few years ago, we had a very large number of subscribers who used the Escapees Mail Forwarding Service in Livingston, Texas. In fact, more than all of the other mail forwarding services put together. Alternative Resources in Sioux Falls, South Dakota was a distant second, followed by other mail services such as FMCA in Ohio, Good Sam in Florida, and a few others.

Over the years, we have seen the numbers of our subscribers who use an Escapees address shrink by over 50%, yet many of those folks are still subscribers. Some changed their addresses to South Dakota (which we did a couple of years ago), some apparently no longer travel fulltime, because they now have a fixed address, and quite a few have switched to our digital edition. I don’t think that the Escapees membership is shrinking, and I have no idea what their mail service numbers are these days, but again, I don’t think they have gone down any.

Escapees isn’t the only mail service that we are sending fewer papers to these days. We used to have over 100 subscribers who used the FMCA, and now we’re down into the single digits. Many of those folks now use a fixed address, some have switched to other mail forwarding services, or subscribed to our digital edition. Our numbers with Alternative Resources, Good Sam, and other mail services haven’t changed all that much. I think Alternative Resources is up somewhat, and the others are about the same.

We introduced our digital edition about eighteen months ago, and it has been very well received. The numbers of digital subscribers  is growing all the time, and now we actually have more digital subscribers than we do using all of the mail forwarding services combined. That makes sense, because they are mostly fulltimers who want to reduce the amount of printed matter they receive.

We do see a lot of folks subscribe with a mail forwarding service, try the fulltime RV lifestyle for a year or two, and then go back to a sticks and bricks address. Age, illness, and in a few cases finances, are sometimes factors in this decision. And from the start, many of these folks only planned to fulltime for a given amount of time before they settled down again. Others have found that fulltiming just wasn’t for them. A lot of them still travel by RV; some are snowbirds, and some tell us they are armchair travelers these days.

Of course, we have had quite a few subscribers who told us they only planned to travel for year or two, and five, ten years or more later, they’re still rolling down the highway, enjoying the gypsy lifestyle.     

Gee, the things I learn about my own business if I stay home and work on a rainy day!

Thought For The Day – Remember at all times that “listening” isn’t the same as “waiting for your chance to speak.”

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I got the new issue of the Gypsy Journal finished yesterday and we dropped it off at the printer a little before 5 p.m. If all goes according to schedule, we’ll pick it up late today or tomorrow morning, and the next task will be to get it mailed out to all of our subscribers next week.

We’re always a little nervous when we use a new newspaper to print us, but their production manger seemed to think it was going to be fine. I’m sure it will be, but every time, it’s like sending your baby off to the first day of kindergarten.  Are they going to take care of him and treat him nice?

This is issue 69 of the Gypsy Journal. That’s a lot of stories over the years, and we really appreciate all of our faithful readers for their support. Your subscriptions allow us to keep living our dream and doing what we do. We’ve come a long way from the night I thought this thing up, sitting at our kitchen table back in Arizona.

Back then we were overworked and stressed out, and never had time to really enjoy life. These days it’s a whole new world. Yes, we still have to work, but our job is to go the places other people go on vacation, and we get paid to do it! That’s a pretty good gig, if you ask me!

It seems like it’s a long time away, but our Arizona Gypsy Gathering is coming up fast, and we have a lot to get done between now and then. Yesterday I talked to David Bradley again, and we confirmed that he will be performing for us at the rally, on Tuesday evening. David was a big hit at this year’s Arizona rally, and we look forward to having him back.

We already have several vendors registered, and a number of regular rally attendees, too. At every rally, we have vendors who are disappointed because they waited until the last minute to register and request a seminar time slot, and there are none left. Here’s a heads up folks, vendor seminars are on a first come basis, and the sooner you register, the better your chances of securing one. We only have so many slots available, and if you snooze, you lose. 

I’m looking over the seminar schedule, deciding what we’ll bring back again and what new seminars to add. We repeat some seminars every rally, because they are so popular, but I am always looking for new topics so our rallies don’t get stale. We’ve been to some RV rallies where it’s the same seminars year after year, and after two or three times, there is no reason to go back again. We don’t want that to happen to our events.

Several people have e-mailed asking me how I like my new Droid Incredible phone, and how it compares to the Blackberry Storm I had before. All I can say is, wow!

Overall, I love it, and I’m glad I switched. There are more apps available than I could ever use, and I have already downloaded several very good ones.

Accessing the internet on the Droid is both easier and much faster than the Blackberry ever was. The Droid’s keyboard is slightly larger and more intuitive, and I find it easier to use when I reply to an e-mail.

With the Blackberry, I was constantly bumping the side buttons and either disconnecting calls, or getting a mechanical voice asking me to “Say A Command.”  That isn’t a problem with the Droid’s control layout.

With the Blackberry, it costs $10 a month extra for GPS navigation, and it’s free with the Droid. Even though we have a GPS in our van, I’ve found that many times the Droid can find stores, restaurants, and even addresses that the GPS can’t. The Droid gives both spoken driving directions and a map on screen. The Droid came with two or three excellent mapping programs.

There are a couple of features I miss from the Blackberry that I wish I had on the Droid. Whenever I got a new e-mail, the Blackberry would beep to alert me, and with the Droid, I don’t know a new message has come in until I notice the icon on the screen.

The ringer and talk volume was louder on the Blackberry, which I miss. I also am not impressed with the ringtones on the Droid as compared to the selection on the Blackberry. I have not figured out how to download new ringtones yet, or transfer them from my computer. 

I was also disappointed that the Droid came with a very skimpy instruction manual, and there doesn’t seem to be anything on the manufacturer’s website to help me get more familiar with the phone. The Blackberry came with a much more comprehensive User’s Manuel.

The Droid is a major step forward in Smart phone technology, and while I kept hoping that Verizon would finally get an iPhone, I don’t know that the iPhone will do anything the Droid can’t.

Speaking of apps, I mentioned the other day that I had lost my State Lines app when my iPad crashed and had to be replaced. I was eventfully able to download it again from the iTunes app store. I got an e-mail from Cherie Ve Ard, one of the creators of the State Lines, and she told me that they will have an updated release out soon with even more useful info. If you are an RVer that owns an iPhone or iPad and don’t have this excellent app, you need to get it. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Now that I’m done with the new issue of the paper, Bad Nick was eager to get at the keyboard, and he posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled I’m Going To Sue Me. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought for The Day -The rate at which a person matures is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

RVers don’t usually spend a lot of time arguing about politics, religion, or gun control, but certain topics are always sure to get a good campfire debate going, and one of them is whether it is acceptable to dump gray water on the ground.

Some folks are convinced that dumping your gray tank is just as bad as emptying your black tank anywhere except into an RV dump station. They say you are ruining the groundwater table by polluting in this way. Others don’t see the harm in it.

I remember once we were at a campground in Oklahoma, where it was very hot and very dry. The owner of the RV park asked guests to use a garden hose to dump their gray tanks into the trees at every site. A gentleman parked near us was greatly upset, and very vocal in telling the campground’s owner just how terrible that practice was.

The owner listed patiently while the RVer told him all of the nasty things that were destroying the planet by dumping gray water, then when the fellow ran down, he said “Look over there across that fence. Do you see those cows. Do you see what that one’s doing? I wonder what that’s doing to the environment?”

I fall into the group that really does not see a problem with it. If I am dry camping in a friend or relative’s driveway with limited hookups, with their permission I will water their rose bushes as I run my gray water out. If that offends you, I’m sorry. But like that campground owner in Oklahoma, I have spent enough time in ranching country that I just don’t see the harm.

Bob Difley recently addressed the issue of dumping gray water on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land on the RV Boondocking News website. It was interesting to see the BLM’s response to Bob’s inquiries on this.

It’s been my experience that RVers from populated areas like the east coast and California object to this practice much more so than those who are from the Midwest or the west. I wonder if that’s because those in the first category are not as familiar with dry camping. Or is it just that the west is hotter, drier, less populated, and more in need of moisture any way it can get it?

How do you feel about this issue? I’d be interesting in hearing your viewpoints.

Thought For The Day – Just remember, if the world didn’t suck, we’d all fall off.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday I took a break from working on the new issue so we could go to the post office and mail out some orders, and drive into Gloucester Courthouse to touch base with the newspaper that is supposed to print the new issue of the Gypsy Journal later this week. As it turns out, both were wasted trips.

I had forgotten that yesterday was Columbus Day, and the post office was closed. Oops. Then we drove another 8 miles to the newspaper office, only to discover that the fellow we needed to talk to had taken the day off to go fishing. I guess I should have called ahead. 

But the trip wasn’t a total waste. A few days ago, our friend Linda Spindle told us about the Ware Neck Produce Market in Gloucester Courthouse, which also carries excellent fresh seafood. Since we were there, we stopped and Miss Terry picked up some fresh picked crab meat and some scallops. Can you guess what we had for dinner? Delicious! I enjoy dining out, but I have to say that nobody cooks scallops like Miss Terry does. Then again, no matter what’s on the menu, her culinary skills are pretty darned hard to beat. I keep nagging her to do a cookbook and/or a cooking blog, but so far she’s not convinced.

I was talking to Tiffany Ingram at Passport America in Long Beach, Mississippi yesterday, and she told me that they just created a new free app for Droid phones. I downloaded it, and it’s really nifty. It shows all of their affiliate campgrounds, along with contact information, rates, and directions. That’s going to come in really handy. They also have a free app for iPhones.

Speaking of apps, a while back my iPad went on the fritz and had to be replaced. Unfortunately, in the process I lost my apps for Escapees RV parks and a really good one called State Lines, that I used a lot. I can’t seem to find them in my backup files, so if you are the producer of either app and are reading this, help! I really miss your applications.

Even with the time we lost yesterday running around, I’m still on schedule with the paper and things are looking good. I just wish we could have actually talked to the newspaper’s production foreman face to face. Any time we use a new printer, there can be unexpected surprises.

We use different newspapers around the country to do our printing, and I really wish we could find one shop to do it every issue, but then shipping it to us wherever we are becomes an issue, since in addition to the papers for our subscribers, we print several thousand extra each time around to distribute at RV parks, RV rallies, and to give to our readers to pass out in their travels.

That’s one of the things that has held us back in taking a trip to Alaska. When we make that trip, we want to do it right, and spend at least three months. We don’t want to go all the way up there, and then have to rush back to the Lower 48 to get an issue printed, and getting the job done up there is prohibitively expensive. I’m working on a couple of possible solutions to that problem, since going to Alaska has been a dream for both of us since before we bought our first RV.

Thought For The Day – Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally