It’s getting close to that time of year again. The leaves are already beginning to turn in some places up north, and before we know it, the snowbirds will start migrating south for the winter.

If you follow the seasons, and will be away from your summer address for the winter, please don’t forget to send us a note or an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net giving us your winter address, so your Gypsy Journal subscription will get to you. Unless you pay for the first class postage upgrade to your subscription, the post office will not forward the paper. 

We spent yesterday printing more of our RV guides and making CDs to stock the inventory at our vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show, where we will be working eleven hours a day for the next few days.

We took a break for a while to visit with Russ and Patty Frady, longtime subscribers who stopped in for a quick visit. Russ took a bundle of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal to pass out at campgrounds in their travels. We appreciate them helping to spread the word.

Did I mention that there are a lot of geese here at the Hershey Thousand Trails campground? They’re everywhere, and while they are pretty, they are filthy, obnoxious critters. As I wrote before, this isn’t a place to walk around barefoot!

I didn’t have space in yesterday’s blog to tell you about our stop at Bird In Hand, another Amish town in Lancaster County. The Old Village Store sells an interesting collection of traditional Amish goods, tourist souvenirs, and antiques.

On the store’s crowded shelves, and upstairs in the antiques showroom, you can find flyswatters, Bag Balm, kitchen tools, Amish hats and shawls, recipe books, toys, and furniture that was old when your grandparents were kids.

You can even buy pumpkins and squash!

A couple of blog readers wrote to ask me what a “chocolate fountain” is, which I mentioned when I wrote about our dinner at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord. Well, it’s just what it sounds like, a fountain of warm melted chocolate cascading down from the top. People skewer strawberries, banana chunks and such, and dip them under the flowing chocolate for a delicious treat. Think of it as a vertical chocolate fondue, if you will.

We were originally scheduled to be a part of the Trade Days at the Hershey RV Show, which were Monday and Tuesday, but we skipped them to go sightseeing. I’m glad we did, because Al Hesselbart, from the RV Hall of Fame Museum, has been there, and he said it was dead. Al said that at one point yesterday afternoon, the vendors were playing frisbee football in the show aisles because they were bored and had not had any customers all day long. I like Al, but Miss Terry’s a lot prettier, and  I’d much rather spend time exploring the back roads with her than staring at him all day long!

Today the show opens to the public, and  I guess you could say that we’re cautiously optimistic. We have worked a lot of RV rallies, but this will be our first experience vending at an RV show, and we’re not sure how it will work out. We’re looking forward to seeing a lot of new people and introducing them to the Gypsy Journal, and hopefully some of them will like what they see well enough to subscribe. It’s going to be an interesting week.

When I took a break from the computer yesterday, Bad Nick  grabbed the keyboard and wrote a new Bad Nick Blog titled Let Them Serve! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

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It has been raining for two days now, and I’m sick and tired of it. I know the farmers need the rain to make their crops grow, and it makes for really green lawns and golf courses. But I’m not a farmer, I don’t have a lawn, and I don’t play golf. So right now it’s darned inconvenient! (And yes, it really is all about me!)

We’re like kids the day before Christmas, poking at the gifts wrapped up under the tree and going crazy with anticipation. We want to be outside crawling through all of the bays in our Winnebago figuring out where we’re going to put everything, and moving stuff into it. But yesterday it drizzled all day long, and it is so wet and sloppy outside that we’d be tracking mud all over the new rig, after Ron and Brenda Speidel spent all that time cleaning it, and that’s not going to happen!

I guess it really doesn’t matter, because right now we’re busy getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal stuffed into envelopes and ready to drop off at the mail service Monday morning. And then we’re supposed to be vending at the Carriage RV Club rally in Goshen Monday through Thursday. I’ve heard that timing is everything, but right now, the timing of everything sucks!

Several Winnebago and Itasca owners have e-mailed to urge us to join the Winnebago-Itasca Travelers (WIT) Club, and to plan on going to the big WIT Grand National Rally at Winnebago’s headquarters in Forest City, Iowa next July, which we hope to do. Since I own a Winnebago, but haven’t officially joined the club and learned the secret handshake yet, does that at least make me a half-WIT?

One of the great things about a bus conversion that you can carry a ton of stuff. One of the bad things about a bus conversion is that you can carry a ton of stuff, and usually do! Moving into a different motorhome gives us the incentive to sort through and get rid of a lot of stuff we’ve been carrying around forever, but no longer need or want. Like my big Porter-Cable air compressor, books, some tools, a lot of kitchenware Terry needs to decide on, and clothes we have not worn in so long we forgot we had them.

We’re going to have a tailgate sale day at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally next month for folks who want to set out things for sale, but I hope to get rid of most of our unwanted stuff before then. I’m afraid that if we put them in the Winnebago to take them to Ohio, they’ll end up living in it forever!

For those of you who keep asking, yes, there will be a Bad Nick blog hitting the internet very soon. My pal Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour has been goofing off in Salem, Massachusetts lately, even though I told her to be careful, because they do very bad things to witches there. But between touring all the sites, stuffing herself on lobster, and kayaking in Salem Harbor and Marblehead with hubby Jim, she has got the blog pretty much set up. Look for an announcement any time now. 

Thought For The Day – In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

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Terry and I want to thank all of you who left comments or sent us congratulatory e-mails in response to yesterday’s blog about our motorhome purchase.

To be honest, Miss Terry had some real misgivings, not about the Winnebago itself, but about what the reaction might be from some of our readers. As longtime blog readers may remember, we were chastised by a couple of folks when I bought a motorcycle a while back, or when I announced that we were shopping for a motorhome. One rather vocal former reader felt that we were “getting rich off our subscribers,” and didn’t feel it was right for him to help pay for my new toys.

I told Terry that I have never apologized for what success I may have achieved in my life. We work very hard, and there has to be some reward now and then. Besides, it’s like my Dad used to say, “Never explain and never apologize. Your friends don’t need it, and your enemies won’t believe it anyway.” We feel very blessed to have so many wonderful friends such as all of you out there, who can share in our happiness and be happy for us. 

Two very special friends are Ron and Brenda Speidel. Not only did they help us inspect the motorhome before we bought it, yesterday they really blew us out of the water.

Terry and I had to drive 70 miles up to Michigan to pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal from the printer, and then drive 85 miles back to Mishawaka, Indiana to pick up the envelopes from our mail service. From there we needed to go 30 miles to Nappanee, Indiana for an appointment with Carlyle Lehman, a very talented Amish cabinetmaker who owns a company called Focal Wood and specializes in RV upgrades. We wanted to talk to Carlyle about building a custom desk/work station in our new (to us) motorhome. With that finished, we then had to drive 30 miles back to Elkhart Campground! And all we wanted to do was spend the day getting our new home ready to move into!

Before we left, Ron and Brenda told us that they had thought about getting us a nice lamp as a housewarming gift, but being fulltime RVers themselves, they know that the last thing we need is more “stuff.” So instead, they announced that while we were gone, they were going to clean our new motorhome top to bottom, so that as soon as we got the new issue of the paper stuffed and mailed out, all we had to do was start moving in! Wow! What a wonderful, thoughtful offer! We told them that wasn’t necessary, they have done so much for us already, but Ron and Brenda insisted.

We thought we had a nice looking motorhome when we brought it back to the campground Thursday afternoon, but now it’s even better! Ron cleaned every bay, including the walls and the insides of the doors, vacuumed them all, used 303 on all of the seals and grommets, and lubed and tested every hinge, strut and anything else that needed even the slightest attention. Our sewer bay gleams!

And inside, Brenda was just as busy, removing a few small spots from the carpet, and scrubbing every surface from the bedroom closet to the dashboard. There’s not a hospital operating room any cleaner than the inside of that rig! I daresay that no new RV from any manufacturer ever left the dealer’s lot looking as nice. Ron and Brenda worked hard for hours and the results really show. We thanked them profusely, but they just brushed it off, saying that’s what friends do for each other. (Though they did admit later that somewhere around mid-afternoon, they said to each other “We should have just bought them a lamp!”)

In answer to a couple of questions we have been asked several times; we have two buyers who are interested in the bus, and we hope to find it a good home soon, but nothing has happened yet. It is advertised on our website at Gypsy Journal Bus For Sale, if you know anybody looking for a nice, affordable bus conversion. Several people wanted to know if we are moving our solar panels to the new RV. We’re not sure yet. A lot depends on the deal we make with whomever buys the bus.

And last, but not least, a lot of folks asked how they will be able to recognize us when we’re not in the bus. That’s the idea! Now I can slip into a campground or rally incognito and let Bad Nick off his leash, and nobody will know it until it’s too late!

Thought For The Day – Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

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Many of you know that I have a phobia about driving over bridges. Yeah, I know, that bridge has stood for years, it’s inspected periodically, and a thousand cars a day drive over it. But I just know that if that darned thing is going to commit bridge suicide and collapse, it’s waiting for me to come along so it can take me with it!

Yesterday on our drive to Nevada, we crossed Hoover Dam and Miss Terry got some great pictures of the new Colorado River Bridge project that is being built to span the canyon above the dam to divert traffic away from the dam itself.

 I can tell you right now that there is not enough money in the world to pay me, or enough drugs to calm me down enough that I’ll ever drive or ride across that bridge! I think the guys building that thing must be half monkey and half mountain sheep, and whatever they’re paying them isn’t enough. The bridge is erected on both sides of the canyon, and the center sections still have to be put up. It’s a massive engineering project, and there were crowds of people stopped at the dam watching the progress.

Speaking of mountain sheep, we had to stop at the safety inspection checkpoint a few miles from the dam on the Arizona side, and just as we pulled back onto U.S. Highway 93, Terry spotted a beautiful ¾ curl ram standing on a hill right beside the highway! What a beautiful creature!

I mentioned yesterday that we were going to look at a RV for sale in the Las Vegas area. What a fiasco that was! Folks, I have met some hustlers in my time, con men who could charm the ears off the Easter Bunny. But I think we encountered the king of crooks. A week or so ago I saw an ad for a 2002 Winnebago Ultimate Freedom motorhome in the Phoenix newspaper, listed as like new, with 28,000 miles on it. I called the number in the ad, which was in Las Vegas, and was told that the rig was being sold due to a death in the family. The price and terms were right, so I said we’d come by and look at it.

Monday evening I called to say we’d be there yesterday, and arranged to call the seller, who said he was a relative of the owner, at noon when we were in the Las Vegas area.

When we got to town, I called as agreed, and he said he was hung up on something and to call back in an hour. Okay, unexpected things happen, no problem. We dropped off a sample bundle of newspapers at the Thousand Trails campground, stopped at a couple of stores, and then called back. All I got was voice mail.

We grabbed a bite to eat, and at 2:30 I had not received a call back. I tried one more time, reached the seller, and he asked if we could meet at 5 or 6 p.m. I told him no, we were headed back to Kingman if we couldn’t get together. He said he was having the rig detailed, and gave me an address to meet him at.

That address turned out to be his home, and his wife/girlfriend/bimbo said he would be there in 20 to 30 minutes. I learned a long time ago that if a deal feels bad going in, it won’t get any better once you’re stuck. By now I already knew we were not going to deal with this clown, but I wanted to play it out and see what happened. Finally, at 3:45 the rig pulled up, ran over the curb, and a guy stumbled out who probably spent the morning on a street corner with a sign that said “Will Work For Food.” As it turns out, he was not the seller, but the fellow who “detailed” the rig.

When we stepped inside, it reeked, it was filthy, and it was beat to pieces.  The carpets were stained, the curtains were falling off, the counter top was cracked, it smelled of sewage, and crud was everywhere. The guy tried to tell Miss Terry that all RVs smelled that way when you drive them, and she quickly cut him off and told him that we’re in the RV industry.

Looking at the odometer, the rig actually had 59,833 miles on it, the sliding side window was smashed, and the data plate identified it as a 2000 model, not a 2002. To top it all off, there was a Las Vegas Auto Auction bid sheet on the dashboard! Yeah, right, a death in the family. I’d have had to been brain dead to believe any of this crap!  

It didn’t take us long to get out of the piece of junk, and then I looked at the street side, and one bay door was completely caved in! I teach a class on how to buy an RV, and this heap was worse than any example I’ve ever given my students. It was junkyard material, as far as we were concerned.

As we were leaving, the seller called me on my cell phone, and was amazed that I wasn’t falling all over myself trying to get my checkbook out fast enough to complete the deal! I was born early in the morning, but it wasn’t early that morning!

Thought For The Day – He who dies with the most experiences wins.

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