We’re getting down to the wire and I’m hoping we can get everything done here in Elkhart that we need to before we leave. I’m wrapping up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal and hopefully will have it done by tonight so we can take it up to our printer in Michigan on Monday.

Then we need to make a quick overnight trip to Muskegon, Michigan to visit Rocky and Bernie Frees one more time before we begin our winter travels. We’ll get the new issue back from the printer Thursday or Friday, and Miss Terry will spend next weekend stuffing envelopes to drop off at the mail service the following Monday morning.

Meanwhile, I have to put some finishing touches on a website I’m building for Carlyle Lehman at Focal Wood Products and visit him in Nappanee to get his final approval before the website goes live.

And somewhere in that time we need to winterize our bus conversion and move it to its winter storage location. We located an inside storage location, but I still want to have the bus winterized, just in case a bad storm knocks out power for a few days.

I also wanted to get the Winnebago in to Cummins for service, and to a local shop to have a couple of small things done. We may have to wait until we get further south to do that. 

But you know what they say about all work and no play. So yesterday I got away from the computer long enough so we could go to dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant with Greg and Jan White. We first met Greg and Jan when they came to Life on Wheels as students, and I remember that during my Reluctant RVer seminar Jan began to cry. She told me later it was because she felt like I was talking directly to her and addressing many of the fears she had about fulltime RVing. The other day Jan credited me with “talking her in off the ledge” when she wasn’t sure if she could go through with the change to the fulltime lifestyle. Whenever somebody tells me something like that, I am very flattered, and I feel good that maybe I could make a positive impact in their life in some small way. 

Speaking of RV seminars, in yesterday’s blog I told you about my pal Charlie Minshall, the Silver Gypsy. Charlie has offered to come to our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma to present an excellent seminar called Moments in Time:  A 20-year full-time North American RV Adventure that will take you along with Charlie as she lives on a Mexican beach, drives the Trans-Labrador Highway, experiences the Blue Ridge Parkway, discourages a bear on the haul road to Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, takes a Yukon River wilderness canoe trip, and mushes dogs on a glacier. You can bet this is going to be a great seminar, and I plan to be sitting right in the front row!

Even as busy as I’ve been, Bad Nick still found time to write a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Will You Stand By Your Principles? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The trouble with life is there’s no background music.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We had another busy day yesterday. I had a lot of work to get done, but I decided to cheat and go play for a while first. There was a gun show in Shipshewana, the Amish center 20 miles east of Elkhart, and I have wanted to get out that way and drop some bundles of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal at the campgrounds in that area, so I decided to combine business with pleasure.

Shipshewana, best known for its flea market, is an interesting place. In the past I have called it sort of an Amish theme town, in that you will see lots of Amish people in their horse drawn buggies and plain clothes, but also shops packed with tourists buying everything from overpriced quilts and crafts, to delicious cheeses. You can even (for a fee) take a ride in an authentic Amish buggy!

And Shipshewana is always a busy place! The main street through the business district is only a mile or so long, but it can take you a long time to cover that distance with all of the traffic. Cars, tour buses, RVs, buggies, Amish riding bicycles, and people on foot create an obstacle course that you have to be very careful to maneuver safely through.

After an hour or so of wandering through the gun show, and wishing I had kept all of the shooting irons I have sold over the years, I dropped Miss Terry off at E&S Sales, an Amish bulk food store, and then backtracked to drop off a couple of bundles of newspapers at the Shipshewana South Campground. There is also a Shipshewana North Campground a couple of miles north of town, which we had hit on the way in. The northern campground is never as full as the southern, which is within walking distance to everything in town, and both places are always clean and have friendly people in the office.

E&S was packed with shoppers, and when I caught up with Terry we spent a while browsing everything from a huge assortment of flour and other baking goods, to bulk candy and a dozen or more varieties of cheeses.

We had spent more time in Shipshewana than we had planned to, and when we left we stopped at a roadside produce stand, and when we left there, I told Terry I had to get right to work as soon as we got home. Yeah, right!

Dennis and Carol Hill from the RV Driving School had arrived at Elkhart Campground while we were gone, and as we pulled up we saw them and they came over to say hello and tell us all about their summer adventures RVing in Alaska. We just have to make that trip one of these days! Sometime during their visit, somebody mentioned dinner, and Terry and I realized that it was 5 p.m. and we had not had anything to eat all day long. So we piled into their car and went to Ryan’s Buffet for dinner and more good conversation. 

When we returned to the campground, Ruth Fleck and Linda Jensen were waiting at the bus. We had met them in Albuquerque at the Affinity Rally, and ran into them again at the FMCA rally in Bowling Green, Ohio a couple of weeks ago. We visited with them for a while, and Bill Joyce and Diane Melde wandered over to join in the party.

Finally, about 8 p.m., I excused myself and went inside to get some work done. Sometimes you just have to throw your plans out the window and go with the flow.

Thought For The Day – Dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally