Sometimes I have all kinds of things to write about in this blog, and there are other times when I sit down at the computer with no idea what I will come up with to fill the minimum 500 word quota I set for myself every day. Fortunately, one way or another, I always seem to manage to come up with something. My old man used to say, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.

But in writing today’s blog, I had a completely different problem. I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to type, and my fingers all felt like limp noodles when I tried to hit the keys.

No, I’m not sick, just super relaxed. Our friend Jean Damon gave Miss Terry and I full body massages yesterday evening that just turned us both into Jello. Jean was born and raised in the Philippines, where she studied Asian massage techniques before marrying Dave and moving to the United States to become a fulltime RV gypsy. Now they work the rally circuit, selling 303 products, and Jean gives massages.

Jean said she did about 10 massages at our Eastern rally at Elkhart Campground, and another 25 at the Escapade in Goshen. She offered us massages at our Elkhart rally, but we were just too busy to take her up on them. So when we ran into them here at the Orlando Thousand Trails, Jean said we weren’t getting away until she got us on her table. All I can say is wow, it do feel good! If you have never had a professional massage, trust me, you have no idea what you’re missing. Pamper yourself and get one sometime.

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Speaking of RV rallies, I’m thrilled to say that our friends Joe and Vicki Kieva will be presenting two of their excellent seminars at our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma. Joe and Vicki are two of the most well know RV writers and speakers of all time, and having them at our rallies is a real honor for us.

They will be presenting their ever popular  Alaska, the Ultimate RV Adventure seminar, and if you have ever wanted to make the trip north, you don’t want to miss this one. There are plenty of travelogues showing pretty pictures of Alaska, but Joe and Vicki’s presentation is a how-to type seminar telling people how to prepare for a trip to Alaska, and what to expect along the way.

Joe will also be drawing on his experiences as a police officer, and their years of RV travel, to present his Personal Security Tips for RVers seminar. Overall, RVing is one of the safest lifestyles that one could ever choose, but even so, we know firsthand that anyone can run into trouble anywhere. Joe’s seminar shows you the criminal’s point of view, and gives you tips and ideas on how not to become a victim.

Check out Joe and Vicki’s RV Notebook blog, and  be sure to take note of the books and e-books they have advertised in the right hand column. I’ve learned a lot from them over the years, and they’re happy to share their vast knowledge with you too.

For anybody planning an Alaska trip, you can’t have too much knowledge. This rally is going to be a real learning experience on making the big trip north. Besides Joe and Vicki’s seminar, my buddy Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School will be presenting his Preparing To Drive To Alaska seminar, and we will also have an RVing Alaska panel discussion with several folks who have traveled and lived in Alaska participating. So as you can see, we have the topic covered well!

Okay, I’m so relaxed I can’t write another word. I’m headed for bed.

Thought For The Day -  I am not stupid. Everyone else is just smarter than me.

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We know many RVers who work in RV parks around the country to offset their traveling costs. Typically, they work a set number of hours per week in exchange for a free RV site, and any hours over those agreed upon for the site are paid at an hourly wage. Some workamping RVers return to the same campground to work every season, while others prefer to move about and see new places.

Workamping in an RV park can be interesting, and can help you save some money in camping fees. However, as I always say in my seminars on working on the road, as well as in my book Work Your Way Across The USA, if your goal is to make the most possible money in a given time period, often you would be better off to rent a site in an RV park on a monthly basis, and got a job at the local Home Depot or a restaurant in town. RV park wages are just not that good in most cases.

But if you want to do something a little bit different, and still earn money, there are many, many opportunities out there to make money and have fun that don’t involve cleaning bathrooms in an RV park, serving French fries in a fast food restaurant, or working in retail stores. Here are ten jobs that RVers we know have done that you may never have thought of.  

1. Beet Harvest – We have known several RVers who have worked the sugar beet harvests in places like North Dakota and Minnesota. Jobs include everything from driving trucks to sorting the beets when they arrive at warehouses. One website on the sugar beet harvest claims that some workers make as much as $7,000 in a month or less.

2. Canoe & Kayak Tour Guide – From the Florida Keys to Michigan’s wild Upper Peninsula, canoe and kayak liveries are busy all season long introducing tourists to the joys to be found on the water. It’s a great job for RVers who want to make some extra money and spend the summer (or winter) paddling. 

3. Working For Amazon – During the Christmas rush, online retailer Amazon.com hires many RVers to work at their fulfillment center in Kansas. The last I heard, the wage was $11 an hour, plus bonuses, with overtime available.

4. Dealing Blackjack – The gaming industry, in places like Las Vegas, Reno, and Laughlin, Nevada, provides many working opportunities for RVers. Jobs range from dealing blackjack to working as a customer greeter in casinos.

5. Driving Tour Bus – From Alaska to the Grand Canyon to Florida, tourist areas provide many employment opportunities for RVers. Driving tour buses, ranging in size from extended length vans to full sized coaches, is a good way to make money while spending time in places where the tourists pay big bucks to visit.

6. Fish Cannery – This is hard, dirty, smelly, physically demanding work, but one fulltime RVer we know spends a full summer in Alaska working long hours at a fish cannery, and he tells us he makes enough in a season to pay for two years of fulltime RV travel.

7. Working The NASCAR Circuit – Every race car driver, from the superstars to the new guy in the pits, have somebody selling souvenirs with their names and car numbers on them. We’ve met a couple of RVers who tow a vending trailer behind their motorhomes and follow the circuit, selling souvenirs to racing fans.

8. Selling Christmas Trees – This is obviously a seasonal job, and is hard physical work, but we have known many RVers who sell Christmas trees on lots across the country, and several have told us that they have made $8,000 or more in less than a month. Many times the same companies who hire RVers to sell Christmas trees hire them to sell fireworks for the Fourth of July, and Halloween pumpkins on the same lots. One couple we know made about $7,000 in two weeks selling fireworks this past summer.

9. Horse Wrangler – I make it a point never to ride anything you can’t put gasoline in, but if you are an equestrian fan and are comfortable in a saddle, you may find work as a horse wrangler, leading trail rides at one of the many dude ranches in the Southwest. The pay isn’t usually top dollar, but tips can be good, and if you love horses, it’s your chance to get paid for playing cowboy (or cowgirl).

10. Gas Line Survey – There is a long, ongoing thread on the Escapees forum, on working as a gas line surveyor, and the RVers we have talked to who have done this work all say that it’s a great way to make good money and get a lot of exercise in the process.

For more ideas on making money as you travel, check out my Working On The Road web page. What are some of the ways you have earned money on the road?

Thought For The Day – My wife does all the driving; I just get to hold the steering wheel.

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I was hoping that the cold weather here in northern Indiana may have forced the gremlins who inhabit my computer to follow the rest of the RV snowbirds south, but alas, the little buggers are still hanging on.

We use a commercial mail service for sending the Gypsy Journal to most of our subscribers, who chose the Standard Mail rate. But we also send out separate mailings to subscribers who use the Escapees Mail Service, FMCA mail service, and some of the commercial mail forwarding services such as Alternative Resources, as well as for our subscribers in Canada, and those who choose to pay an extra fee for First Class postage.

Yesterday as I was trying to print the mailing labels for those subscribers, I suddenly starting getting an error message and they would not print. This has happened before, for no apparent reason, and usually after a lot of frustration, whatever the problem is seems to clear up and they finally print. But yesterday I spent hours fighting with the mailing lists, with no success at all.

Our friends Rick Schafer and Marcia Gantz stopped over to see our new motorhome and tell us all about their summer travels in Alaska. Between the two of them, they have forgotten more about computers and computer programs than I’ll ever hope to learn, and when I mentioned the problems I was having with the mailing list, they put their heads together and tried to come up with a solution. Rick downloaded new drivers for our HP laser printer, which we hoped would do the job.

As it turns out, the problem still persisted, and I tried to get the mailing labels to print out all evening. Finally, about midnight, the gremlins must have fallen asleep, because suddenly the problem disappeared and the labels printed just fine. I didn’t do anything different, so what gives?

I think we have figured out a problem a few subscribers to the digital edition of the Gypsy Journal had with the current issue. In each case, they could not open the new issue, and by a process of elimination, I discovered that all of their computers had recently done an automatic update to Adobe Reader version 9.

Miss Terry experienced it with her laptop, which did the automatic update after she had already opened the new issue on the older version of Reader. She deleted the update and reinstalled the earlier version 8 of Reader and once again could open the file with no problems.

We have also had subscribers who use Firefox as their web browser report the same problem, but when they use , it works. Did I mention that sometimes I hate computers?

Even with all of the computer problems, it was nice to see Rick and Marcia again, and to hear about their travels since we last crossed paths. Terry and I have not made the Alaska trip yet, but it’s very high on our bucket list.

Quite a few Gypsy Journal subscribers were readers of a great little tabloid called Two Lane Roads that a fellow named Loren Eyrich published a few years back. I was a fan of Loren’s work, and when he was diagnosed with cancer and had to stop traveling and publishing, we took over the balance of his unfulfilled subscriptions.

Several people have asked me from time to time how Loren is doing, and I’m happy to report that I got an e-mail from him yesterday. Loren has been cancer free for seven years now, and he told me that while he has some long term effected from the chemo and/or radiation, he’s well and happy to be alive. Loren posts occasional updates on his website at http://www.two-lane.com/, and I know he’d be happy to have you log in and pay him a visit. 

Thought For The Day – Don’t assume malice for what stupidity can explain.

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Yesterday I got an e-mail from one of my personal heroes, Charlie Minshall. If you don’t know her, Sharlene “Charlie” Minshall is the author of half a dozen books telling the stories of her adventures over 20 years of solo fulltime RVing, including In Pursuit of a Dream, Freedom Unlimited, RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy, and the newly updated RVing Alaska and Canada, to name just a few.

Back when Terry and I were dreaming of escaping our hectic workaholic lifestyle and becoming fulltime RVers, we read all of Charlie’s books, and she helped convince us that we too could make it happen.

My first contact with Charlie was when I conceived the idea of the Gypsy Journal. Since the name of her self-publishing company is Gypsy Press, I wrote her to ask if she would have any objection to the name of our new publication, or if she felt there would be a conflict between the two names. Charlie wrote back and told us to go for it, and very graciously wished us well in our new business and in our new lifestyle.

We met Charlie a couple of months later when we went to our first Life on Wheels conference as brand new, wet behind the ears RVers. We sat through two of her seminars, and found her just as entertaining and delightful in person as in print. Over the years we had quite a few laughs together when we also became Life on Wheels instructors.

Whether she’s taking a jet boat ride up the Rogue River in Oregon, exploring the wonders of Alaska and Canada, or taking a “detour” over a cow path in the middle of Montana, Charlie always seems to find something interesting to get into, and somehow survives her adventures and misadventures.

When we visited Charlie at her lot at the Escapees North Ranch in Congress, Arizona a couple of years ago, Charlie told me that she had entered the “nesting” stage of her life, had bought a park model, and sold her motorhome. I wondered how well the Silver Gypsy would adapt to life in one place, and in yesterday’s e-mail she proved that the gypsy blood still flows through her veins. This year Charlie packed her little red Chevy Cavalier, bought a tent, and took off on a four month long journey that covered 11,623 miles! It doesn’t look like she’s letting any grass grow under her feet!

You can read Charlie’s Silver, Single, and Solo column on the RV Life website, or visit her own website, Full Time RVer. I bet you’ll enjoy getting to know Charlie as much as we have over the years.

Thought For The Day – Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren’t paved.

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It seems like every time I turn around, we get news of the passing of someone else we know. I guess that’s what happens as we get older.

Unfortunately, we lost another dear friend yesterday, when Lue Reed passed away in California. We first met Lue over ten years ago in our first month on the road, when we attended Life on Wheels in Moscow, Idaho as students. Lue’s husband Dick Reed, is the founder of the RV Driving School, and we just seemed to click with both of them. Even then Lue was fighting a battle with Alzheimer’s, and though she didn’t always remember our names, she always knew Miss Terry by her pretty long hair.  

Lue was one of those sweet people who never had a bad word to say about anybody, and even if you had never met before, the first time she laid eyes on you, you were friends. I will always remember her gentleness and the smile that never left her face. Rest in peace, dear friend.

For a guy who makes his living with words, I never seem to know the right thing to say to someone at times like this, but Dick, there are a lot of us out here who care about you and share your loss. I hope you can feel all of our arms around you, surrounding you with love.

I spent yesterday doing the same thing I’ll be doing today and tomorrow, working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal to get it ready to take to the printer next week. I think the months are getting shorter, because it seems like I was doing this just a couple of weeks ago.

I may escape from the computer for an hour or two and drive out to Shipshewana to go to a gun show today, and Dennis and Carol Hill, who bought the RV Driving School from Dick Reed a couple of years ago, are due in sometime tomorrow too. They spent most of the summer in Alaska, and Dennis e-mailed me to say they had a hot grill and a big piece of halibut with my name on it, so Sunday I’ll have to drag myself away from my desk again for a cookout. Yeah, I know, it sucks to be me.

Thought For The Day – Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

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