It’s okay if you find yourself humming the tune to Maria’s song from The Sound of Music, given today’s blog title. But I thought I’d share some of my favorite things in the RV lifestyle, from my favorite truckstop to my favorite campground, to name just a few, and why they rate so high with me. I’m curious how my list compares with yours.

Favorite Truckstop – I love the Iowa 80 Truckstop in Walcott, Iowa. Billed as the “World’s Largest Truckstop,” this place is so big that they have two or three semi tractors on display inside the showroom! Along with every kind of gadget and goodie a trucker (or an RV driver) could ever want or need. Not to mention a 300 seat restaurant with a 50 foot salad bar, a movie theater, game room, barbershop, dentist office, garage, big rig wash, CAT scales, a Wendy’s and a Dairy Queen! What’s not to love?

Favorite Campground – Hands down, that would be our present location, Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, Indiana. Located in the RV Capital of the World, you can find anything and everything related to RVing in the surrounding area. We have been coming here for so many years that the owners, Bob and Gita Patel, have become part of our extended family.

Favorite Escapees Park – Raccoon Valley in Heiskell, Tennessee. We love the surrounding area, the friendly people, and the twice weekly jam sessions by local bluegrass musicians.

Favorite Corps of Engineers Campground – We have never stayed at a COE campground that we didn’t like, but my very favorite has to be Toad Suck Park, near Conway, Arkansas. The name alone makes it a winner, but our huge RV site with 50 amp electric and water, located right on the bank of the Arkansas River, was wonderful. We loved sitting and watching the riverboats pushing barges through the locks at the dam adjacent to the campground.

Favorite Snowbird Roost – This is another easy choice. We love the area around Rockport and Aransas Pass, Texas, on the Gulf Coast. It’s affordable, slow paced, the people are friendly, the seafood is plentiful and cheap, and if you enjoy fishing and kayaking, you’ll be in heaven.

Favorite Route – There are many that we have loved traveling, from historic Route 66 across the country, to U.S. Highway 2 across Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula, but the very best has been U.S. Highway 101 along the Oregon coast. There are breathtaking vistas around almost every bend in the road.

Favorite Big City – We try to avoid big cities whenever we can, much preferring the slower pace of small town America, but two big cities we have loved have been Boston and Washington, D.C. It’s a hard choice, since both are loaded with the history we love exploring, but since I can only have one favorite, it would be Washington. From museums to monuments to famous buildings, we could spend weeks in D.C. and not see it all.

Favorite Museum – We’ve been to many wonderful museums in our time on the road, but my favorite of them all has been the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where we saw so many of our nation’s historic documents  and artifacts on display.

Favorite Free Overnight Parking Spot – We never miss the chance to stop at the Cabela’s Outfitters store just off Interstate 90 in Mitchell, South Dakota. They have a dedicated parking lot for RVs, complete with a dump station, and it is within walking distance to a restaurant, Super Wal-Mart, and a Menard’s Home Improvement store.

Favorite Fast Food Restaurant – How could I not end this blog with at least one place to eat? We think the Cheddar Butterburger at Culver’s Restaurants can’t be beat. Whenever we have been in an area where there is no Culver’s, we stop at the first one we see when we enter their market area.

Thought For The Day – If it wasn’t for my faults I’d be perfect.

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We left Bowling Green State University Friday morning, and though I had been worried that we might get stuck in the field where we were parked, we got out just fine. We stopped for fuel, then drove north about ten miles on Interstate 75, skirted the west edge of Toledo on Interstate 475, then picked up U.S. Highway 23 and followed it north into Michigan.

The line at the dump station in Bowling Green was really long, so we decided to stop at the Cabela’s Outfitters in Dundee, Michigan, about 45 miles north of Bowling Green, to use their dump station. Apparently quite a few other folks from the FMCA rally had the same idea, because there were several motorhomes waiting to dump. We also needed to make a bank deposit, so we unhooked the van and Miss Terry ran off to do that errand while I waited in line to dump. She needn’t have hurried, because I was still in line when she got back.

Several rigs ahead of me pulled up, dumped, and quickly went on their way, but you know there always has to be one jerk in every crowd. A guy in a big diesel pusher pulled up to the dump station, got out, didn’t like his position, got back inside his coach and maneuvered around a bit, got back out, still didn’t like where he was, and repeated the process again. Then he puttered around, opened his sewer bay, closed it, went back inside his coach, came back out, opened the sewer bay again, then opened several other bays until he found his rubber gloves and put them on.

Then he took out his sewer hose, hooked it to his tank outlet, realized that it was too short, and went to two other coaches until he could find somebody to loan him an extra length of hose and a connector, which he attached to his hose and finally dumped. That chore done, he rinsed out the hoses, unhooked the loaner hose, unhooked his sewer hose, replaced it in the bay, returned the loaner hose, went back to his rig and opened two bay doors before he decided where he wanted to put his gloves, changed his mind and got them back out and put them in a different bay, and finally got inside his coach. And sat there. And then he sat there some more. People started blowing their horns and the fellow ahead of me was ready to do him bodily harm before the fool finally drove off and the line moved forward, and eventually I was next in line to dump.

That was when an idiot in an SUV pulling an Airstream trailer came the other way through the parking lot and tried to shoehorn himself in behind the rig that was finishing dumping. No way was that going to happen, and Bad Nick went flying out of the bus to explain the facts of life to the guy behind the wheel. Meanwhile, the air was split with blaring horns as people who had waited patiently in line let the offender know that he wasn’t going to get away with that!

He decided to play dumb and said “Oh, are all of you waiting to dump? I’m sorry,” before beating a hasty retreat.

We wasted an hour at the dump station, but eventually got back onto the highway and followed it north until it joined Interstate 75. Traffic was heavy all the way from Toledo to Bay City, with some particularly bad stretches in Ann Arbor and Flint, where nobody seemed to know what a yield sign, a turn signal, or a rearview mirror was for.

By the time we turned west on U.S. Highway 10 at Bay City, I was more than ready to get on a slower paced road. An hour later we joined State Highway 115 and took it to U.S. Highway 131 near Cadillac, and with a couple more zigs and zags down two lane highways we arrived at my cousin Terry Cook’s place just south of Traverse City about 6:30 p.m., having logged just over 300 miles.

We backed into our usual spot in Terry’s driveway, received warm greetings from the entire family, and hooked up to water and electric. We’ll be here for a few days as Miss Terry has her annual visit to her oncologist, and we enjoy some time relaxing with family. After being up early every morning at the FMCA rally, the first order of business will be to turn the telephones off and sleep late every morning!

Thought For The Day – Over prepare, and then go with the flow.

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