We had originally planned to stay in Kingman, Arizona until Monday, visiting my old friend Mike Howard. But a combination of Mike not feeling very well, terrible cell phone and internet service, and a scheduling mix up changed our plans.

We had been in contact with the marketing folks at the Grand Canyon Railway in Williams, Arizona about doing a story on the train ride to the Grand Canyon. The original plan was to arrive in Williams Monday, stay overnight at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park, and ride the train Tuesday.

But somehow communications between their main office in Denver, Colorado and the folks in Williams went awry, and after a lot of phone calls back and forth, a bit of frustration further complicated by it being the holiday weekend, and a false start or two, it was decided that we’d come to Williams yesterday, and take the train to the Grand Canyon today.

I know that Mike was disappointed to see us leaving so soon, but if he’s anything like me, the last thing I want to do when I’m under the weather is have to entertain guests. We hope to stop in and see him again in a few weeks, after we spend some family time with my daughter in Show Low.

I think Mohave County, Arizona was just as happy to see me go as I was to leave. Is it just me, or is that mountain giving me the finger?

What a difference a year makes! Exactly one year ago to the day, we left Kingman headed for our old hometown of Show Low. I just re-read my blog post for that trip, and noted that it was a slow, torturous trip uphill, and that between Seligman and Williams, we were crawling along on the shoulder of Interstate 40 in our old MCI bus conversion at 10 miles per hour, radiator misters on, and temperature gauge just bumping the red line.

This trip, in our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, we were doing over 50 miles per hour, passing eighteen wheelers on the steep climbs, and our Cummins diesel engine never missed a beat. There are a lot of things about that old bus that I really loved, but driving it in the mountains wasn’t one of them.

Once we were settled into our site at the RV park, we went looking for someplace to eat. A girl at the railroad depot, and somebody at the local Visitor Center, both recommended the Pine Country Restaurant, which features 25 different pies, baked fresh daily. Well, let me at them!

The service was friendly, the portions huge, and while our dinners were good, I wouldn’t call them great. But the pies! Oh, the pies! The servings were just as large as with the rest of the meal, and beyond delicious. I had the pecan pie alamode, and Terry had cherry Dutch crumb, and we argued over whose was better. Miss Terry said the next time we go there, we’ll just have a sandwich to have room for more pie!

Once we had finished our dinner, we had to make a quick run into Flagstaff, 30 miles to the east, to go TV shopping. While we were at Best Buy, a pretty young lady sales clerk invited me to play with the new Apple iPad, which was just released yesterday. Anytime a pretty girl asks me to play with anything, especially a new gadget, I’m all over it!

To be honest, when I first heard about the iPad, I wasn’t at all interested. But after spending a few minutes browsing the web and watching a video on it, my thinking changed 180 degrees. This thing is cool, and I could find a hundred uses for it.

Would I buy one? Probably not, but only because in another month or so they are introducing a new, improved version with 3G capabilities, in addition to the WiFi the current models have. The young lady also told me that Apple will be making its iPhone available to Verizon customers by the end of the year. I’ve heard rumors of that before, and if it does happen, I’ll definitely make the change from my Blackberry Storm. I’ve used the Blackberry for almost a year now, and I have also played with a few iPhones, and the Apple product is far superior in my opinion.

Okay, we’re off to ride the train!

Thought For The Day – Finding fortune among the accidents of life – is there any greater talent?

Yesterday we found three neat places away from the Las Vegas Strip to explore, and our friend Jan White got to check one more thing off of her personal bucket list. 

My pal Jan may seem like your average retired RVing lady, but underneath that peaceful exterior beats the heart of an Annie Oakley! So when she learned that The Gun Store, located on Tropicana Avenue, has an indoor range, where customers can bring their own guns to shoot, or rent firearms from the store, including machine guns, Jan was raring to go!

The store has an impressive collection of fully automatic weapons available for rent, including military style M-16s, Soviet AK-47s, Israeli Uzis, and everything in between. But Jan had her sights set on the most classic of them all, a Thompson submachine gun. This is a weapon I know intimately, and highly respect. The .45 Tommy gun won fame during the wild gangster days of Prohibition, and saw action in every American war from the Banana Wars of the 1930s through Vietnam. It was my preferred weapon during my time in the Army, and even though it was older than I was, I trusted my beat up old Thompson more than any M-16 I was ever issued. 

Terry and I stayed outside of the actual range area, looking though a glass wall while Jan was shooting. A couple of young guys were standing next to us watching the action, and one marveled that “that girl” was going to shoot a Tommy gun, predicting that it would “knock her on her butt.” I told him that I knew “that girl” and I was willing to bet money on her performance if he was. He decided not to take the bet, and it was a good thing, because once she got the feel for the weapon, Jan really tore up her target! “That girl” made me proud!

A block or so from the gun shop, we spotted a place called Fox’s Spy Outlet, and I just had to stop and check it out. Inside the small shop, we found all kinds of neat gadgets, like this stun gun disguised as a cell phone, tiny surveillance cameras, and miniature recording devices. There was even a camcorder disguised as a fountain pen!

One thing I liked was Rex, an electric guard dog alarm that senses motion outside of your door and sounds just like a ticked off German shepherd. I don’t want to own an animal at this point in my life, but I want one of these things! That will scare the bad guys off at night!

Another neat item, which I have seen before, was this hollowed out Country Time lemonade can that is actually a safe for cash and small valuables. The shop also had other secret safes, including fake food containers and books. Clever stuff.

A block away, we came to the Pinball Hall of Fame, a nondescript building packed with vintage pinball machines and arcade games dating back to the 1950s. They are all in working order, and you are welcome to slip a coin into any of them and play! How cool is that?

We spent an hour or so just wandering up and down the aisles, looking at the neat old machines, and watching the evolution of arcade games through the years. Compared to today’s high tech electronic toys, this stuff was really primitive, but it sure brought back some memories. Greg White and I compared notes, and decided that between the two of us, we’d slipped enough dimes and quarters into games like this over the years to make a good sized down payment on a nice motorhome!

We’ve enjoyed getting to know the side of Las Vegas away from the casinos and gambling halls. There’s a lot to see and do here that most tourists never know about. 

Thought For The Day – The cure for insomnia is to get more sleep.

We hit the ground running yesterday! The techs at Duncan RV Repair were supposed to start working on our motorhome at 9 a.m., so Miss Terry had the alarm clock set for 7:30 so we’d have time to get our morning routine done and have the Winnebago unplugged from shore power, the slides in, and the jacks up when they came for it.

Terry was up before me, and when I rolled out of bed, I glanced at my cell phone and it said the time was 8:41 a.m. I asked Terry why she had let me sleep so late, and then we realized that while we had adjusted the clocks on our microwave, computers, and in the van back to Eastern Time, we had forgotten the alarm clock!

What followed was a mad rush to brush teeth, get dressed, store things away inside the motorhome, run outside to unplug the electrical cord, and get the slides in and the jacks up, but we were done at exactly 9 a.m. Whew! What a way to start the day! But we were right on schedule.

Of course, then we waited. And waited. Finally about 9:30 I went inside and was told that the employees were in a meeting and should be done soon. A tech broke free and came out to get our keys, and when we left a little before 10, they still had not moved the RV inside. Hurry up and wait, just like in the Army. Oh well, at least I got an extra hour or so of sleep!

We drove over to Phoenix Commercial Paint and spent the day piddling around the bus, charging the batteries to compensate for the time the bus has been sitting unused, and then starting it up to warm up the engine.

We took a break about 1 p.m. for lunch with our friend Michele Henry, owner of Phoenix Commercial Paint, and when we came out of the restaurant it was snowing! Being anywhere it is snowing goes completely against the very carefully laid out plan I have for my life. I was supposed to be on a houseboat in Key West right now!

Back at Duncan RV Repair, late in the day, they did not have everything finished on the motorhome, which I had expected, since we needed several things done.  That was one reason we got to town early, so they could have two days to work on it, if needed. They had repaired the water heater, so that it now works on both gas and electric, and had completed the engine oil change, lube job, and fuel filter replacement.

They were closing for the day, so our service tech moved the motorhome back out to their campground, and today it will go back into the shop to have the Wilson Trucker antenna installed and the Onan generator serviced.

Today is going to be another busy day for us. We have to pick up a new order of our Just A Gypsy T-shirts from our screen printer here in Elkhart, and then touch base with Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum. We had arranged for our mail forwarding service to send our mail to us, care of the museum. Then we have to unload our bicycles and kayaks from the van to have room for passengers, and at 4:46 p.m. we have to be at the airport in South Bend, Indiana to met Rich Perry, who is flying in from California with a friend to pick up the bus.

We’re going to be sorry to see that old gal go, she sure has been good to us!    

Thought For The Day – Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection all over again.

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When I checked my e-mail yesterday morning, I had a message from Verizon Wireless that an update for my Blackberry Storm was available, which was supposed to be the latest and greatest thing since sliced bread.

So, being the trusting soul I am, I plugged my phone into my computer, logged onto the Verizon website, and clicked the update button. The process took a few minutes, and then I got a message telling me the download was complete. Quick and easy, right?

Well, yes, except for the fact that the upload wiped out my entire contacts list. The photos I had stored on the phone are still there, even a couple of songs I transferred over from my computer a while back. But every telephone number I had is gone.

Yeah, I know, I could have backed up my information to my computer, but I never thought of it. So I’ll be spending some time digging out business cards and entering all of those numbers all over again. What fun.

There are many features I like about the Blackberry, but after using it for the last few months I have come to realize that my smart phone is smarter than I am by a long shot! I’m sure my seven year old granddaughter Hailey could probably make it do wonderful things, but I get a headache trying to figure what all the buttons are for.

It has been interesting to read all of the e-mails and comments from readers of yesterday’s blog Considering Our Options, about RV extended warranties. Some people feel that an extended warranty is a good investment, and just as many, if not more, seem to think they are not worth the money. I also heard from some folks who did buy extended warranties on their RVs, only to find that the companies issuing the warranties either did not honor needed repairs, or were very slow in paying. Like so much in the RV industry, there seem to be so many snakes selling extended warranties that you have to be very, very careful who you do business with.

I have had some comments from longtime readers who took me to task for buying a factory built motorhome because I have always said that “all RVs are junk and I’d never own anything but a bus conversion.” I don’t know when I supposedly said that, and in looking back over several years of past blogs and issues of the Gypsy Journal, I don’t find any such comment.

Yes, I have said many times that the quality of most factory built RVs is pretty sad, and I have said that a lot of junk has been foisted off on RV buyers by a lot of companies. However I have also said many times, in print and in the seminars I present at RV rallies, that there were four companies whose rigs I would be comfortable owning. Those companies are Heartland, Tiffin, Newmar, and Winnebago. When we started looking for a rig to replace our MCI bus conversion, they were on our very short list.

I love our old bus, and I will always be a fan of bus conversions. For cargo carrying capacity, safety in the event of a crash, longevity, and overall ruggedness, there has never been a stick and staple motorhome built that can compare. When we moved from the bus to our Winnebago, we traded down in those respects. No question about it.

However, our needs have changed. As our granddaughters have gotten older, the bus has become very crowded when they came to visit. We really wanted a coach with a slide. We also do not see ourselves doing nearly as much dry camping as we have in the past, so the huge holding tanks, battery bank, and solar panels on the bus are no longer a necessity.   

Yes, we had many wonderful years in our bus, and it carried us many miles in comfort and safety. Just as it will whomever owns it next. And though we have moved on, we’ll always look when we hear an old Detroit diesel roar to life. Once a bus nut, always a bus nut.

Thought For The Day – It’s frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.

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Yesterday we had what my friend Greg White calls a Don Quixote Day. We were up and out of bed early because we had a lot to get done, we worked hard all day, and we didn’t accomplish a damn thing!

We have a Magnum Energy 2,000 watt pure sine wave inverter in our MCI bus conversion, which is, in my experience, the finest RV inverter on the market. I wanted to replace the standard equipment Heart modified sine wave inverter in our Winnebago motorhome with a Magnum, so yesterday my pal Michele Henry, from Phoenix Commercial Paint, let us use one of the bays at her shop to do the job inside, out of the cold.

We had previously measured the space where the Heart unit is in the motorhome, measured the Magnum inverter, and though the Magnum is a little bit bigger than the old inverter, it looked like there would be no problem at all getting it in. Wanna bet?

Whoever builds RVs goes out of their way to make it difficult, if not impossible to reach just about anything you need to get to. It was quite a chore to get the old inverter unbolted from its location on the bulkhead of the fresh water bay of the Winnebago, but Greg finally managed to get it out and disconnect all of the wiring.

Then we started to install the Magnum inverter, and we immediately ran into a roadblock. While yes, there was plenty of room inside the bay to mount the inverter, what we had not considered was that getting in into the bay involved sliding past the fresh water tank, and we lacked about half an inch of space in the opening. We spent hours trying to wiggle and jiggle the inverter to get it in, and no matter what we did, there was just no way it was going to fit.

Finally, late in the afternoon, we had to admit defeat. If our fresh water tank had been square or rectangular, we would have been okay, but it is wider at the bottom than at the top, and Greg, who worked for NASA on space shuttle projects, tried everything under the sun to get the Magnum inverter in, without success. I think he was as disappointed as I was, because Greg is one of those guys who love a challenge.

So we decided to put the old Heart inverter back in, and while it slid into the bay opening just fine, getting the holes to match up with the mounting bolts on the bulkhead of the compartment was a real bear. The inverter weighs about 45 pounds, and trying to hold that much dead weight up in the air, in a space with very limited room to maneuver, was another nightmare. It took Greg, myself, and Miss Terry until after 8 p.m. to finally get it mounted and all of the wiring hooked back up.

Meanwhile, Greg had also tried to figure out why the electric side of our water heater was not working. The water heater is mounted on the bottom passenger side of the chassis, and several Winnebago owners have told me that there is supposed to be a reset switch on the back that is often the culprit. Again, whoever built the coach sure didn’t want to make it easy for anybody to service it. Greg could not access the back of the water heater, and that’s a project that will have to wait for another day.

It was dark by the time I backed the Ultimate Advantage out of the paint shop, and I know Michele must have been glad to finally see us leave, though she was as gracious as always. It was only about three miles back to Elkhart Campground, and Terry followed me in the van. I was quickly reminded of why I never drive after dark. My night vision is terrible, and I was sure glad to get back to the campground and pull into our space.

While I was plugging in the electric and hooking up our water and sewer connection, Terry realized that her cell phone was missing. We tried calling it, hoping that we could hear it ring and find it in the van or motorhome, but no luck.

It was 9 p.m. by then, we had not eaten all day, and all four of us were famished. We went to Bob Evans for a late dinner, and then Greg and Jan volunteered to follow us back to Michele’s shop to see if Terry had dropped her phone while she was guiding me out of the bay, and hoping that if she did, I hadn’t run over it with the Winnebago. Sure enough, just as we pulled in, we both spotted the phone laying in the driveway, and all in one piece! That was the only break we had all day!

Thought For The Day – The only thing I know for certain is that I don’t know anything for certain.

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