What better way to start the New Year than spending it with good friends? Yesterday Greg and Jan White drove over from Friendswood, Texas, south of Houston, to spend the day with us. What a treat!

We last saw this fun couple exactly two months ago, when we left Elkhart Campground on November 1^st. Greg and Jan are fulltimers who are spending a few weeks in their old hometown for some family time, but Jan admitted yesterday that hitch itch is really setting in, and they’re really looking forward to getting back on the road. We know that feeling all too well.

Greg is one of those techie guys who can fix anything, from a stubborn generator to a cantankerous computer, so once the greeting hugs were out of the way, and we had some of Miss Terry’s delicious homemade cinnamon rolls, I put him to work hooking my new netbook computer to the Silverleaf engine monitoring system. I was just getting hooked on this great addition to our Winnebago motorhome when the burglar(s) who broke into our rig stole it, and I missed it in our most recent trips.

Jan loves animals, and she was looking forward to seeing some of the deer who live here at the Thousand Trails campground that I had written about. Though there is a huge herd of deer on the grounds, when Greg and Jan first arrived, they were off hiding somewhere, maybe sleeping off deer hangovers from whatever deer do on New Years Eve.

But, a couple of hours later a lone deer stepped out of the trees across the field from us, followed soon after by a second, and then a third. Before long we had a dozen or more grazing their way toward our campsite. I guarantee you that by the time the afternoon was over, Jan saw plenty of deer! They were munching away right outside our windows, and we enjoyed watching them from such a close vantage point.  

About 6 pm. We drove into Columbus for dinner at Nancy’s Seafood Grill, and the restaurant changed my mind about there being no place decent to eat in this little town. Everything was delicious, and the service was very good. About the time we finished our meal, we had some excitement when one of the portable buffet tables collapsed with a huge clatter. We all looked to see what had happened, and saw flames as several of the little Sterno cans used to keep the food hot rolled around on the floor. Greg and I hurried over to see what we could do to prevent the fire from spreading, but a couple of restaurant employees poured water on them and quenched the fire before it could get out of hand. Once everything was under control, I couldn’t help but quip to the other diners “The good news is, the buffet is now half off!”

It was great to see our friends, and we said our goodbyes with promises to see them again in Arizona in a few weeks. Thanks for driving so far to visit with us, Greg and Jan. We had a great time!

We have hitch itch too, and today we plan to hit the road, headed west. We’ll stop for a night or two along the way to visit our friends Mike and Pam Steffen at their place in Salt Flat, Texas, but we won’t tarry long. We’re eager to get to Arizona to see our family, and there are some grandkids that need spoiling! Depending on where we’re at, we may or may not have internet access the next couple of nights. West Texas is one of the few places in the country where we have had problems getting online with our Verizon air card. So if I miss a blog entry or two, don’t worry, as soon as we get a signal I’ll be back.

Thought For The Day – Life is a grindstone…it can polish you up or wear you down…what’s it gonna’ be?

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Happy New Year! I hope it’s the best year ever for you, filled with love, happiness, and lots of fun. Do you make New Years resolutions? If so, what are they? I never do, because I have enough failure in my life to deal with without adding self-imposed goals I cannot reach. To quote a line from an old Clint Eastwood movie, “a man has to know his limitations.” And do I ever have limitations!

Though the weather report had been for clear skies and temperatures in the upper 60s, the last day of the year started out foggy here in Columbus, Texas, and it stayed gray and chilly for most of the day.

Terry and I ran into town to drop some things off at the post office, and then made a stop at WalMart and the HEB grocery store next door. Then we walked across the parking lot to Jack in the Box for lunch.

Jack in the Box is usually one of my favorite fast food restaurants, but if this had been my first visit to one, it would have also been my last. The restaurant needed a good cleaning, we had to wait a long time for our order, and the soda machine only spit out a weak stream of fizz from the Coke spout. I told the girl at the desk it needed attention, but she just looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. We waited a long time for our meal, and only got it when I finally went back up to the counter to ask why people who had come in after us were already finishing their meals, while we were still waiting. Apparently they lost our order, and once we got it, I think we’d have been better off if it stayed lost. It was disappointing, to say the least.

Back at the Thousand Trails campground, we had a quiet afternoon,  puttering around inside the Winnebago. A few days ago, I wrote  about all of the deer here at the campground, and this was the view out our window yesterday. As you can see, they don’t seem to have much fear of people. Like many of the RVers here, our neighbor throws out corn for the deer, and while they won’t eat out of your hand, they sure do come in close to feed!

One of our favorite hobbies is geocaching, and when one of my blog readers sent me an e-mail to tell me that there was a cache right at the entrance to the Thousand Trails, I went looking for it. We have not been caching in quite a while, and my skills must really be rusty, because try as I might, I couldn’t find the cache. I know it’s there, because somebody logged a find just the other day, but it eluded me. Of course, I didn’t have my secret weapon with me, because Miss Terry was busy and didn’t come along. I’m sure if she had, we’d have found it, because she seldom misses a cache.

If you’re a geocacher, or want to get into the hobby, there’s an entirely new aspect of the hobby that you may not know about, called earthcaching. While in geocaching, your goal is to find something somebody else hid; with earthcaching the goal is to find some neat natural place or thing. The earthcaching website is brought to you by the same folks who have the geocaching website. It’s still new, but I think it will only enhance our favorite hobby.   

Somewhere around 7 p.m. the wind started blowing pretty hard, and I sure was glad we’re off the road and tucked away safely in an RV park to welcome in the new year. 

While I was busy with all of that, Bad Nick decided he needed to welcome the new year in with a new Bad Nick Blog post titled The Perpetual Pissing Match. Check it out and leave a comment.

We have company coming to visit today, and then either Saturday or Sunday we’ll probably hit the road again, headed west, with a stop or two along the way.

Thought For The Day – The wound of a blade will heal, the wound of a word will not.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I’ve had a few e-mails from readers who noted that we are currently staying at a Thousand Trails preserve and wanted to know if I felt that  Thousand Trails membership was a good investment.

As I have said many times before, like anything, a campground membership can be a good investment if you use it enough. If you don’t, it’s a waste of money. I know Thousand Trails members who get a lot of value from their memberships, and others, like Terry and myself, who really don’t use it enough to justify the annual dues.

We knew going in that it would take us some time to free up our schedule enough to really take advantage of our membership, and we got it cheap enough that we can handle that.

We have stayed at Thousands Trails and NACO campgrounds in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, and Ohio, and visited preserves in several other states. Most have been more than adequate for our needs, but overall we have not found them to be the idyllic resorts that the fancy brochures the marketing people put out depict.

This is our third visit to the Colorado River preserve in Columbus, Texas, and the first time that we have not had problems with electrical power (so far). As in past trips, the electrical posts at several RV sites are covered with plastic bags and inoperable, so even though the campground is supposed to have 94 campsites available, a number of them are out of service. Nobody ever seems to get around to repairing them.

This lack of maintenance seems to be a common theme at many Thousand Trails/NACO preserves across the country. We have been to some preserves where interior roads were in poor shape, and others where swimming pools and hot tubs were out of commission. There have been a couple that we have not even visited, because of the poor reports on them posted at the Thousand Trails Yahoo group.

Despite maintenance problems at some locations, every preserve we have visited or stayed in has been very clean, and the staff have always been very friendly and helpful.

Be aware that this system was designed for family camping, so in the summertime you can expect lots of kids, bicycles, smoky campfires, and such. If this isn’t your thing, like us, you will probably want to avoid the preserves when school is out of session.

Many Thousand Trails members have expressed concern over the growing numbers of RV sites that are leased out on a seasonal basis, taking them out of the pool for traveling members. These are usually the most desirable sites in the preserves. Given that, we still have always been able to find a site at any Thousand Trails or NACO campground we have visited.

What really burns me up is the fact that they have hired an outside company to handle annual dues payments. This company is also a collection agency, and there has been a lack of communication between them and the Thousand Trails office a couple of times in terms of posting payments.  Twice the dweebs at the outside company have called us and acted like we were deadbeats, when in fact the payment was already made, but Thousand Trails had not updated the records they share with them.

If you are interested in a Thousand Trails membership, be sure to get a nationwide one, with the NACO package included. And be aware that no two Thousand Trails memberships seem to be the same. It’s all about how good a negotiator you are and how hungry the salesman is, as to pricing and what added benefits your membership may have.

You can come to a preserve and sit through their sales spiel, but be aware that like all campground membership sales reps, some of the folks hustling these memberships are very much into the hard sell. A new membership will cost you thousands of dollars. Or, like us, you can buy a used membership.

There are tons of folks out there who have Thousand Trails/NACO memberships who just want to get rid of them and stop paying the dues. You can find a used membership for anywhere from free to about $1,000. Some people ask a whole lot more for them, because they believed the salesman who sold it and told them they could always get their money back.

When we decided we wanted a membership, I simply put a post on the Escapees forum and was swamped with folks wanting to unload theirs for anywhere from free to $5,000.

We got our membership used for $100 plus the $750 transfer fee, from a lady whose husband died and she wasn’t RVing any more. We can stay at any Thousand Trails or NACO park nationwide for fourteen days, and go directly to another one with no days out of the system. The original owner wanted to give it to us, but my attorney said to give her $100 to make it a binding contract.

Our annual dues are $500, which gives us 50 nights of camping, and after that, we pay $5 a night. If we wanted to pay higher annual dues, we could stay in Thousand Tails/NACO parks 365 days a year. So it can be a good bargain if we used it enough, which we hope to do, now that our schedule is not so complicated.

If you are considering a used membership, always call Thousand Trails and give them the contract number and ask what it includes, and if there will be any changes if you buy it. Here is a link to a website where you may be able to find a good deal, if you are looking for a used membership  http://www.rvparkstore.com/campground_memberships.htm

And while you’re online, check out Bad Nick’s new blog post What Does It Take? and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – A cloth is not woven from a single thread.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Christmas morning we were up early again, and it was chilly enough that we really had to force ourselves out from under those warm covers. We really need to break this new habit of getting up so early! Mark and Sue Didelot were getting ready to go to a family Christmas celebration, and we wanted to see them off, and then get on the road to take advantage of the light holiday traffic through Houston.

In spite of the cold, I walked down to the boat launch at White Oak Park to take a couple of photos of the Calcasieu River. I’d love to come back someday and kayak here, but only when it’s a lot warmer! I quickly took my photos and headed back to the motorhome.

We were on the road by 9:15 and enjoyed an easy drive west on Interstate 10, crossing into Texas and sharing the road with only a few cars along the way. I always dread driving through Houston, but this time around it was a piece of cake. There were a handful of cars and a couple of other motorhomes, but not enough to even mention. I don’t think we encountered one eighteen wheeler all day long.

On the west side of Houston we pulled into the Flying J truck stop for fuel, and wondered again who designs their RV islands. Whoever it is, he or she obviously has never driven anything bigger than an SUV! I wanted to get propane, but the only way to do so would have been to pull so far past the fuel island that we would have had to back up to get to it, which is not recommended when towing a dinghy. I decided (again) that we’d wait until we get someplace more convenient to get propane.

Back on the road, it was only another forty miles or so to Columbus and our turnoff. We took State Route 71 north about four miles, turned left on a local road, and arrived at the Colorado River Thousand Trails Preserve about 1:30 p.m. We chose a full hookup RV site with 30 amp electric and got settled in. They have a few 50 amp sites, but none are full hookups, and we wanted to be able to take long showers, and Terry needed to catch up on laundry.

This is our third visit to this particular Thousand Trails campground in three years, and as much as we don’t like falling into ruts, it’s beginning to feel that way. But if you’re going to be in a rut, this is a pretty nice one! The campground is located on the bank of the Colorado River, and pecan trees at many of the campsites give visitors the opportunity to collect enough nuts to make some delicious treats.

A large herd of deer live at the campground, and they have little fear of humans. They graze around the RV sites and pretty much ignore people, unless they get within a few feet of them. I couldn’t resist grabbing my Canon Digital Rebel and getting a few photos of our four legged neighbors.

We really, really need some downtime, and we don’t plan to do much the next couple of days except sleep late, watch TV, cruise the internet, and relax. Lucky me, Miss Terry considers baking peanut butter cookies, pecan pie, and her world famous cinnamon rolls very relaxing!

Thought For The Day – A man has reached middle age when he is cautioned to slow down by his doctor instead of by the police.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Merry Christmas! I appreciate you taking time from your holiday to read my blog today. If I could, may I also ask you to take a moment or two to remember the men and women who are serving in uniform, both here in the United States and abroad, to guarantee our freedom to live and worship as we choose, and all of those who have served in the past?

The bad weather we had hoped to avoid as we drove across southern Louisiana on Wednesday caught up with us in the early morning hours yesterday here in Lake Charles. We got lightning, wind, rain, and even some hail. We were very grateful we were parked safely off the highway.

Mark Didelot is another one of those guys I admire so much, because he can do anything, from replacing the starter on a diesel motorhome to reformatting a computer’s hard drive.

Of course, just because I admire somebody doesn’t mean I won’t exploit him every chance I get. When I casually mentioned yesterday that I couldn’t figure out how to install the fancy digital converter box we got a while back so that the two TVs in our motorhome would pick up local channels from our Winegard batwing antenna, Mark said that was easy, and immediately began taking things apart in the cabinets above the dashboard. I love it when a plan comes together!

For the next two or three hours he, with Miss Terry’s help, took out the TV, wired in an extension AC outlet, hooked up the digital converter box, and got the batwing antenna connected properly, and then put the entire thing back together. I did what I do best to contribute to the project, by sitting down and staying out of the way. As this picture shows, it is a mess of wires up there, and while it all looked like so much spaghetti to me, it was child’s play to Mark. Thanks buddy, I appreciate your help!

Mark and Sue lived inLake Charles before they became fulltime RVers and have family here, but since they didn’t have any plans for Christmas Eve, the four of us went to the buffet at the L’Auberge du Lac Casino. It was beyond wonderful! They had about ten different kinds of shrimp, two or three kinds of crab, prime rib, turkey, and a half dozen more entrees, along with all kinds of sides, and a desert bar that I gained three pounds just walking past! 

Today we plan to drive about 225 miles to the Thousand Trails preserve in Columbus, Texas. We’ll stay there until the new issue of the Gypsy Journal is ready to pick up and we get it mailed out.

Wherever you are, I hope you are having a very, very Merry Christmas!

Thought For The Day – Don’t miss out on a blessing, just because it isn’t packaged the way you expected.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally