Well, another Gypsy Gathering rally has come and gone. Except for coffee and donuts, and lots of goodbye hugs this morning, the rally is over. In fact, quite a few people left yesterday after the last seminars ended. But those who stuck around enjoyed the final door prize drawings, and a lot of us enjoyed dancing to the music of One More Time. But I think we must all have been pretty worn out, because by 9 p.m. we were all headed back to our RVs.

Congratulations to Dan and Karen Silverwood, who won our Grand Prize, a free admission to any future Gypsy Gathering rally. And thanks once again to all of the folks who attended, and especially to all of our volunteers who work so hard to make these rallies a success.

It’s been a long week, and we’re worn out. To be honest, it’s one of the few times when my brain is just too foggy to write much. So instead, I thought I’d just share some candid rally photos my buddy Carey McGleish and some other folks provided, so those of you who weren’t at the rally can see all the fun you missed.

Here are our good friends, Bob and Molly Pinner, who sold the 50/50 drawing tickets at the rally. We had two 50/50 drawings, and both times the winners took home well over $200. Thanks for all your help, Bob and Molly.

We had a good lineup of vendors, including Dennis Haddix from Makarios RV and ChatRV.com. If you have not checked out Chat RV, it’s kind of like a Facebook for the RV world. Sign up today, its fun and it’s free!

Our dear friends Tom Owens, Diane Rojewski, and Alice Kyle, from the Final Exit Plan are faithful vendors and loyal supporters of the Gypsy Journal and our rallies.

This was the first time Pete Peterson from TrailerMate fifth wheel hitches attended one of our rallies as a vendor, but he said they had a good time and plan to come back again.

We had an unexpected VIP visitor yesterday when the Burger King dropped by to check out the RV really. Here he is with vendor Dave Damon, who sells 303 products, and whose wife Jean, is an excellent masseuse.

We got a lot of very good feedback on the computer boot camp and the six seminars presented by Jim and Chris Guld, the Geeks on Tour.

I never pass up an opportunity to hug a pretty lady. Here I am with Melissa Beahm, one half of the musical duo One More Time.

Speaking of pretty ladies, here are Nancy Beck, Edie Cox, and Linda Cheyfitz, who helped serve morning coffee and donuts.

Seeing old friends and making new ones are always the best parts of an RV rally. Here are Tina Allen and Carey McGleish enjoying each other’s company at our Wednesday night pizza party.

And here I am with another pretty lady, Miss Molly Pinner. There’s nothing better than a good looking woman with a handful of money!

As you can see, the pizza party drew quite a crowd, and everybody had plenty to eat.

And here I am with the prettiest lady of them all, my very own Miss Terry! Somebody said I looked grumpy in this photo. No, I’m just tired.

As you can see, there was a lot going on, and from a quick read of the rally feedback forms, it looks like most people were pretty pleased with the rally. If you were here with us, thanks for coming. And if you didn’t make it to this rally, hopefully we’ll see you at our Western Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma, Arizona March 8-12.

Thought For The Day – A good friend is like a good bra. Hard to find, supportive, comfortable, and always close to your heart!

Our Second Annual Eastern Gypsy Gathering is getting closer every day. As of now we have over 100 RVs registered, and every day more registrations are coming in. Things are happening fast, and I have lots of rally news to share with you.

At last year’s rally, husband and wife team Melissa and Larry Beahm of One More Time delighted the crowd with their concert, and a while back they wrote to ask if we’d like to have them back this year. Their concert is set for Wednesday evening, and I know you’re all going to love them.

However, as they say in those television infomercials, but wait, there’s more! Yesterday Melissa e-mailed to offer to do a second concert on Thursday evening, this one a combination of soft rock, jazz, blues, and a couple of original songs they’d like to showcase. The performance will include some Carole King, Frank Sinatra, James Taylor, Johnny Nash, and The Beatles. Sounds great, doesn’t it? I told Melissa we’d love to have them give us two performances.

These two are very talented, and a lot of fun, and all they ask for their great contribution to the rally is that we pass the hat for donations. Last year the crowd was very appreciative of their efforts, and very generous in showing them so, and I know this year will be more of the same.

We know how dangerous an overloaded RV can be, and how carrying too much weight can cause all sorts of mechanical problems, from early tire failure to broken shock absorbers and even axles. So one of the first things we plan to do at the rally is have the folks from the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) weigh our new to us Winnebago motorhome. The new rig has a pretty healthy cargo carrying capacity, but you can never be too safe, and it is an investment in our safety.

The RVSEF representatives will be doing two seminars at the rally on RV Weight Safety and RV Tire Safety, both on Tuesday morning, because they have other commitments and will have to leave the rally early to get to another event back here in Indiana. Usually they schedule RV weighing for after a rally, but this time around they will be weighing rigs as they arrive.

If you plan to have your RV weighed, please click the appropriate link and print out and complete the Motorhome Work Sheet or the Trailer Work Sheet. Then when you arrive, you can just hand it to the weighing crew and save everybody a lot of time. For weighing fees and information, or any questions, call Rick Lang at (207) 522-3336, or e-mail him at ricklang46@hotmail.com.   

If you have not signed up yet for the Geeks on Tour pre-rally Computer Boot Camp Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27, click this registration link and get that taken care of now. Everyone I know who has attended one of the Geeks’ Boot Camps has had nothing but praise for it, including Miss Terry.

The material in the Boot Camp is more advanced than most people expect.  The program is designed to fill in the holes in your computer knowledge, and I promise you that you will come away a much more informed computer user. I’ve always been the one who knew his way around a computer in our home on wheels, but after taking the Boot Camp last year, Miss Terry has found herself answering questions for me many times.

The cost of the Boot Camp is $99 per computer for one person or a couple. This does not include your camping fee, which will be paid directly to the Mercer County Fairgrounds. For more information on the Boot Camp, go to http://www.geeksontour.com/bootcamp/.

The two new seminars the Geeks on Tour will be presenting, Blogger: Beyond the Basics, and Picasa: Beyond the Basics are a Gypsy Gathering exclusive that you won’t find anywhere else. They will be primarily a question and answer format, and if you will send your questions to Chris Guld in advance, she says it will help her insure they get covered.

As you can see, there is a lot going on, and if you click the Rally Registration Page and scroll to the bottom to see the schedule, I think you’ll be impressed. We think it’s going to be a great rally, and I hope we see you there! 

Thought For The Day – We teach others how to treat us by how we treat ourselves.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

With all of the fun things we did while were in Muskegon, Michigan this last week, I never had the time to report on a visit from Gypsy Journal subscribers Paul and Dennise Ziaja, from Weslaco, Texas. Paul and Dennise were staying at the campground at the Elks lodge and when they read in the blog that we were at Fisherman’s Landing, they came over to say hello. We had a very nice visit, and Dennise told Terry about all of the good produce for sale at the Farmer’s Market, which we checked out the next day. It was great to have the time to chat for a while before they had to go run some errands.

I have been busy working on the seminar schedule for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, and it is a tough balancing act to get everything to fit. We have a great lineup of seminars, and I have a few new ones to tell you about. The Geeks on Tour, Chris and Jim Guld’s seminars are always popular, and they have offered to present a couple of extra seminars at the rally.

They are going to present both beginner and advanced seminars on writing an RV blog, basic and advanced seminars on managing digital photos with Picasa, a seminar on creating digital slide shows with Photo Story 3, and a seminar on Google Earth. That’s six seminars in all, besides their excellent Computer Boot Camp before the rally starts! When will they ever sleep? When will they ever feed their yappy little French Poodle? Where does it all end? Will they be offering late night computer classes for insomniacs? Stay tuned to find out!

One topic we get asked for all of the time is a seminar on cooking in an RV. Subscriber Vera Andrews is a home economist with 14 years teaching experience, and she has presented seminars at Escapade rallies in the past. Vera will be doing two seminars for us in Celina; Cooking on the Road, and Healthy Eating – The Why and The How. I have not added these new seminars to our Rally Registration Page yet, but check it out and factor these new offerings in and I think you’ll agree that we’ll have something for everyone.

As I said, it’s a juggling act to get everything to fit into the seminar schedule, and when some of our speakers learned that Joe and Vicki Kieva will be presenting their excellent Alaska, The Ultimate RV Adventure and RV Travel and Camping Tips seminars, they begged me not to put them up against these two powerhouse speakers. Either they did not want to compete with such well known speakers, or because they wanted to see the Kievas’ seminars themselves. But I’ll figure it all out, one way or another.

Okay, enough of that and on to other things. Early Tuesday morning a nasty thunderstorm hit Muskegon and lasted for an hour or two. We were wondering what kind of weather we’d have to travel in, but by daylight it had calmed down, though the sky was still heavily overcast.

We pulled out of Fisherman’s Landing campground at 12:30 and had an easy run south, with just one little rain sprinkle that only lasted about ten minutes. Traffic was light and we arrived back at our regular site at Elkhart Campground at 3:30 p.m. They have an Avion rally going on, and there are quite a few of the silver trailers here. I hope to get over and check some of them out today.

We’ll only be here a few days before heading to Bowling Green, Ohio for the FMCA rally, if they can find a vendor booth for us. Then our next stop will be Traverse City, Michigan for Miss Terry’s annual oncologist checkup. We’re having a busy summer!

Thought For The Day – Sometimes happiness comes through doors you didn’t even know you left open. 

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

We spent Saturday relaxing at Ray Behrens Corps of Engineers Campground. At least I did. Poor Miss Terry had several loads of laundry to catch up on, as well as cleaning up all of the mud and dirt tracked in during the Escapade at Sedalia.

I had a backlog of e-mail to catch up on, and worked my way through that, then entered some new subscriptions that had come in during the rally. We have very poor Verizon service on our cell phones and air card, only 1X Extended Network instead of the much faster EVDO service we get in most places.

We can get online and make calls, but we have to be patient to do so. I did a speed test, and our download speed is only 66 kbs, while upload is 28 kbs. That’s a little better then the dismal service we had in Kingman, Arizona back in March, but nowhere near the 1500 to 2200 kbs we had in Apache Junction and other places around the country.

If you have not been to a Corps of Engineers campground before, you have no idea what you are missing. They are some of the best values in the RV world. Our site at Ray Behrens Campground on Mark Twain Lake is typical of the other Corps parks we have visited, with the added plus of a full hookup site, which not all Corps campgrounds have. But every one we have visited has had huge sites, is super clean, and at a great price.

As these photos I took yesterday show, there is room for any size RV. With our 40 foot MCI bus conversion and extended length Ford cargo van in our paved site, we could still park another full size car or truck. We have neighbors in everything from tents to fifth wheel trailers, and lots of room between the sites so we don’t feel cramped. The restrooms are clean and the grass is carefully trimmed.

Yesterday, longtime Gypsy Journal readers Joy and Phil Brown stopped by to visit. They are in the area doing genealogical research, which is one of Joy’s passions, and it was nice to see them. Be sure to check out their Backroad Chronicles blog.

Also yesterday, our friends Bob and Molly Pinner pulled into the site across from us in their beautiful Monaco Dynasty motorhome, and we had a nice visit with them. Bob and Molly are a wonderful couple we have enjoyed meeting up with at our Gypsy Gathering rallies and other RV events across the country. Bob and Molly share their traveling adventures in their excellent Moon River And We blog.

Speaking of Gypsy Gathering rallies, several people have been asking me if Chris and Jim Guld of Geeks on Tour would be putting on their Computer Boot Camp at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally in September. I have confirmed with Chris that they are going to hold the Boot Camp, so visit their website or send them an e-mail for more details.

At last year’s rally the Boot Camp was so successful that they repeated it a second time. Miss Terry participated in the second session the Boot Camp, at the end of the rally, and learned a tremendous amount about how to get the most out of her computer.

Thought For The Day – The aging process could be slowed down dramatically if it had to work its way through Congress.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally