I think I’m probably one of the few men I know who wasn’t parked in front of the television yesterday, eating junk food and watching the Super Bowl. While I do love junk food, football just doesn’t do a thing for me. Just because I’m built like a football doesn’t mean I have to like it. Of course, I don’t watch baseball, hockey, golf, or any other organized sport either.

A few years ago we spent a few days at the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico, and one Sunday morning when I went up to the office to check out so we could go on to Arizona, everybody was amazed that we’d travel on Super Bowl Sunday. I probably further advanced their belief that I must not be a real red blooded American male, because I replied “No, I just had a big bowl of Frosted Flakes, I don’t have room for a sundae. Besides, it’s too early for ice cream.”

We did learn, however, that if you have to drive someplace on an interstate highway, Super Bowl Sunday is a good day for traveling. We pretty much had the road to ourselves all the way to Tucson.

Instead of watching the big football game, I spent yesterday working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal and fielding e-mails and telephone calls from people about our Gypsy Gathering rally next month.  

Our friend and former Life on Wheels co-instructor Russ Maxwell must not be a football fan either, because he stopped over for a visit during the early afternoon. Russ is a factory representative for Carefree Awnings, and will be presenting a seminar on the Care and Operation of RV Awnings at our rally.

Awnings are a great way to shade your RV during hot weather, and can add to your outdoor living space, but you can’t just roll them in and out whenever you want to and ignore them the rest of the time. Russ’ seminar will teach you how to properly care for and use your awning, and I learned a thing or two from him about the awnings on our Winnebago during yesterday’s visit.

Today will be more of the same. I have about a dozen pages to finish on the new issue so I can get it mailed up to our printer in Flagstaff, and I hope to get it sent out by Wednesday. That will give me time to get it back from the printer, and then catch my breath before we have Terry’s dad’s big 80^th birthday party on Saturday. 

Thought For The Day – The most secure investment you can make is in yourself.

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For a week or so now, we have been up early every morning, and that’s a habit we really need to break. It’s ruining my bad reputation. 

We left the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico a little after 9 a.m. and drove west on Interstate 10 to Lordsburg, where we stopped at the Flying J for fuel, and then took U.S. Highway 70, the Old West Highay,  northwest into Arizona. We had never traveled this route before, and it is a nice two lane road that is a more direct route to central Arizona that taking Interstate 10, which dips south first before going north toward Tucson and Phoenix.

There were a few hills, but nothing serious, and we had to slow down through small towns like Safford and Thatcher, but we made good time. When we entered the San Carlos Apache Reservation, it was like going into a Third World country. The small Indian communities we passed through were depressing places where the yards of the houses were littered with trash, and the people we passed didn’t look very friendly.

We had planned to stay at the RV park at the Apache Gold Casino, a few miles east of Globe, which would put us within about a 90 minute drive north to our daughter’s home in Show Low, perfect for a day trip. But when we arrived, the convenience store that is also the office for the RV park was closed for several days, and when I went inside the casino to inquire about an RV site, nobody seemed to know anything, or offer much help.

This attitude of indifference reminded me of what I had come to know as the norm on the White Mountain Apache Reservation, which is the neighbor to our old hometown of Show Low. The Apaches are never rude, they just let you know that you’re welcome to come to their casino and spend your money, or pay to fish in their lakes, but don’t expect much in the way of hospitality.

I finally found a security guard who told me that they were “probably” full, and even if we could find an open site, he had no idea if we could stay or not, or how much it would cost us. He did say we could dry camp a night or two for free out by the highway in several long spaces reserved for eighteen wheelers, but when I asked him about security in the area, he just shrugged. We just did not feel comfortable leaving the motorhome unattended there while we went to Show Low. I guess that’s a holdover from our burglary last month. We have no fear dry camping anywhere within reason, but leaving the rig like that, with no RV neighbors nearby, just didn’t feel good.

We were only about 70 miles from Apache Junction, where Terry’s parents live, and our ultimate destination, so we decided to just drive the rest of the way in and find an RV park where we can get a monthly space, and then drive the van to Show Low in a day or three.

There was a lot of road construction on U.S. Highway 60 between Globe to Miami that was pretty much stop and go  traffic, but once we got through that it was an easy drive the rest of the way. The Winnebago performed well coming through the mountains, and the 7% climbs and the trip back down into the Valley of the Sun was no problem with our Cummins diesel engine and exhaust brake. We arrived at the Elks lodge in Apache Junction and took a dry camping spot with several other RVs, and a beautiful  view out our windshield of the Superstition Mountains. 

Once we were settled in, we drove over to Terry’s parents’ house and had a nice reunion with them, and I  know they were sure happy to see her. It had been a long day, so when we left them, we stopped for a quick dinner and got back to the RV tired and ready for bed. Before we began our fulltime RV adventure, Arizona was our home, and it’s good to be back.

We have a lot of friends and subscribers who want to get together, and by the time we got back to the Elks lodge, I had eight e-mails from people wanting to get together today or tomorrow. We’ll try to do some visting once we get caught up a bit. But the next few days will be devoted to finding an RV park, washing a couple thousand miles of road grime off our Winnebago and van, and then family time. We’ll be in the Apache Junction area for over a month, and we’re looking forward to some down time.

Thought For The Day – Live in the possibility rather than the probability.

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We said a reluctant goodbye to Mike Steffen and left his place in Salt Flat, Texas a little after 9 a.m. yesterday morning, headed west on U.S. Highway 180. It’s always good to see our friends, and always hard to leave. But, the good thing about the RV lifestyle is that we can always go back and see them again. 

We made a brief stop at Cornudas, a wide spot in the road that has an interesting history. Cornudas started life as a stagecoach station, and today the “town” is owned by May Carson, a feisty lady who is the mayor, heads the water department, and owns the entire town.

May will serve you a great hamburger, and a piece of pecan pie to  die for, but if you give her any grief, she’ll show you the baseball bat she keeps behind the counter and let you know she means business. May is a character, as are most of her customers.

A while back May sold the town on eBay, but the deal went sour and she had to take it back, which made her many fans very happy. Cornudas is one of those places you have to stop at, just to say you’ve been there.

An hour after leaving Salt Flat, we got on the Loop 375, which took us through Fort Bliss and across the Franklin Mountains, past the National Border Patrol Museum. We did a story on the museum years ago, and I recommend it to anyone traveling through El Paso.

Loop 375, also called Transmountain Road, is a divided four lane road up an 8% grade over the mountains, and the Winnebago did fine. We were not setting any speed records, but we went up as fast as I wanted to, and I left our Allison transmission in fourth gear and let the exhaust brake carry us down to the other side safely.

Well, almost safely. As we were approaching Interstate 10, a jerk in an eighteen wheeler pulled out of a business on the left side and across the highway directly in front of us. I slammed on the brakes and managed to stop before we hit him, but it was darned close! I got on the CB radio and told him what a jerk he was, and that I hoped that when he got home, his mother ran out from under the porch and bit him, but he ignored me. He was a typical OPOP, which is a term I stole from one of our readers a few years back. It stands for Only Person On Planet, because idiots like that seem to think that nobody exists except them, and they’ll kill you to prove it.

After our blood pressure dropped back down to a reasonable level, we got on Interstate 10 only six miles from the New Mexico state line. The loop was a steep climb and descent, but a good road, and it sure beats the heck out of driving through El Paso on the interstate. There was about a mile long stretch where it was on surface streets after we left the military reservation, but it was an easy drive.

Except for slowing down for the Border Patrol checkpoint west of Las Cruces, we made good time, and arrived at the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming about 12:45. This is a regular stop for us when we travel west, because it’s right off the interstate, with easy access in and out.

We got parked and hooked up, and then ran to the post office to send out some orders that had come in over the weekend. Our good friend Deb Peters lives in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, about 90 miles away, and we had not seen her in a couple of years. Deb drove down to Deming and we had a nice dinner together, catching up on our lives since the last time we were together. It was a real treat to see her again.

We had thought about staying here a couple of nights, but for some reason we only have the slower National Access signal on our Verizon air card, even though our cell phones both show high speed EVDO signals. I took the air card out of our Cradlepoint router and put it in my computer and updated it, but it did not help our speed at all. We have a lot of online work to get done, and it’s frustrating to keep getting knocked offline, so we’ll see how the day goes. We may hang around, or we may get fed up and say the heck with it and hit the road. Tune in tomorrow to see what we decide.

Thought For The Day – Laughter is the medicine of life.

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Terry and I have been dry camping at Mike and Pam Steffen’s place in Salt Flat, Texas for a couple of days, swapping lies, playing with their herd of dogs, target shooting, and admiring the star filled sky above us at night. In another life, that would be called goofing off, but in the laid back RV lifestyle, it’s called….. okay, I guess it’s still goofing off. But what’s wrong with that?

Mike is a well known and respected RV columnist for Trailblazer magazine, and his work is also familiar to readers of MotorHome magazine, Trailer Life, Woodall’s, and most other RV publications. Mike has been presenting seminars at RV rallies for longer than Terry and I have even been RVers, and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years.

Salt Flat is located on U.S. Highway 180, about 60 miles east of El Paso, and seventeen miles from nowhere. To get to Mike and Pam’s place, you turn north at the cattle guard, drive eleventeen miles down a dirt road, cross a couple of dry washes, take a right at the scorpion crossing, bear left at the pile of cow flop, and then drive for six days and nights. Eventually a wild menagerie of friendly dogs will run out to greet you, and you’re there. Do you get the picture?

This is rustic dry camping. Our Verizon cell phones and air card don’t work way out here, but we arrived with a full tank of fresh water, a full propane tank, empty waste tanks, and our Onan QuietDiesel generator gives us all the power we need. Mike and Pam are so far off the grid that they’re not even in the same galaxy. But, that doesn’t mean that they’re roughing it. When the sun hides behind the clouds and his large array of solar panels doesn’t work, Mike ties a key onto a kite string and pulls power right out of the sky, and if that doesn’t work, all he has to do is harness a couple dozen of his dogs and put them on a treadmill and they’ll crank out some power!

Okay, so it’s not a four star RV resort, but how many of them have a private shooting range where I can play with my toys? Not many! Yesterday I hauled a couple that I had not tried out yet across the yard to Mike’s range and put them through their paces, and after I got a bit familiar with them, I even managed to impress myself.

I love dogs, and this is a great place to get a puppy fix. Mike and Pam have a bunch of lovable mutts, and not a poodle in the lot! I have been licked, nuzzled, and snuggled enough to hold me over for a couple of months, and I’ve scratched behind enough canine ears to send a battalion of fleas across the border into Mexico.

As you can see, we’ve had a great time here, but today we’ll get back on the road and head for the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico. Coming across west Texas on Interstate 10, I fell in love with the big 350 Cummins engine in our Winnebago all over again. It just eats up hills and doesn’t even seem to notice. Today will be its first real test. We’ll avoid all of the traffic in El Paso by taking the 375 Loop through Fort Bliss and over the Franklin Mountains to Interstate 10, just south of the New Mexico state line. Called Transmountain Drive as it crosses through Franklin Mountains State Park, the road has some pretty steep climbs and descents. We came over it in a gas powered motorhome years ago, but we never attempted it in our old bus conversion. I don’t think it’ll be a problem with this rig.

On another note, we have received e-mails from several Gypsy Journal subscribers complaining that pages 7 and 30 of the new issue are unreadable due to a problem with the printing process. If you get a bad paper, please e-mail me, and we’ll send you a replacement.

Thought For The Day – Each of us has our own individual Heaven and Hell.

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We spent two nights at Mike and Pam Steffen’s place in Salt Flat, Texas, enjoying their hospitality, scratching their dogs’ ears, and telling lies. It was a nice visit.

We’ve known Mike and Pam ever since we started fulltiming almost ten years ago. In our first month on the road we attended Life on Wheels in Moscow, Idaho, and Mike was an instructor who we really clicked with. By the time the conference had ended, Mike was encouraging me to become an instructor. At the time, I told him there was no way I could ever get up in front of a classroom full of people and talk, and Mike assured me that I could do it. Who knew a few short years later I would be asked to join the Life on Wheels staff?

I actually was sort of drafted into presenting my first RV seminar at an Escapees Club rally in Lancaster, California just a few months later, and I was absolutely terrified. Mike was there, and told me “Just remember, Nick, these people don’t know you, and they don’t know anything about you. To them, you are the expert. They came to learn what you can teach them. Just get up there and be yourself. Hell, I like you, and they will too.” Well, that really helped. I got up on stage and did my thing, and by the time it was over I realized that I was having a great time. The rest, as they say, is history. Thanks for your friendship and support over the years, Mike.

We had a lot of fun with Mike and Pam, but poor Miss Terry didn’t fare as well as the rest of us. Their place is out in the middle of nowhere, about 70 miles east of El Paso, and they have a good sized chunk of land. Mike has a little shooting range on his property made of a dirt berm reinforced with tires as a bullet stop.

Sunday afternoon we were target shooting, and Terry was trying out one of Mike’s .40 semi-automatic pistols. On one of her shots, the bullet nicked the target, richocheted off one of the tires, and came back and hit her in the upper thigh. It had lost most of its velocity by then, and didn’t go through her blue jeans or penetrate the skin, but it did leave an ugly welt that split and a big bruise.

She’s fine, it just left her with a sore leg. It was just one of those freak accidents that happen, and we’re very thankful it was not worse. Mke picked up the bullet,which landed at Terry’s feet, and gave it to her as a souvenier.  

I told Terry that in the last couple of months, she was bitten by a tarpon in the Florida Keys, got dunked in the water in Aransas Pass, Texas, and now shot in the leg. And I’m supposed to be the clumsy one! Her Mom may not let her play with me any more.  

Yesterday we left Salt Flat and drove to El Paso on U.S. Highway 180/62, which is a nice two lane road that had several climbs that left me watching the temperature gauge carefully, but we made it fine. Coming into the El Paso area, we passed several miles of junk yards and run down industrial buildings, then cut across the edge of Fort Bliss (which is undergoing a massive building project) on State Route 375, picked up U.S, Highway 54 and eventually ended up on Interstate 10.

I have never liked El Paso, even when I lived there for a while as a kid, and every time we drive through it I am nervous until we get out of the heavy traffic and cross into New Mexico. There are some cities where the drivers just seem extra aggressive, and El Paso is one of them.

There is a State Welcome Center and rest area just across the state line, and we pulled in to have a sandwich and a short break. A sign at the rest area reminded us that we’re back in the Wild West.

Back on the road, in less than two hours we pulled into the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming. It was only about 1:30 p.m., and we had driven less than four hours. We could have pushed on further, but our next stop will be the Pinal County Fairgrounds in Casa Grande, where we will start getting things together for our Gypsy Gathering rally February 9-13. We will have water and electric hookups, and a dump station, but no sewer. Terry had some laundry she wanted to get caught up on before we get there, so Dreamcatcher makes a good stop. Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll be in Casa Grande tomorrow.

Thought For The Day – How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?

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