As massive storms moved across much of the country yesterday,  we spent the day and evening monitoring the weather. This area of Tennessee was under a tornado watch, and we were braced for whatever Mother Nature decided to throw at us.

We’ve been in some really nasty weather in our 12+ years on the road, and we take it seriously. RVs don’t provide much protection against severe weather, and to ignore warnings is just plain foolish. We knew that the bathroom on the west side of the campground is the designated tornado shelter, and we were prepared to head there on a moment’s notice. We were glad that we weren’t out on the road someplace, or sitting out the weather in a rest area or WalMart parking lot. We’ve done that, too!

I post this blog a little after midnight local time, and we were still under the tornado watch at that time, so if you don’t see a blog post tomorrow, it may be because we were blown away to the Land of Oz. If we do, and if we land on a witch like Dorothy did, I hope it’s one of my ex-mothers-in-law!

We enjoy this area of Tennessee, but we are looking forward to getting down to Florida, so we will probably leave here Thursday or Friday. The most direct route is to take Interstate 75 south, but we’ve been over that route so many times that we could drive it in our sleep. Plus, we really don’t like driving through Atlanta.

So, for a change of scenery, we may take Interstate 40 east from Knoxville to Asheville, North Carolina, and then Interstate 26 across South Carolina to Interstate 95, which will take us south to Titusville.  The mileage is about the same as taking Interstate 75, and we’ll pass through some areas we haven’t been to before.  

During the afternoon, our friends Vince and Judy Douglas pulled in, and parked right across from us. It has been several years since we crossed paths, so when Vince and his little dog Lady came by to visit, it was a nice treat. I don’t like yappy little dogs, but I do like dogs of any size that are well mannered and have a good personality. And Lady has a great personality! I played with her for an hour or so as we chatted with Vince, and that little critter sure has a lot of energy! It was kind of like having my grandkids over; I enjoyed the visit and had fun playing, but I was glad Vince took her with him when he left. I like loaner dogs like Lady rather than having the responsibility of caring for one myself.

Speaking of dogs, I exchanged e-mails yesterday with a lady who got upset with us at our first Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally because we wouldn’t allow her to bring her dog into the seminar buildings, or to morning coffee and donuts. Since then she has contacted us every year wanting to attend our Arizona rally, but insisting that her dog be allowed to accompany her to all of the events, because it suffers from separation anxiety when left alone, and destroys things in her RV. And, just as I have every year, I told her that only service animals are allowed in any of the buildings. It’s our policy at every rally, and our insurance company insists on it.

I guess this time I really ticked her off, because she informed me that she will be in the fairgrounds parking lot with a sign saying “Nick Russell Hates Animals!” Actually, I like some animals much better than I do their inconsiderate owners.

Before I close this blog, I want to tell you about a neat website that my friends Orv and Nancy Hazelton discovered, and shared with me, called Mile By Mile. It lists state and interstate highways in every state, as well as Canada and Mexico, with mile by mile descriptions of what you’ll see along the way. I know I’ll spend a lot of time exploring this one, and I bet you will too!

Bad Nick laughs in the face of bad weather! He spent part of yesterday posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Cruel And Unusual? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Go where you are celebrated, not tolerated.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

A few days ago we covered the reasons to consider upgrading your present RV rather than going into debt to buy a new (or newer) motorhome or fifth wheel trailer. But a few people have written to ask when you should consider the other option, of trading in your old rig for something new(er).

Terry and I were faced with that decision last year. For over eight years we lived and traveled in the 1976 MCI bus conversion that we had built ourselves, and we loved that old bus. It was built like a tank, we had unbelievable cargo carrying capacity, and we could carry anything that we could find room to cram into it. We built the bus for extended boondocking, with huge holding tanks, 540 watts of solar power, a large battery bank, and a top of the line pure sine wave inverter.

If we were snowbirds who only went out to Quartzsite to hang out in the winter, or if we were weekend warriors, the bus would have been our home on wheels forever. In fact, we expected it to be.

However, our needs and our traveling style changed over the years, and at the same time, the bus was beginning to need some major upgrades. We have done a lot of boondocking over the years; our longest stint was over seven months without being plugging into electrical power or water. We still don’t mind dry camping for a few days, but we have gotten to the point where we really enjoy being in a campground with full hookups.

We didn’t have slides in the bus, and as our two granddaughters have gotten older, it was getting really cramped when they visited us. We looked into having a living room slide installed, and the cost would have been over $10,000.

The 8V71 Detroit diesel was never a powerhouse, even new, and ours had a million miles on it, and it was getting older and slower every day. Climbing even moderate hills was presenting a real challenge, and the mountains out west were becoming impossible. We found ourselves not going places where we wanted go, because of the limitations of the bus. We were getting to the point where we were not enjoying traveling because we were always worried about a major breakdown.

Another problem was that it was getting harder and harder to find qualified diesel mechanics who knew enough about the old two stroke manually aspirated motors like we had. They are a dying breed. There are plenty of technicians who can plug an analyzer into a data port and tell you everything that is wrong with a modern diesel, but it takes an old school mechanic to understand the quirks of an old Detroit diesel.

We looked into replacing the motor, and the best quote we got for a factory rebuilt 8V92 turbo was $35,000 installed. However, the mechanic, someone who had done a lot of work on the bus for us in the past, and whom we trusted completely, said that our transmission would not hold up to the torque of the newer, more powerful engine. A used transmission would have set us back another $15,000. And then we’d still have cooling issues, so figure another $3,000 to $5,000 for two new radiators and the rest of a cooling system upgrade. Sam told us “You’ll still have a 35 year old bus with a non-electronic engine, that won’t be worth much more than half of what you’ll put into it.”

For us, it was time to step up to a newer coach. We found our 2002 Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, with 33,000 miles on it, for not much more than what we would have invested in upgrading the bus.

If we weren’t fulltimers, and if  I was a diesel mechanic, and if  I had the necessary tools and a place to do the work, I would have kept the bus and done the upgrades myself. But like my dad used to say, if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt.

So when is it time to trade your old RV in? For us, it was when the basic design no longer fit our needs, and when the cost of upgrading was 3/4 of what it cost to buy a much newer, more powerful motorhome that had more room and more advantages for us than keeping the old bus did.

Now that we have been in the Winnebago for over a year, and put 10,000+ miles on it, we are convinced that we made the right decision for us. Only you can decide which choice is right for your needs, your lifestyle, and your budget.

Thought For The Day – I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Readers have been asking me for an update on how we like our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, now that we have lived and traveled in it for almost six months, as compared to the MCI bus conversion we built and lived in for over eight years.

Overall, we are both very happy with the Winnebago, though we have had to make a few adjustments. We love having the extra room the bedroom and living room slides give us. However, we actually had more inside storage room in the bus, due to the extensive cabinetry that Miss Terry designed and built for it.

But, even though we had three huge bays underneath the bus, we still have more basement storage in the Winnebago than we did with the bus. The reason for that is that one entire bay of the bus was used for our holding tanks, which do not take up bay space in the Winnebago, and also because half of one bay in the bus held our house battery bank and inverter, and half of the third bay held our twin propane tanks, plus the fuel tank for our Onan gas generator.

We had a huge gray/black waste tank in the rear bay, and when we were parked in a campground with full hookups, we could turn a diverter valve and let the gray water run directly into the sewer, which meant we could go a long time without dumping the waste tank. In the Winnebago we have to dump the black tank about every seven days. We could probably stretch that if we were boondocking and being very careful, but the difference in tank capacity is really noticeable.

After our first night in the Winnebago, we could really tell the difference in insulation between the two rigs. We built a lot of insulation into the bus, and it was both quieter inside, and much warmer (or cooler, depending on the season), than the motorhome. But, the bus had a single rooftop air conditioner that was vented directly inside, which was much nosier when running than the ducted basement air conditioner in the Winnebago.

After driving across the country in the Winnebago, I don’t know how I lived with the tired old Detroit diesel in the bus for so long. These days I think nothing of cruising up long grades at 60 miles per hour, passing eighteen wheelers, instead of crawling along in the right lane with the radiator misters on at fifteen miles per hour, hoping some eighteen wheeler didn’t run over us. The Winnebago definitely has more power and gets better fuel mileage than the bus did, but I find that I don’t have as much confidence in the Winnebago’s exhaust brake as I did the Jake brake in the bus when going down steep grades.

Everything in life is a tradeoff. Terry misses the household style refrigerator, gas range with oven, and separate washer and dryer that we had in the bus. But, the larger kitchen area and the spacious bedroom/bathroom layout of the Winnebago is much more comfortable. She’s learning to live with the Winnebago’s microwave/convection oven, and the Splendide RV washer/dryer combo.

When you add in a lot of creature comforts and handy accessories, such as cruise control, automatic HWH leveling jacks, automatic Winegard rooftop TV dish, two gas furnaces, and a heat pump, for us the Winnebago comes out the winner.

Several readers have asked us if we will be at the Winnebago Grand National Rally in Forest City, Iowa in July, if we’ll be vendors, and if I’ll be presenting any of my seminars at the rally. The answers are yes, probably, and I don’t know. Yes, we plan to attend the rally, we’ll probably be vending (I haven’t registered yet), and I don’t know if I’ll be presenting any seminars. I haven’t been invited to do any, and the inquiry I sent was never answered. But if you are a Winnebago owner and will be at the rally, and would like me to do a seminar or two, why not give the folks in Forest City a shout or an e-mail? They have no idea who I am, since we have not had our coach that long, but if they see there is an interest, they might invite me to do a couple of seminars.

Speaking of RV seminars, while our schedule won’t allow us to be at the RVSEF RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky, June 3-6, Walter Cannon has come up with an excellent RV education program filled with great seminars. There is a 10% discount for anybody registering for the conference before March 1^st, so if you plan to attend, register now and save yourself some money on this excellent program. 

Thought For The Day – Virtue is the only true nobility.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Terry and I have spent most of our time inside the last few days, catching up on paperwork and working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal. It’s just as well, because it’s been too darned cold to do much outside. And looking at the weather forecast for the Elkhart area, it’s only going to get worse as time goes on. The highs for the next four days are only in the 40s, with overnight lows at or near freezing. Believe me, I’m working hard to get the paper finished and printed so we can hit the road!

I did take a break yesterday to go check on our bus conversion. Since it’s not plugged into power, which means the block heater isn’t on, I was worried that it might not want to start with this cold weather. But that faithful old Detroit diesel fired right up, blowing out a cloud of smoke that killed any mosquito larvae that might be hanging out waiting for next summer. In a modern coach, that much smoke on startup is a reason to worry, but not in the old diesels. It’s just how they are in cold weather, and once they warm up the smoke goes away. Bad Nick thinks it’s a great way to get even with rude campground neighbors with yappy little dogs.

The other day Al Hesselbart got the battery charged up on his vintage Newell and got it started, and as he drove past us, Terry and I grinned at each other and said “We know that brand of perfume!”

Greg and Jan White, readers from Texas who were at our rally in Ohio, are parked behind us at Elkhart Campground, and yesterday Greg invited us over for a demonstration of the Silverleaf VMSpc program for monitoring diesel engines. I was very impressed with the many options the program offers, and I’ll be adding one very soon. Fulltimer Norm Payne has a very good report on the Silverleaf that does an excellent job of explaining what it can do on his excellent  See Ya’ Down The Road website. Click the link for Silverleaf VMSpc Monitor link.

We have not had mail in a couple of weeks, and yesterday the postman brought us a big Priority Mail box from our mail service. It was late in the day by the time the mail arrived, and by the time Miss Terry got everything opened and made up a bank deposit, we knew we’d have to get every light green in time to make it to the bank before it closed. Which meant, of course, that instead, we got every red light! We made it to the bank a minute after they locked the doors! Grrrr!

Our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel have been in town getting some upgrades done to their Winnebago Journey DL motorhome, and hopefully everything will be wrapped up this morning and they’ll be on the road by noon. We wanted to get together one last time before that happened, so yesterday afternoon we had dinner at one of our favorite places, Texas Roadhouse. We’ve been together since just before we bought our Ultimate Advantage, and we are sorry to have to part company, but we know that we’ll cross paths again somewhere down the road. Hopefully someplace where it’s warmer!

Thought For The Day – To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others use your heart.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

By yesterday morning there were only a handful of RVs left at the Mercer County Fairgrounds, and several of those left by mid-day. Mike and Elaine Loscher were the first to pull out, headed for Elkhart, Indiana to get some service done on their Winnebago Class A motorhome.

Soon after Mike and Elaine left, Ron Speidel fired up the Caterpillar diesel engine in his Winnebago Journey motorhome, and while Ron and Brenda hooked up the Saturn they tow behind them, Larry and Carolyn Stover stopped to say goodbye before they headed on down the road with their Carriage fifth wheel.

Ron and Brenda have been with us for seven weeks now, first at Elkhart Campground and then at Celina, helping us get settled into our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, and then in Celina, doing 101 things before, during, and after our Gypsy Gathering rally to make sure it was a success. We couldn’t have done it without them, and we appreciate them more than we can ever say. Now it was time to say goodbye, as they headed off to begin their winter travels. There were lots of hugs and loving words as we said our goodbyes and saw our friends pull out.

Then it was time for Terry and I to take our leave. We had debated leaving the motorhome at the fairgrounds, and driving the van down to Lexington, Kentucky for my annual appointment at the V.A. hospital today. But at the last minute, we decided that we wanted to take our home with us and avoid a night in a hotel. While we were hooking up the van to our Blue Ox tow bar, Ken Barker came over to say goodbye. He and wife Billie were staying over another night at the fairgrounds in their gorgeous 1991 Safari motorhome. We had only met Ken and Billie once before, but we became so close to them this year that we look forward to our next time together.

It’s always sad to say goodbye, and in the fulltime RV lifestyle, we have a lot of goodbyes. But the good news is, we also have a lot of hellos in this lifestyle, and we know we’ll see all of our friends again somewhere down the road.

All that was left was a quick scan of our PressurePro tire monitoring system to make sure our tires were all properly inflated, and we pulled out of the fairgrounds and drove east on State Route 29, hooked up with U.S. Highway 33 and continued east, and in less than a half hour we were on Interstate 75, headed south.

It being Sunday, we chose to stay on Interstate 75 right through Cincinnati, rather than taking the longer I-275 bypass around the city. Traffic was light, and except for several stretches of road construction where we had to slow down to 45 miles per hour, we cruised along just fine. Before we knew it, we were crossing the Ohio River and were in Kentucky.

This was the first test for the Winnebago’s big 350 Cummins diesel engine on a familiar route. There are several hills south of the river, and we’ve taken this route in our old MCI bus conversion many times, towing the van. On a couple of the climbs, we used to have to get over in the right lane and let everybody pass us as the Detroit diesel chugged right along, pushing us up faithfully, if not quickly.

In the Winnebago, we got down to 48 miles per hour on one hill, and that was only because other traffic slowed us down. On the others, I was passing eighteen wheelers, just to see what the big Cummins engine could do. Normally I try to keep my speed between 55 and 62 miles per hour, if I can safely do so without getting run over by speeding trucks, but this trip I ran a bit over that most of the way, just to see how the new rig performed.

We arrived at Kentucky Horse Park Campground, on the north side of Lexington, and backed into the same site we had last year. I hooked up to water and electricity, and said a silent thank you to Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories when I glanced at the Electrical Management System (EMS) he installed at the rally, and saw that everything was fine. I know from experience that not all campground power is reliable, and the EMS in our bus conversion saved us from damage several times in the past.    

This was our fist solo trip in the Winnebago, and I have to say that we were both very pleased with its performance and ride. It has lots of power, holds the road great even in the curves, and is comfortable at every speed we’ll be driving at.  

Thought For The Day – Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem.