It was one year ago yesterday that we had the most frightening experience in our lives as fulltime RVers. Longtime readers may remember that it was on December 4, 2009 that we returned to our Winnebago, which was parked in the campground at an RV repair facility in Elkhart, Indiana, and came face to face with an armed burglar inside our motorhome.

By the time I realized what was happening, I was already out of our van and approaching the door of the RV, and he was pointing a gun at me. In the confrontation that followed, I managed to slam the RV’s door on his hand and disarmed the intruder. He got away, only to show up at a hospital three days later with seven broken bones in his wrist and hand.

As it turned out, he was a career criminal out on bail on other charges, and with outstanding warrants. He’s back in prison where he belongs, and will be for a long time, or until the next parole board believes his sob story about how he grew up poor and was victimized by life and the system.

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Besides some things that were missing, the intruder and whoever had been with him trashed the inside of our RV, throwing electronic components on the floor and stomping on them, slashing furniture, and ripping down window blinds.

A frustrating battle with our insurance company followed, but we finally prevailed, and were able to put our motorhome and our lives back together. Living well really is the best revenge.

What a difference a year makes! Back then, we spent the next week freezing our butts off in Indiana while repairs were made to our RV so we could leave. Now we’re in Florida, where a cold front is coming through, and temperatures are predicted to dip as low as 29 degrees in the next few days. So yes, we’ll be freezing our butts off again, but if that’s the worst that can happen, we can deal with it.

Our lives have gone on, and while we have put the burglary behind us, we still feel violated, and disgusted with a system that had let the creep out of prison early so he could prey on us and others. We don’t fear traveling in our RV, and we still dry camp frequently. Inside our motorhome, we feel secure, but Terry and I are both a little apprehensive when we return to our coach after dark, unless we’re parked in a campground we know.

We had a motion detector light installed at our door, and while we refuse to live in fear, we are not nearly as complacent as we had become. We realize that while what happened to us can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time, the odds against the average RVer ever having such an experience are very, very slim.  We still feel that this is the greatest lifestyle in the world, and every new day is an adventure, whether we’re camping in the desert of Arizona and listening to the coyotes singing us to sleep, or parked under a palm tree in Florida enjoying a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Thought For The Day – If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics are all wrong.

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Yesterday we had a quiet day at home. Sometimes we need one of those, just to get caught up on paperwork and household chores, to relax and enjoy each other’s company, and just decompress.

I updated the calendars on our RV website, motorcycle travel website, and self-publishing website, and added some events to the Small Town Festivals page on the RV website. Then I spent a couple of hours updating our mailing lists. 

I need to make some changes to Carlyle Lehman’s Focal Wood website, because several of the links are not working. I struggled with the links for over two hours, but whatever the reason, I couldn’t get them to work, no matter what I did. It’s time to call on my pal Greg White. I know it’s probably a simple thing that he can do in his sleep, because Greg’s a simple man.

I also watched one of our neighbors climb up the ladder on the back of her motorhome, wearing a pair of flip flops, and trip when the toe of one caught on the top step. She managed to catch herself, but I was afraid it was going to be time to call 911. I don’t trust RV ladders. We have had a couple of friends seriously injured using them in the past, and one friend who just bought a new high end coach discovered that at least some of the screws holding his  ladder in place were not secure. To climb up on one without proper footwear is just plain foolish!

In the late afternoon, Linda Spindle stopped by our motorhome and visited for a while. We saw Linda and her husband Dave when we were in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and now they are parked just a short distance across from us. Linda told us about a great place to buy fresh seafood in Gloucester, and we’ll definitely be stopping by there!

We spent the evening watching a movie about 1950s singer Buddy Holly, which we found interesting, because we visited the musician’s grave in Lubbock, Texas several years ago, and the site of the airplane crash that took his life a couple of months ago when we were in Iowa. Did you know that his name was actually spelled Holley, but a secretary at Decca records misspelled his name on a recording contract, and it stuck?

Today we don’t have any solid plans. We may do some exploring, taking in the local sights, and we have a couple of orders to mail out. We’re just enjoying a slow pace for a while. It’s a nice change from the hectic schedule we have kept for too long now.

Thought For The Day – Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.

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Yesterday was another gray, dreary day. The rain had stopped, but there was a heavy overcast, and it was downright chilly. We even broke out our little electric space heater. I’m not ready for winter yet!

Miss Terry knew just how to put a smile back on my face, she baked a batch of her decadently delicious made from scratch cinnamon rolls! Trust me, they taste ten times better than they look! There’s nothing better than fresh, hot cinnamon rolls and a cold glass of milk to start your day off right!

We spent much of the day not doing much, except answering e-mails and cruising the internet. Well, at least that’s what I did. Terry also did some laundry, put fresh sheets on the bed, washed dishes, and cleaned up all of the little messes I make and never notice.

About 3:30 in the afternoon we drove a few miles to Dutton, a wide spot in the road, to drop off some orders at the post office. This Thousand Trails preserve is several miles from anything, so while we were out we continued on to Gloucester to stock up on some things we needed at WalMart. 

The small town of Gloucester Courthouse is the county seat of Gloucester County, and we poked around town for a little while, stopping at a nice little bookstore and chatting with the owner. They have preserved the original county courthouse and several other historic buildings in a small park located in an island right in the middle of the main street through town.

During the Civil War, Union troops marched into Gloucester Courthouse searching for weapons they believed Confederate forces had hidden there. They only stayed two hours, and didn’t find any weapons, but they did seize a large number of horses, mules, and other livestock from local families before marching on.

A tall monument on the site honors the county’s Confederate war dead.

The back roads around here have all kinds of hidden treasures for us to discover. I could spend days just reading all of the historical markers alongside the roads, telling about early settlements, long forgotten plantations, military maneuvers, and such.

We stopped to take a picture of this old abandoned gas station. At one time, this was some entrepreneur’s pride and joy. I wonder what happened to that dream.

We love finding old places like this, whether they are still in use, or just old roadside relics. If you do too, you may enjoy a new website I discovered called LandmarkHunter.com. It is a sister website to BridgeHunter.com, another one where I can get lost for hours. Hey, I may not like driving over high bridges, but I sure do like looking at them!

We’re supposed to have sunny skies for the next few days, though it won’t get much warmer. But we’re going to try to get some sightseeing in while we can, and then I have to buckle down and get to work on the new issue of the paper.

Thought For The Day – Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

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As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, when we were in town on Wednesday, we spent some time at the National Museum of American History, which is one of the dozen or so museums that make up the Smithsonian in Washington. This is our favorite of them all.

We saw all kinds of interesting exhibits and famous things, including the original flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the siege of Baltimore in the War of 1812, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the Star-Spangled Banner, which became our country’s national anthem.  No photographs are allowed of the flag to protect it for future generations.

But I did get some pictures of a few other things you will recognize, including Archie and Edith Bunker’s chairs from the sitcom All In The Family.

And here’s some memorabilia from another favorite old television show, the jacket worn by the Fonz in Happy Days. Next to the jacket is country comedienne Minnie Pearl’s famous hat, complete with dangling price tag!

And for the ladies who like cooking shows, such as Miss Terry, they even have Julia Childs’ kitchen on display!

As well as the ruby slippers that Dorothy wore in The Wizard of Oz.

The museum’s collections include everything from musical instruments to coins, dresses worn by America’s First Ladies, weapons, computers, and anything else that tells the story of America and Americans.

We’re supposed to leave here Sunday, and our original plan was to go to the Thousand Trails campground in Gloucester, Virginia for a couple of weeks. But we have a new issue of the Gypsy Journal to get out, and I’m having trouble finding a newspaper printer in the area who uses the same size paper we do, and who can do the job at a price we can afford.

Newspapers don’t get printed at quick print type places, they require a specialized press that is about three times the size of your average motorhome, and cost about 100 times more. We really don’t want to go to the new size of newsprint, which is about two inches narrower and three inches shorter per page than our current format, but sooner or later we may be forced to.

So we’re up in the air right now as to our next move.  I have some feelers out to other newspaper printing plants in the region, because our only other option is to go all the way back to Elkhart to get printed at our regular printer in that area. We really don’t want to backtrack that far if we can help it.

The big storm that has been pounding the east coast certainly pounded us here at Cherry Hill Park in College Park, Maryland. We decided to just stay home yesterday and take a day off from playing tourist, but if the weather gives us a break, we’ll be back at it today. We only have a couple of days left here in the Washington D.C. area, and there is so much to see and do that we could never get to all of it. But, it sure is fun trying!

Bad Nick took advantage of the rainy day yesterday to write a new Bad Nick Blog titled Why Didn’t They Resist? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

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Yesterday we were up and out early, riding the Metro train back into Washington D.C. for more sightseeing. We had a great time, but playing tourist is darned hard work! After two days in a row, we are worn out!

We started the day by visiting the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where the nation’s money is printed. We saw displays on the history of currency, and a took a free tour that was very interesting.

Being an old newspaper man, I’ve spent a lot of time in print shops over the years. It’s one thing to watch newspapers rolling off a press, and something else entirely to watch money being churned out. But the pressmen seemed like pressmen in every shop I’ve been in, and not at all impressed that they were printing huge sums of money every day.

No photographs are allowed during the tour, but we could take pictures in the lobby and in the gift shop after the tour. Here is a stack of $1millon in $10 bills! That’s a lot of money!

You can even buy some shredded money to take home with you. I wonder how long it would take to paste this all back together again?

They also have a tall tube of shredded $100 bills and you can see how much money it would take to match your height. According to this, Miss Terry is about $1,491,000 tall, but I wouldn’t take a thousand times that for her!

Since I couldn’t convince the folks at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to give me any samples, we left and stopped in at the U.S. Forest Service headquarters, where we met this furry fellow.

We toured the Museum of American History during our last visit to Washington, but we couldn’t resist popping back in for a while, since we’re big history nuts. But I’ll save that for another day.

It started to rain, but we didn’t let that stop us as we walked several blocks to the National Museum of the American Indian. This was another very impressive place!

There were four floors of galleries devoted to Native American history, culture and folklore. Displays included everything from sculptures and artwork, to this beautifully beaded cradleboard.

There were exhibits on every major American Indian tribe, on Indian mythology, and on how today’s Indians live in the modern world but hold onto their traditional values and culture.

We left the museum about 4 p.m. and caught the Metro back to the College Park station, then took the bus to Cherry Hill Park. We timed it just right, because we only had about a two minute wait for the train, and the bus was waiting for us when we got off the train, so we were back at the campground by 5 p.m.

The weather reports are for heavy rains today, with as much as four inches predicted within the next 24 hours. The rain is supposed to be accompanied by strong winds; the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole. If it’s going to be that nasty, we’ll probably batten down the hatches and just sit tight today. Besides, after two hard days of playing tourist, we need a break!

Thought For The Day – I’m not a complete idiot, some parts are missing.

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