It’s getting close to that time of year again. The leaves are already beginning to turn in some places up north, and before we know it, the snowbirds will start migrating south for the winter.

If you follow the seasons, and will be away from your summer address for the winter, please don’t forget to send us a note or an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net giving us your winter address, so your Gypsy Journal subscription will get to you. Unless you pay for the first class postage upgrade to your subscription, the post office will not forward the paper. 

We spent yesterday printing more of our RV guides and making CDs to stock the inventory at our vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show, where we will be working eleven hours a day for the next few days.

We took a break for a while to visit with Russ and Patty Frady, longtime subscribers who stopped in for a quick visit. Russ took a bundle of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal to pass out at campgrounds in their travels. We appreciate them helping to spread the word.

Did I mention that there are a lot of geese here at the Hershey Thousand Trails campground? They’re everywhere, and while they are pretty, they are filthy, obnoxious critters. As I wrote before, this isn’t a place to walk around barefoot!

I didn’t have space in yesterday’s blog to tell you about our stop at Bird In Hand, another Amish town in Lancaster County. The Old Village Store sells an interesting collection of traditional Amish goods, tourist souvenirs, and antiques.

On the store’s crowded shelves, and upstairs in the antiques showroom, you can find flyswatters, Bag Balm, kitchen tools, Amish hats and shawls, recipe books, toys, and furniture that was old when your grandparents were kids.

You can even buy pumpkins and squash!

A couple of blog readers wrote to ask me what a “chocolate fountain” is, which I mentioned when I wrote about our dinner at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord. Well, it’s just what it sounds like, a fountain of warm melted chocolate cascading down from the top. People skewer strawberries, banana chunks and such, and dip them under the flowing chocolate for a delicious treat. Think of it as a vertical chocolate fondue, if you will.

We were originally scheduled to be a part of the Trade Days at the Hershey RV Show, which were Monday and Tuesday, but we skipped them to go sightseeing. I’m glad we did, because Al Hesselbart, from the RV Hall of Fame Museum, has been there, and he said it was dead. Al said that at one point yesterday afternoon, the vendors were playing frisbee football in the show aisles because they were bored and had not had any customers all day long. I like Al, but Miss Terry’s a lot prettier, and  I’d much rather spend time exploring the back roads with her than staring at him all day long!

Today the show opens to the public, and  I guess you could say that we’re cautiously optimistic. We have worked a lot of RV rallies, but this will be our first experience vending at an RV show, and we’re not sure how it will work out. We’re looking forward to seeing a lot of new people and introducing them to the Gypsy Journal, and hopefully some of them will like what they see well enough to subscribe. It’s going to be an interesting week.

When I took a break from the computer yesterday, Bad Nick  grabbed the keyboard and wrote a new Bad Nick Blog titled Let Them Serve! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

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I always enjoy talking to new RVers or wannabes about the fulltime lifestyle, and hopefully, I can help them avoid some of the mistakes we made as greenhorns by sharing our experiences with them. But sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall, and I want to ask them “Do you want me to tell you what I know, or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?”

A couple of weeks ago, at a fuel island, I had a conversation with the fellow next to us, who was driving a fancy new diesel pusher. He told me that he and his wife have been fulltiming for several months now, and that they are about to throw in the towel because it’s just too expensive. “How can anybody afford to pay $1,000 to $1,500 a month on campgrounds and still put fuel in the tank?” he asked me.

I told him that I don’t know anybody who spends even half that much on campgrounds, and he asked me how we do it. I told him about all of the ways we save money on camping fees, from free campgrounds, to discount programs like Passport America, camping at Elks and Moose lodges, fairgrounds camping, and boondocking.

“My wife would never do any of that,” he said. “We joined Passport America, but we pulled into one campground and she said “No way” and we drove right back out. We have never boondocked, she wouldn’t stand for it. We only stay at four star rated RV parks, because she doesn’t like the looks of the people at other places. It’s costing us a fortune, but what else can we do?”

I felt like telling him that his wife needed a lesson in reality, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. It was obvious that she wanted nothing to do with the RV lifestyle, and that she fully intended to have a miserable time of it until she finally made him miserable enough to give in and go do whatever she wanted to do instead.

This can be a very affordable lifestyle, if one takes the time to learn about the many ways you can keep camping costs low. But, one has to be willing to settle for less than upscale RV “resorts” (and there are a lot of excellent campgrounds that don’t get a four star rating), and flexibility is also a major asset to have. But some people, like this lady, just will not be happy living the gypsy lifestyle, and that’s fine too. It leaves more opportunities for the rest of us.

I also had an interesting conversation with a couple while I was doing some genealogy research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City a while back, but I really had to bite my tongue to keep from bursting their bubble. They noticed my Gypsy Journal t-shirt, struck up a conversation, and told me they had just purchased a new diesel pusher, and would be taking delivery in three days.

I congratulated them, and the husband told me that they looked at a lot of RVs, both new and used, and decided to go with a new motorhome because, while they don’t plan to become fulltime RVers, they will be traveling six to eight months a year. “We just don’t want to mess with repairs and stuff,” he told me. “With a new motorhome, all we’ll have to do is turn the key and go the day we pick it up, and not have to worry about anything being broken.”

I told him that he might want to be prepared to spend some time going back to the dealer once they take delivery, because every new RV that hits the street seems to need a certain amount of time to get the bugs worked out of it. I told him that many experienced RVers seem to feel that once you buy a new rig, it takes at least six months just to get all of the stuff fixed that should have been handled before it left the factory.

“No way,” he told me, “That’s why we bought a new diesel pusher. With the money we’re spending, I guarantee you that it will be ready to roll the day we take delivery.”

What could I do, except nod, wish them well, and also secretly wish I that could be a fly on the wall of that new motorhome about a month or two down the road, to see how their thinking would have changed.

Thought For The Day – A father is a guy who has snapshots in his wallet where his money used to be.

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Many people have asked me how I come up with something new to write about every day in the blog. Usually it’s no problem; I write about our travels when we’re on the move, and about the RV lifestyle in general when we’re stationary for  awhile. And sometimes I stumble across something totally unexpected I want to share with my readers. Yesterday was such a day.

When I drove into downtown Salt Lake City to do some more genealogy research at the Family History Library yesterday, there was a crowd of people, a contingent of Utah Highway patrol Officers,  a horse drawn hearse, and several news crews across the street from the library.

As it turns out, it was the funeral for world famous artist Arnold Friberg, who died Thursday, at the age of 96. Friberg was known for his patriotic and religious paintings. His work also included the posters for the Cecil B. DeMille movie The Ten Commandments, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award; paintings depicting scenes from the Book of Mormon;  and his masterpiece work Prayer At Valley Forge, portraying George Washington kneeling next to his horse, praying for guidance during the darkest days of the American Revolution.

Fribeg was also famous for over 300 paintings he created to honor the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and he was a beloved friend to the Mounties. A squad of Mounties, in their trademark dress uniform known as the Red Serge, the scarlet tunic, worn with the flat brimmed Stetson hat and high boots, were on hand to escort his hearse to a nearby cemetery.

A squad of Mounties in full dress uniform is something very few people ever see in the United States. The Mounties’ everyday working uniform is a grey shirt with dark blue tie, blue trousers, ankle length patrol boots  and a regular policeman’s style cap. The Red Serge is worn only for special formal occasions. A news reporter at the scene said Friberg loved pomp and ceremony, and his funeral certainly provided that, in a grand way.

After watching the Mounties march off behind the hearse, I went up to the second floor of the Family History library, where they have a large bank of computers where visitors can do their research. These computers are hooked up to just about every online genealogy resource that exists. It would cost a person a small fortune to subscribe to all of these websites and services, but it’s all free here.

Half of the second floor has aisle after aisle of cabinets filled with microfilms that contain records for millions of people.

Each box contains a separate filmstrip, and each strip has hundreds, some even thousands, of pieces of data. Everything from court records, to birth, wedding and death records, newspaper items, land records and deeds, and much, much more.

In this age of computers and internet access, I had forgotten a lesson from my early newspaper days that I was reminded of in a big way yesterday. When you are sitting at a viewer, cranking through page after page of microfilm to get to what you are looking for, you can very easily get what can best be described as a form of motion sickness as the images fly past your eyes. Some people experience the same thing when trying to read a book or newspaper while riding in a car. After about three hours, I was so nauseated, and had such a headache, that I had to give up for the day.  When I go back next week, I’ll pace myself better so that doesn’t happen again!

Back at the RV park, I picked up Terry and we went to two different Joann Fabrics stores to get enough of a particular yarn she needed to finish a project she is working on, then we had dinner and went home to a quiet evening.

Today we have some visitors coming by, and then we may drive over to check out the Great Salt Lake. Or, if it’s too hot, we may just stay home and enjoy the air conditioning.

Thought For The Day -  Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

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How’s that for a headline that grabs you? My old college journalism instructor would be so proud! I bet you’re wondering how I can tie those two things together, aren’t you? Well, keep on reading.

After a quick run to the post office and bank, we left the Gilroy, California Elks lodge at 10 a.m. yesterday morning and traveled east on State Route 152, which started out as a two lane road for the first 13 miles, and then became four lanes as it wound its way around golden hillsides and the sparkling blue waters of the massive San Luis Reservoir.

There was a pretty stiff wind coming out of the southwest. Not enough to make driving hazardous, but it did make whitecaps on the water in some places. There was a lot of traffic but we moved right along.  It took us an hour to cover the 44 miles between Gilroy and Interstate 5, where we headed north.

After a quick stop at the Flying J in Lodi for fuel, we continued north to Sacramento, where we got onto Interstate 80, eastbound. Traffic in Sacramento and for miles on both sides was busy, but moving well, so we had no delays.

As we began the long climb into the Sierra Nevada mountains, the golden grass covered hills of central California gave way to a thick conifer forest that crowded in close to the highway on both sides. (One down, one to go.)

The highway was divided three lanes for quite a distance, then dropped done to two lanes, with occasional truck lanes added on the steeper climbs. Some sections of the interstate were pretty good, but in others the pavement was so rough that it almost rattled the fillings out of my teeth.

The countryside was beautiful, and even though it was 87 degrees outside, in some places, there were still piles of snow on the ground, and a few mountaintops still had snow on them. I didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked, because the road has a lot of twists and turns and there was a lot of traffic, so there was no time for sightseeing.

About 3:15 we stopped at Truckee to tour the Emigrant Trail Museum at Donner Memorial State Park. I had called ahead to ask if the parking lot could accommodate a 40 foot diesel pusher towing an extended length van and the ranger assured me it was no problem, they had big rigs in and out all day. The ranger lied.

We arrived to find a rather small parking lot filled with cars. Not only couldn’t we park hooked up, we couldn’t even get out while the van was still hooked up! So we unhooked, I parked the Winnebago off to the side, and the van in a regular parking space, and we went in to tour the museum, which is dedicated to the ill fated Donner Party, pioneers who were stranded in what is now Truckee, in the winter of 1846.

Admission to the small museum was $8 per vehicle, and it took a few minutes of discussion with the ranger on duty not to have to pay for two separate vehicles because we had unhooked the van, but we got that done, and then toured the museum, with artifacts from pioneer days, and watched a 20 minute video on the Donner Party.

Their story is tragic, but also glaringly shows what can happen when people who are not prepared set off into the wilderness, be it 164 years ago, or today.  There were 87 people in the wagon train, 42 of them children. When they ignored warnings to turn back, because it was too late in the year and the mountain crossing was hazardous, they sealed their own fate. What ensued was a story of survival at its most desperate. By the time their ordeal was over, only 41 were still alive, the dead including 14 children. When the rescue party finally reached them, they were horrified to learn that some of the the survivors had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive! (Two for two!)

Today a striking monument of a pioneer family stands outside the museum, to honor those who perished here, and those who survived, as well as the other brave pioneers who settled the West.

We were delayed leaving the museum, because one of our inside duals was very low on air, but I’m running long now, so I’ll tell you about that adventure tomorrow.

But leave we did, and we ran right into a short but nasty thunderstorm as we made our way down the eastern slope of the Sierras. We pulled into Boomtown Casino at Verdi, Nevada about 6:30 and had a mediocre dinner at Denny’s, then came outside just in time to see this beautiful sunset.

We boondocked at the casino overnight, and today we’ll push on east. We covered 288 miles yesterday, and have another 520 to go before we get to Salt Lake City, Utah on Thursday. We’ll have a couple of easy days driving ahead of us, and then we’ll squat down for a week or so.

Thought For The Day – Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.

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I received an e-mail yesterday from a couple who are investigating the fulltime RV lifestyle. They will both be retiring within the next eighteen months, and though they have never owned an RV, they camped in tents when their kids were little, and they said they love traveling. They are looking at different types of RVs, and are favoring a diesel pusher in the 40 foot range. Their question was, how many fulltime RVers jumped right into the lifestyle with both feet, never having owned an RV before?

We know fulltimers who have done just that, and we know others whose evolution into fulltiming was a long process, starting with tents or tent campers, and moving up through the ranks with small Class C motorhomes or travel trailers, and up to larger Class A motorhomes or fifth wheel trailers. We all seem to have taken our own path on the journey to fulltiming.

In our case, I started out with a sleeping bag thrown into a bare bones camper shell mounted on the back of a pickup truck, moved up to a larger pickup camper, then a small Class C motorhome, and a conversion van somewhere along the way. These were all during my working and child raising years, when money and time were both hard to come by. They were used just for weekend outings and a couple of short trips lasting a week or so.

When Miss Terry’s kids were tiny, she took them camping a few times, and owned a Volkswagen camper van for a while. Her folks own a Class A motorhome and fulltimed for several years, but Terry never traveled with them in it.

We started fulltiming in a Class A gas motorhome, then built our own MCI bus conversion, and last year we upgraded to a Winnebago Ultimate Advantage diesel pusher.

Our friends Orv and Nancy Hazelton started out tent camping on their honeymoon, and then had a small Class C motorhome for years. They are currently fulltiming in an Allegro Class A motorhome, and have a brand new Tiffin diesel pusher on order.

Dennis and Carol Hill, from the RV Driving School, have owned everything from pull behinds to motorhomes, in just about every configuration you can imagine. They currently live and travel in a Tiffin Phaeton diesel pusher.

Greg and Jan White, on the other hand, had never traveled in an RV before they rented a Class C for a three week trip in early 2007 that included attending Life on Wheels in Tucson, Arizona. A few months later they purchased an American Eagle diesel pusher and hit the road.

As you can see, there is no one right way to start out. My advice to these folks was to attend the RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green Kentucky June 3-6, our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally in Elkhart, Indiana August 30 to September 3, and the Escapees Boot Camp for new and wannabe RVers, followed by the Escapade Rally September 12-17. Between all of the seminars offered at these events, and the opportunity to interact with both new and veteran RVers,  they will come away with a darned good foundation upon which to build their new fulltiming life.

So, how about you? Was your evolution into fulltime RVing or extended RV traveling a slow process, as you worked your way through a series of RVs, or did you jump right in with both feet, buying a rig and hitting the road?

Thought For The Day -  Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

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