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.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

There is an ongoing thread on the Escapees Forum about the fact that Flying J truck stops are now charging RVers $5 to dump their holding tanks. Some of the people who have commented about Flying J’s new policy, as well as some who have written to me about it, are really ticked off, calling it corporate greed and vowing to buy their fuel elsewhere from now on. One fulltime RVer who e-mailed me said “I have bought fuel at Flying J for 8 years, used their dump stations, and spent the night many times. But I’ll go out of my way to avoid them from now on!”

Well, I don’t blame you, brother. The nerve of those guys! After years of giving you free camping and free dumping, now that the economy has changed and businesses are scrambling to cover their costs, let alone make a profit, you deserve to be able to continue to freeload. How dare they start charging you for the same things that commercial campgrounds have been charging for ever since they first opened!

I remember a similar thread last year before the Escapade rally in Sedalia, Missouri, when folks were complaining that barriers in the parking lot of the Sedalia Wal-Mart prevented RVers from entering to dry camp overnight, and there were comments about boycotting the store. 

Where is it written that a business has to give its customers anything for free! Good service, yes; a fair price, absolutely; but free camping and the free use of an RV dump station? I guess I missed that memo.

I served many years on my town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, and I remember codes requiring businesses to jump through a lot of hoops if they wanted to set up shop in our community. But I can’t ever remember demanding that a business give something away to customers.

For the most part, RVers are pretty special people, and I’m proud to count myself among their numbers. But every barrel has a few bad apples,including ours.

My friend Bill Joyce sent me a link to a blog post yesterday about Wild Horse Casino near Chandler, Arizona. It seems that in the past, RVers had abused the casino’s hospitality by setting up housekeeping for weeks, even months on end. That has changed, and now casino security is clamping down on the RV slobs who take unfair advantage of the casino’s free RV parking. I’m sure that there are some who feel this is unfair too. Probably the same jerks who caused the problem in the first place.

I just don’t get this idea that somebody owes us anything and we deserve to get it. I appreciate it when a business gives me a break, whether it be free camping, free dumping, or a discount on a purchase. But I don’t expect it, and I don’t demand it. And if a business has been generous in the past, but things change and they have to start charging me for a service that was free in the past, I certainly don’t feel offended, I don’t boycott them, and I don’t whine and complain. I appreciate the courtesies of the past, pay up and figure I’m still ahead because of prior savings,and continue to support them. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Bad Nick has been busy, by the way, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Our Tax Dollars At Work. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I want to know – therefore I go.

Terry and I have been very lucky in that our business has allowed us live our dreams and have a life that many people envy. We’ll never be rich, if you measure riches in terms of dollars, but we get to go where we want, see interesting things and beautiful places, and meet wonderful people.

We really don’t have the time to take on any other jobs, but I can’t help browsing through the pages of Workamper News and thinking “That might be fun to do!”

Last week while we were at the Escapade rally in Sedalia, Missouri, we talked to some friends who are going to be selling fireworks for a couple of weeks leading up to the Fourth of July. They gave me the name of their contact at the fireworks company, and I called just to see how it all works.

Basically, as the company representative explained it to me, they have specific locations arranged, sometimes a lot on a busy corner, sometimes part of a WalMart parking lot or some other high traffic business. The company sets up a tent and delivers a load of fireworks about the third week of June. The contracted dealers, many of whom are RVers, sell from the stand through July 5^th or 6^th, and then whatever inventory remains is returned to a nearby company warehouse. The dealer gets 20% of all of the money they take in.

I was told by some people that have experience in such things that different companies have different contracts, and some pay a guarantee plus commission. We have met several RVers who pick up extra money selling fireworks, Christmas trees, and pumpkins at roadside stands. It is hard work, you are expected to be open 12 hours a day for two weeks or more, and you are responsible for any theft. The tent must be lighted at night to prevent theft, and the dealer is expected to either use their RV generator to power the lights, or rent a generator.

How much you make depends on your location. At one spot the company had in Connecticut, the representative said we could expect to clear $4500. At another, in southern Michigan, I was told to expect to make about $3,000.

That sounded like a lot of money for just a couple of weeks’ work, until I crunched the numbers. The Michigan commitment would require us to spend a day or two receiving the inventory and getting it set up, 15 days of sales, and then at least another day to pack all of the inventory up and get it back to the warehouse.

Just the 15 days of sales, at 12 hours a day per person for the two of us was a deal breaker. That is $200 a day, or $100 each. $100 divided by 12 hours is $8.33 an hour. And that does not include the time involved in receiving and setting up the inventory, fuel for a generator to light the tent at night, rental of a credit card machine and cash register, as well as a few other expenses the job required, or the time to pack everything up and take it back to the warehouse. It also did not factor in the loss due to theft, or heaven forbid, if we got robbed.

Even if we would have been willing to invest the time, that is when our next issue of the Gypsy Journal is due to be printed and mailed, so we would not have had the time anyway.

I’m curious if any of you blog readers have sold fireworks, Christmas trees or pumpkins, and how it worked out for you. Care to share your experiences?

Thought For The Day – Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday started out windy here in Show Low, Arizona, but by noon it had calmed down quite a bit. My daughter Tiffany and her family stopped by for a visit in the early afternoon, and it’s always a treat to spend time with them.

My son-in-law, Jim, crawled under our Ford van to unbolt the winch we had mounted between our bucket seats to pull my motorcycle inside the van. With the bike gone, the winch was in the way, and Jim can use it on his ATV, so I told him if he’d remove it, he could have it. Jim also replaced a leaky gasket on the cap of the power steering reservoir on our bus, getting himself nice and dirty in the process.

Meanwhile, our two granddaughters, Hailey and Destiny, kept Terry and their mom busy, turning over rocks to look for bugs and taking a walk down to the playground here at Show Low Lake Campground.

Later in the evening we went to Tiffany and Jim’s house for a delicious pasta dinner Miss Terry made. My granddaughters have an endless supply of energy, and they just love crawling over their Grandpa. They are always coming up with something, including decorating me with their little plastic hair clips. The things I do to entertain those girls!

We have had a great time visiting our family and friends here in our old hometown, but Terry and I are both getting a bad case of hitch itch, and we’re looking forward to getting back on the road in a little over a week.

I’ve been looking at routes we can take to Sedalia, Missouri for the Escapade rally, and though we can get there in two or three days if we push it and take the interstates all the way, what fun is that? I think we’ll take Interstate 40 as far as Tucumcari, New Mexico, and then follow U.S. Highway 54 across the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and into Kansas.

U.S. 54 will actually take us across Kansas and into Missouri, within an hour or so of Sedalia. But, depending on our schedule, we may detour north toward Kansas City for a visit with Terry’s cousin Carolyn Henley and her husband Mel on the way. I have been doing some researching on the internet and have found several places I’d like to stop along the way to gather stories for the Gypsy Journal.

Whenever we can, we always prefer following the U.S. Highways and two lane roads in our travels. They are never as fast as the superslab, but we enjoy the slower pace, and that’s where we have found the real America.

Let’s face it, a Denny’s restaurant in Flagstaff, Arizona and a Denny’s in Toledo, Ohio are pretty much the same. My late friend Dave Baleria referred to it as Generica, the one size fits all cookie cutter land of corporate franchises that you can find at every interstate highway off ramp in the country.

We much prefer the small town diners and Mom and Pop businesses we find on the back roads. If you have lunch in any small town diner in America and do a little eavesdropping, by the time you finish your dessert, you’ll know who’s cheating on who, who just got their pickup truck repossesed, and who’s kid just got expelled from school.

And besides, the blueberry pie always tastes better in those places than the cardboard fare they serve in the chain restaurants!

Thought For The Day – Lead your life so you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

For whatever reason, once we were parked at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds Tuesday after driving to Albuquerque from Show Low, Arizona, I just could not get to sleep. I tossed and turned all night long, and I think I managed about two or three hours of sleep at the most.

Since we arrived at the fairgrounds after normal parking hours and dry camped in the parking lot, we had to be up early yesterday morning, because the fellow in charge of the parking crew had said he’d be at our rig bright and early to get us moved into our assigned space.

So I rolled out of bed a little after 7:30 a.m., which is long before my normal time, and then you have to consider that our bodies are still on Arizona time, which is an hour later. Needles to say, I was kind of fuzzy headed most of the day yesterday. Yes, even more so than usual!

This place is filling up fast as people arrive for the Affinity rally, and we have run into several people we know, including Tim and Crystal Ryerson, from Inflatable Boats 4 Less, as well as Tim and Sue Daugherty from Sky Med, and Chris and Charles Yust, who represent Good Sam’s Roadside Assistance plan. All of these folks have been vendors at our Gypsy Gathering rallies, as well as Gary and Cheryl Green, who are also parked nearby. Cheryl is a representative for Creative Memories scrapbooking supplies. It was fun visiting with everybody, and just to make the party merrier, Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour arrived and are parked right behind us! We’re all just one big happy family out here on the road.

We have made so many wonderful friendships among the RVing community, and if it is possible, even closer relationships among some of the vendors we see at rallies all over the country.

Another vendor couple we have been close with for years is also here, Jack and Doreen Ingle, from AON Recreational Insurance, which has just undergone a name change and is now called PoliSeek Recreational Insurance. We met Jack and Doreen at our very first RV rally, an Escapade in Lancaster, California, during our first few weeks on the road, and we’ve been pals ever since. Like I said, one big happy family.

Since we’ve been at an RV site with just electric power for the last couple of weeks, with no water or sewer connection, our laundry had piled up. Miss Terry said it was time to either go shopping for a new wardrobe, or wash the ones we have now. So after we were parked in our designated site, we checked out the vending area, and then found a nearby laundromat. Terry much prefers to use the apartment size washer and dryer we have in our bus instead of going out to do this chore, but sometimes that doesn’t work out. We were lucky and found a very clean laundromat where all of the washers and dryers worked, which isn’t always the case.

Back at the fairgrounds, several of us got together for dinner at a Chinese buffet somebody had located, and when we returned from dinner, Jim and Chris Guld came over so Jim could resolve some issues Terry was having with her computer. I don’t know what we ever did without our mobile computer geek buddies! Chris has helped me with getting my two blogs up and running, and whenever I have a hardware issue, I call Jim. If you have not been to one of their seminars yet, be sure you do at your next RV rally. They really know their stuff, and make learning complex things easy and fun.

By the time Jim had things taken care of on Terry’s computer, it was 10:30 p.m. and we were both tired. But we still had to make the bed, and I had to get this blog and the Todays Hero Blog posts ready to go. I’ll tell you what, the bed sure looked nice by the time we were finally ready to turn in!

Thought For The Day – If raising children was going to be easy, it never would have started with something called labor!

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally