In our many years on the road, we have met a lot of people who travel with pets. Most have been your run of the mill dogs and cats, with an occasional oddity thrown in, like one couple we met who fulltime with two Amazon parrots. We have also heard of RVers who travel with ferrets, and even a snake or two. I try to avoid anybody who considers a snake a pet.

I’m not a cat person, and when it comes to dogs, I prefer the medium to large sized breeds. Unfortunately, many RVers tend to go with the smaller breeds, which is understandable, given the limited space inside of an RV.  I don’t mind little dogs, though I absolutely detest yappy little dogs.

I joke about not liking French poodles, though my pals Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour actually have a poodle that I have been known to scratch behind the ears, when nobody is looking. But Odie isn’t your typical obnoxious poodle, and he ignores me most of the time, which I respect, given the comments I have made about many of his cousins in the past.

Yesterday I think I met the strangest animal I have ever come across in an RV park; Randy, the traveling tortoise. Jay and Gwen McMichael are parked a few sites down from us here at Fisherman’s Landing in Muskegon, Michigan, killing time before they go down to Elkhart for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally the end of this month. I wandered down to chat with them yesterday morning, and they introduced me to their African Leopard Tortoise, Randy.

He was busy munching on grass under a picnic table, and when Jay picked him up to show him to me, I swear the critter actually had a personality! Instead of withdrawing into his shell like most turtles I have ever seen, Randy was happy to have his head rubbed.

Jay said he got Randy when he wasn’t much more than a hatchling, and that he makes a great pet, because he doesn’t bark, doesn’t shed, doesn’t claw the furniture, and is very low maintenance overall. Randy lives in the shower stall of their Pace Arrow motorhome, and seems to be very happy in his role as probably the world’s only RVing tortoise.

So what’s the difference between a tortoise and a turtle, you ask? Well, a tortoise is a kind of a turtle, but not all turtles are tortoises. Turtles have flatter backs than tortoises, they can swim well, and different types may spend all or part of their lives underwater. Turtles are often omnivorous, eating plants, insects, and fish.

In the natural world, tortoises live entirely above water, only going into water to drink. They are not good swimmers, and often drown if caught in deep water or swift currents. Tortoises are mostly herbivorous, eating cactus, shrubs, and other plants that have a lot of moisture. Their shell forms a rounded dome, allowing the tortoise’s limbs and head to withdraw for protection. Okay, end of biology lesson.

I’m glad I met Randy. He’s a pretty cool creature, and as reptiles go, he’s a lot more socially acceptable than a snake, or even a lizard. But tortoises don’t have ears to scratch behind, and when a tortoise wags his tail at you, it just isn’t the same as a friendly mutt doing the same thing. On the other hand, in all the time I was visiting with Jay and Gwen, I never heard him yap or bark!

I guess if you’re going to travel with your house, having a pet that travels with his own house too kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? What are some of the stranger pets you have seen in RV parks?

Bad Nick doesn’t like any critter that weighs less than 50 pounds, or won’t occasionally give his hand a friendly lick. So while I was out meeting Randy, he stayed home yesterday to post a new Bad Nick Blog titled The Lesser of Two Evils. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Life is sexually transmitted.

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This is our third stay Fisherman’s Landing Marina and Campground, which is owned by the City of Muskegon, Michigan. Overall, we really like it, because it is a comfortable campground and is only a mile or two from my cousin Berni Frees and her husband Rocky’s place, which makes visiting convenient.

I really wish they had a weekly rate, because we’d visit more often, and stay longer. The daily rate is $25 for a back in site with 30 amp electricity and water, and our site also has a picnic table and cement slab.

While they don’t have a weekly rate, they do offer a monthly rate of $500, which is too steep for our budget, especially for a site with no sewer, just a dump station at the exit from the marina. $300 a month I could understand, but not $500. They do offer a Passport America discount for two nights at half price out of any 30 day period.

The only problem I have with the place, and it is a problem that may well play into our decision whether or not to return to Fisherman’s Landing, is that on two out of our three visits, groups of rowdy tent campers were raising hell into the wee hours of the morning. I don’t mind folks having a good time, but when people are hooting and hollering and playing loud music at 3 or 4 a.m., as they were Saturday night, that’s too much.

When this happened on a previous visit, the manager said she was away from the campground overnight, or she would have done something about it. I don’t know what the excuse is this time around, but I know that the folks in one RV parked near us left Sunday morning because of the noise and foul language. They had told me the day before that they were thinking of extending their stay for a few days because they liked the community so much.

If the folks in charge want to attract family campers and have them return, and if they want them to have a good impression of Muskegon, they need to monitor the party animals that are running good customers away. The Elks lodge in Muskegon has a campground with RV sites for $21 a night, and I was told they have a $300 monthly rate.  I think we’ll stay there on our next visit, so we can get some sleep.  

I’m always on the lookout for interesting RVs, and when I spotted this old Airstream motorhome parked next to us at Fisherman’s Landing, I had to take a photograph. I have a soft spot in my heart for Airstream travel trailers, and though I have never been inside one of the motorhomes, I really like their classic looks.

Yesterday was the 57^th wedding anniversary for Rocky’s parents, and we were invited to take part in a family dinner Berni and Rocky were holding for them. We didn’t want to intrude, but everybody insisted we join in, so we did. Berni grilled some delicious steaks, Miss Terry made an awesome triple berry pie and her yummy homemade yeast rolls, and we all gorged ourselves. Wow, 57 years! That’s a real achievement! Congratulations!

Thought For The Day – Urban sprawl is when they cut down all the trees and name the streets after them.

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We have enjoyed our week in Muskegon, Michigan but sadly, it’s time to leave and get on down the road. But we sure have had a wonderful time in this friendly lakeside community.

We stayed at Fisherman’s Landing, a city owned marina and campground, where our back-in RV site had a concrete pad with picnic table, water and 30 amp electric, and a dump station, all for $25 a night. Actually two of those nights were only $12.50, with our Passport America discount, which is good for two nights in any 30 day period. The campground has 70 RV sites, and is located on a lake that connects to the Muskegon River. We did not need them in our self-contained bus conversion, but Fisherman’s Landing also has restrooms with showers and flush toilets.

How friendly is Muskegon? When we returned to our bus late last night after spending our last evening with my cousin Berni and her husband Rocky, we found a business card stuck in our door from city commissioner Steven Wisneski, along with a stack of goodies he had left for us that included two folding chairs in cloth bags, and two goodie bags packed with gifts like water bottles, can cozies, and keychain flashlights, along with a big collection of brochures about local attractions. You can bet we’ll be returning to Muskegon again! It’s one of our favorite places to visit, and I can certainly understand why Rocky and Berni chose this area to live in when they stopped fulltiming.

The city and surrounding area have a lot to offer visitors, from fishing and water sports, to neat museums, great restaurants (we ate out six of the seven nights we were in town, at a different  restaurant each time, and never had a bad meal), a wonderful farmer’s market, and some of the nicest people we have met anywhere.

And the fun doesn’t stop at the end of summer! The Muskegon area is a year round playground, with a winter sports complex, cross country skiing, snow shoeing, and ice fishing. At least Rocky tells me so. I hope to be in Key West by the time the first snow falls!

I wrote in yesterday’s blog that we hoped to do some more paddling before we left town, so yesterday after Berni and Rocky got off work we put our kayaks in the Muskegon River and paddled for a couple of hours. This time we were smart and paddled upriver against the current starting out, while we were still fresh, and allowed the current to carry us back to our launch point when we were done.

We poked into a couple of channels that led off the river and up into some small islands. At one point the channel we were paddling wasn’t more than a few feet wide, and the water under us was choked with weeds. Our kayaks did fine, but a regular boat would have had a hard time of it.

I was in the lead, and as I rounded one bend in the waterway a beaver or muskrat swam across and disappeared into the cattails on the bank as I approached, and soon after that I drifted around another curve and startled three great blue heron, who took flight at my intrusion into their little sanctuary.

Now that’s why we love kayaking! You can have your motor boats and jet skis. We much prefer the slower, quiet ride that allows us to get up close and personal with Mother Nature. As much as I love our life on the open road, I have to admit that I am just a little bit jealous of Rocky and Berni for having this wonderful place only a minute or two from their front door.

We’re heading back to Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, Indiana today, and we’ll be there for a few days before we head over to Bowling Green, Ohio for the FMCA rally, if they have an open vendor booth for us. It’s been a fun mini-vacation.

Thought For The Day – Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

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Yesterday morning we were up and getting the bus ready to travel a couple of hours before we are normally even out of bed. We had a short driving day planned, only 150 miles from Elkhart, Indiana to Muskegon, Michigan. We never pull out of a campground before 10 a.m., because we prefer to let the morning rush hour traffic get over with, though Elkhart doesn’t have much of a rush hour anyway. 

But, things don’t always go as we plan, do they? We have a set routine we follow when we are traveling; while Terry stows things away inside the bus, I check our oil and water, give the engine compartment a quick inspection to be sure the motor is still where I left it, then unhook our utilities, stow our TV dish, and scan the bus and van tires with our PressurePro tire monitoring system to be sure of proper inflation.

With all of that done, we hook up the van to our Blue Ox tow bar, disengage the Remco driveshaft disconnect, and do a brake light and turn signal check to be sure everything is working properly. The whole procedure only takes a few minutes, and while we used a printed pre-trip checklist in our early days, after ten years of fulltiming, we have it down to memory.

As I was checking things inside our engine compartment, I spotted green antifreeze dripping from a short three inch diameter hose that carries radiator fluid to the engine. Since we were parked on grass, there had not been a puddle to notice before. Closer inspection revealed a hole in the hose.

We carry a few spare parts with us, as all seasoned bus nuts do, so we happened to have some extra hose of the same diameter in one of our storage bays. We put a bucket under the hose to catch as much fluid as possible, and replaced the bad one with new, then refilled the radiator.

The entire process wasn’t that hard, even for someone as inept of a mechanic as myself. (Let’s be honest, Miss Terry did most of the work while I tried to look busy in case anybody wandered by.)

With all of that done, we cleaned up (in case you have never been around a bus conversion, all you have to do is open the engine bay doors and grease and oil jump out and cling to you), made a stop at the dump station, and pulled out of Elkhart Campground about 11:30 a.m.

This just illustrates how important it is to do a pre-trip inspection every day when you are traveling. You never know what minor problem is just waiting to become a major problem once you’re on the highway. While it was aggravating to lose 90 minutes of traveling time and get all dirty replacing the hose, it was still a lot easier than trying to replace a hose on a hot engine while broken down on the shoulder of the highway, or waiting for our roadside service company to send out a tow truck.

We had a short nineteen mile trip west on the Indiana Toll Road to South Bend, where we picked up U.S. Highway 31 and followed it north 130 miles to Muskegon. We have a week’s reservations at Fisherman’s Landing, a city owned RV park and marina, and we plan to spend the time visiting family here, and maybe we’ll even get our kayaks in the water!

Thought For The Day – It’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere.

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