Thanks to everybody who e-mailed me saying get well. It seems to be working. I was in bed by midnight Saturday night. I just crashed and slept eleven hours. When I woke up yesterday I felt a lot better, and by day’s end I was almost back to normal. I knew I was feeling better when my appetite returned!

While I was so out of it, Terry was working hard, and managed to get all of the envelopes stuffed for the new issue.  I don’t know how that lady does it! Today we’ll drive back to Flagstaff to drop everything off at the mail service, and we’ll hit a few RV parks in Flagstaff and here in Williams, dropping off bundles of sample copies of the paper. Then we can relax and get back to having fun.

I’m afraid to even look at the news right now. In addition to the two forest fires burning around Flagstaff that I wrote about previously, two new fires have started. One burned over 3,000 acres yesterday, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate their homes, and the other, the fourth fire currently burning in the area, was still going strong yesterday evening. Here is the view of the smoke from one of the fires, looking out our RV windshield from our site at Canyon Gateway RV Park.

While Terry was finishing up the mailing yesterday, I uploaded the new digital edition for our online subscribers, and discovered an unexpected benefit of using the new InDesign page layout program. Previous PDF issues of the digital paper averaged about 22 MB in size, and InDesign lets me upload them with the same quality, at just under 6 MB, which means it opens and downloads faster for our subscribers.

Now that we have the paper done, we plan to head toward the California coast. We originally were going to stop in Kingman, Arizona for a day or so to visit my friend Mike Howard, but having just been sick, I don’t want to take any chance of passing anything on to him. So we’ll stop and abuse Mike’s hospitality another time.

That is if the wind dies down a bit. It’s been blowing hard ever since we got here, and I don’t like to drive the motorhome when I have to battle the wind every mile. What fun is that? That’s the great thing about the fulltime RV lifestyle, we don’t have to rush to get anywhere, because  wherever we are, we’re at home!

Bad Nick spent some time at the computer yesterday, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled This Land Isn’t Our Land. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If you can’t feed ‘em, don’t breed ‘em.

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We pulled out of our RV site at the Show Low Elks campground just before 9:30 a.m. yesterday morning, stopped in the lodge’s large dirt parking lot long enough to hook up our Blue Ox tow bar to our Ford van, did a light check, and put our old hometown in our rear view mirror.

We drove north 50 miles on State Route 77 to Holbrook, and then got onto Interstate 40 headed west. 30 miles later we stopped for fuel at the Flying J in Winslow. We still had just under half a tank of diesel, but I like to run on the top half of my tank whenever I can. It gives me more margin for error for whatever unexpected change in plans may lie ahead.

As it turns out, our fuel stop had an extra benefit; my daughter Tiffany was in Winslow for her job, and met us at Flying J for one last quick visit, a final hug or three, and then she was headed back home to Show Low, while we were back on the highway headed west.

We passed Meteor Crater, then started to see the San Francisco Peaks that tower over Flagstaff off in the distance. There was still snow on the tops of those high mountains.

A few miles past Flagstaff, Miss Terry pointed out a dozen or so cow elk standing in the forest’s edge right alongside the road. A mile or so later we saw a dead elk on the shoulder of the highway, and were glad we weren’t the ones who hit it. Those critters are as big as a horse, and hitting one can really do a lot of damage.

About the time we put the elk behind us, we started to see smoke from the Eagle Rock forest fire, which has burned 3,400 acres of ponderosa pines some eleven miles northeast of Williams. A news report I read later in the evening said that as of nightfall, the fire was 30 percent contained, but that fire crews were concerned that the winds might pick up and expand the wildfire. Sure enough, the wind kicked up, and is expected to be strong for the next two or three days.

Thirty miles west of Flagstaff, we pulled into Canyon Gateway RV Park in Williams, a Passport America affiliate located just off Interstate 40.  This is typical of many Passport America parks, nothing fancy, but clean and friendly, and a good value at $24 a night, tax included, for a level, 50 amp full hookup RV site. Some other RV parks here in Williams charge twice that.

The campground has gravel roads and sites, and small trees at every site. There are a few older rigs that look like they are permanents, but there is nothing wrong with that. Not everybody is made to live in a sticks and bricks house.

Here is our Winnebago, all leveled out and hooked up.

We had covered 175 miles since leaving Show Low, but we weren’t done yet. As soon as we had the RV parked and hooked up, Terry drove us back to Flagstaff in the van, where we stopped at the Arizona Daily Sun newspaper to pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, and then we stopped at Sam’s Club and Office Max for some mailing supplies.

We have been craving a good Chinese buffet for weeks now, and I had always wanted to try the Mandarin Super Buffet in Flagstaff, so we stopped there before heading back to Williams. I had not been feeling well for a couple of hours, so I don’t know if the food wasn’t all that good, or if I just couldn’t appreciate it. But I really did not enjoy the meal, which seldom happens. I drowsed most of the way back to Williams, and once back at the motorhome, I laid down for a while, which seemed to help.

By dark the wind had really picked up, and I’m glad it is blowing from the southwest, which means if it does spread the fire, at least it will be burning in the opposite direction of town. Hopefully the fire crews can knock it down before it gets any larger, or does any more damage.

We’ll be here for the next four days, while we get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal ready to mail out on Monday. We have excellent Verizon service, a  clear aim at the sky for our satellite TV dish, and Williams has a couple of good restaurants if Miss Terry wants to take a break and not cook. It’s good to be on the road again!

Before I close, one last thing. Several blog readers wanted to know if our new Levolor window blinds rattle or make any noise going down the highway. Now that we have actually driven the RV with them, I can report that they don’t make a sound, which is exactly what we expected.

Thought For The Day – I love to give homemade gifts, which one of my kids do you want?

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I’ve said many times before that saying goodbye is the hardest part of the fulltime RV lifestyle. Yesterday evening when we took our leave from my daughter Tiffany and her family, we all had tears in our eyes. Seven year old granddaughter Hailey clung to us until we almost had to pry her arms loose, and we promised her that we will be back again, and that we’ll send her postcards and call her from the road. I love my family, and I always feel terrible for leaving them, but I know, as does Tiffany, that I’d be miserable living in one place all the time.

Today we will leave Show Low, where we’ve been for over two months, and travel 170 miles to Williams, Arizona, where we’ll hang out for a few days getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal ready to mail out. As soon as that’s done, we’re headed for the California coast. We have enjoyed our time here in our old hometown, but we stayed longer than we planned to, and we are really looking foreyard to seeing some new territory.

Except for winds predicted at 15 to 25 miles per hour, we should have an easy drive today. But in northern Arizona, that’s not really windy, it’s just a breeze. We have to pick the new issue of the paper up from our printer in Flagstaff, which is 30 miles east of Williams, but we’ll probably go on to Williams first and get the motorhome parked, then drive back in the van. I don’t like driving a big rig in Flagstaff, and besides, there is a Chinese buffet there that I’ve wanted to try for years.

I have had several people ask us if we will have rally T-shirts available at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally in Elkhart, Indiana. Yes, we will, and it would really help us plan our order if you reserved your shirts before the rally. Cost is $15 per shirt, and 2x and 3x sizes are $17. You don’t need to pay us right now, but knowing who wants what helps us make sure we get enough shirts in the right sizes, and that we reserve shirts for those who ordered in advance.

I was contacted by longtime readers Ray and Nancy Fassbender yesterday, asking if I could reach out to blog readers to help them with a problem. They have been stuck for several days while a repair shop tries to diagnose a problem with their 2001 Serengeti Safari motorhome, built on a 2000 Magnum Chassis with a Cummins diesel engine.

If anybody out there has an electrical wiring schematic for a coach like this, please contact these folks at 520-280-4715  or e-mail them at nfass@earthlink.net. Neither they nor the shop has the wiring diagrams, and they are at a standstill. Please contact them directly, not me, because we’ll be on the road, and it will only delay matters for them. RVers are the nicest folks there are, and I know if anybody can help them, it will be my blog readers.

I promised Bad Nick that I would let him play with the computer, now that I have the new issue of the paper finished, and he jumped right on it, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled I’m Sorry, BP. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We have been sitting still way too long, and Terry and I are both itching to get back on the road and see some new places and new faces.

Yesterday I finished putting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal together, and once I got the hang of InDesign, our new page layout software, it went pretty well. Today Miss Terry will proof the new issue, and then we’ll send it to our printer in Flagstaff.

We’ll pick the printed papers up on Friday, spend the next few days stuffing envelopes, and as soon as everything hits the post office, we’ll be making tracks!

While we are excited to be getting back on the road, it is always very hard to say goodbye to my daughter Tiffany and her family, and we’re sure going to miss those two granddaughters of ours. But the great thing is that the road goes two ways, and we knew we’ll be back again.

We still have a lot to do before we resume our gypsy lifestyle, and we’ll be busy the next couple of days wrapping up some last minute details, paying a last visit on some friends here, and planning our trip.

We have to be in Vail, Colorado in mid-July for a family wedding, and Vail is almost due north of where we are right now. So naturally, we plan to travel west about 750 miles first. Don’t you travel that way? We once left northern Indiana, headed for Florida, and took the long route through Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to get there!

We want to pop in on my friend Mike Howard in Kingman, Arizona, and then we plan to go to the central California coast, around Pismo Beach and Morro Bay for a while. We haven’t had fresh seafood in months, and since we’ve had our kayaks in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, it only seems right that we dip them into the Pacific too, don’t you think?

Of course, like I always say, our plans are set in Jello, and who knows where we may actually end up, and when? Except for the wedding and our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally in Elkhart, Indiana the end of August, we have no commitments, and we don’t want any.

We’ve been known to spot a interesting historical marker, and go off on a tangent that lasted a day or more, or to hear about some interesting place we never knew about, and take off in the opposite direction of our intended route to check it out. That’s the beauty of the RV lifestyle.

I’ve been so busy producing the new issue of the paper that I have not allowed Bad Nick near the computer in a week or so, and he has been building up steam, so I suspect he’ll have a new blog post anytime now.

Thought For The Day – It only seems kinky the first time.

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It’s windy again here in Northern Arizona, go figure. Yesterday,  for the fourth time in four weeks, Interstate 40 east of Flagstaff was closed due to high wind and blowing dust. Will it ever stop?

The wind blew hard all day yesterday, with gusts over 60 miles per hour. It never let up all night long,and today we have more of the same. The weather report says we can expect sustained winds at 25 to 40 miles per hour, and gusts over 60 miles per hour. I think I know what the Oakies in the Dust Bowl must have felt like.

The storm system is also bringing more cold weather, with highs in the upper 40s and low 50s the next couple of days, and Friday night it is supposed to get down to 29 degrees! This sucks. I love visiting with my daughter and her family, but I’m already looking forward to getting someplace warmer. Hopefully someplace where I can open the motorhome door without the wind trying to rip it off its hinges.

I spent yesterday loading a new version of QuickBooks Pro into my computer, and then setting it up for our bookkeeping.

Then I loaded Family Tree Maker 2010. I have been using Ancestry.com for my genealogy research, and since this is an Ancestry product, I was looking forward to adding its capabilities to my family tree search. To be honest, so far it hasn’t really impressed me. I don’t see what I can do with it that I couldn’t already do just with my Ancestry.com subscription. Time will tell.

The new 3G Apple iPads are scheduled to hit the stores on Friday, and I really, really wish there was a Best Buy or Apple store nearby. The closest Best Buy is in Flagstaff, and the closet Apple store is in Gilbert, Arizona. Hmmm…. road trip time? I know I could order one online and have it delivered, but I’d prefer to purchase it from a store and have the techno-geeks there set it up for me so it’s done right.

While I was doing my thing yesterday, Miss Terry caught up on a bunch of paperwork, and logged in some new registrations for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. In the evening she made a wonderful supper of fried chicken and wild rice. It sure is nice being married to a woman who is beautiful, smart, and a great cook too! How’d I get so lucky?

Bad Nick doesn’t like the wind either, so he stayed inside and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled It’s Working Already! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!