We are into our annual slowdown in our printing schedule.

We try to have each issue of the Gypsy Journal printed and mailed by the middle of the month preceding the issue date, and five issues a year, we are usually able to meet that deadline. But every year, when it’s time to print the January-February issue, that schedule goes out the window. No matter where we are in the country or which newspaper we are using to do the printing, and no matter how far we plan ahead, we run into scheduling problems.

This is caused by several factors, including heavier than usual printing schedules, as stores are printing and mailing out special holiday advertising inserts, at the same time that press rooms are shorthanded as employees take vacation days. Because we are not a weekly or even monthly job on their schedule, we get shoved to the bottom of the pile while they take care of their regular customers’ needs. We understand it, we expect it, but it’s still frustrating.

So, like every year, the newest issue of the paper is going out later than we want it to. It’s at the printer now, and hopefully they’ll have it back to us early next week so we can get it mailed out. In the meantime, we appreciate everybody’s patience.

We have made a change to the way we do our printing, starting with this issue. Until now, we have used different printers in different locations around the country, wherever we happened to be when it was time to go to press. This has been problematic at times, and with the changes in the industry, it has only gotten worse. We never know what kind of quality we’re going to get with a new printer.

Another major problem is that the size of most newspaper pages is getting smaller and smaller, and we have resisted going to the newest size reduction. But, it has been increasingly hard to find newspapers that continue to print on our size paper at times. Last year we had to leave Alabama earlier than we had planned and drive all the way to south Texas to get printed, after last minute changes at the printer we had used in this region in the past. This year we thought that we’d have to go all the way back to Indiana from Washington, DC to get printed, when the newspaper we had planned to use switched paper sizes on us. Fortunately, we found a printer in Virginia at the last minute, but it was stressful.

So we have contracted with one of the newspapers who prints us in Michigan when we are in the Midwest to do all of our printing in the future. They have recently upgraded their systems and added the ability to allow us to upload our files to them via the internet, and once each issue is printed, they will ship it to us by truck.  They could actually handle our mailing too, but in addition to the papers we mail out, we also have several thousand extra printed of each issue, which we distribute as samples at RV rallies and RV parks we visit in our travels.

This will add quite a bit to our cost for each issue, but it will give us consistent quality from a printer we are comfortable with, and who understands our unique needs.  I’m sure we’ll have a glitch or two along the way, but we’re confident that in the long run, it will all work out.

I’m still adding new seminars to the schedule for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally, March 7-11 in Yuma. I still have quite a few time slots to fill in, but it’s coming together. I have posted a very preliminary seminar schedule on our rally registration page to give you an idea some of the offerings we will have. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check it out. We’ll have over 60 different seminars by the time we’re done, so there’s sure to be plenty to meet everybody’s interest. As I said, this is just a preliminary schedule, and there will be lots of changes and additions by the time the rally starts. Be sure to register early, we’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Thought For The Day – We can’t go back in time and have a different beginning, but we can start today to make a new ending for ourselves.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Hey, give me a break! You try coming up with clever blog post headlines every day! It’s hard work!

After reading yesterday’s blog, some readers wanted to know if the new high back seat from Sea Eagle was any improvement for my bad back. Yes, after paddling 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon, I had no back pain at all, and felt great!

Somebody else wrote to ask why we keep deflating the kayak after paddling it, and then re-inflating it the next time we go out, and was it because the Sea Eagle PaddleSki was too heavy to carry inflated in our van. No, the boat only weighs about 40 pounds, and as this photo shows, I can easily drag it out of the water and stand it upright.

The problem is that our van is too tall for Terry and I to get it up there without using a ladder, and the inflated boat is over 14 feet long, so it won’t fit inside our van. Not counting the fact that our two hard kayaks are inside the van, as well as all of the newspapers we carry, and two Trek bicycles. It’s not all that much hassle to inflate and deflate the Sea Eagle, and it will be even less when I order the electric pump from Inflatable Boats 4 Less.

Yesterday morning, Dave Damon, who sells 303 products at RV rallies, came by to visit for a while, and we had a good time swapping lies. Then Terry and I had some running around to do, and drove down to Winter Haven, about 30 miles south of the Thousand Trails campground. 

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I have to be honest, I have never been enamored with Florida, but lately I have been thinking that with all of the water around here, and how much we love paddling and fishing, maybe we should switch our legal domicile to Florida. I could save some money on the cost of a resident fishing license over the much higher fees for a non-resident license. And getting back to Florida to renew our licenses would be easier than South Dakota, given our usual travel routes. 

There are three RV friendly states that seem to be home to most fulltime RVers – Texas, South Dakota, and Florida. There is an excellent mail forwarding service in Green Cove Springs, and the Good Sam Club has a mail forwarding service in Pensacola.

However, while talking to my car insurance company yesterday about another matter, I happened to mention changing domiciles, and was told that the higher cost of car and motorhome insurance in Florida would more than offset any savings on fishing licenses. We saved about a $1,000 a year on insurance when we switched from Texas to South Dakota, and I guess maybe we’ll stay right where we are.

Back at the motorhome, I had a long list of e-mails to answer, and an even longer list of forwarded junk, myths, and garbage that I just deleted without opening. I don’t mind a good joke now and then, and I’m guilty of forwarding one from time to time to a select group of twisted, sick people on my e-mail list.

But I really get tired of all of the stupid dire warnings of doom, the warm fuzzy stuff that is supposed to bring tears to my eyes, and the nonsense that anybody with half a brain cell could glance at and know is pure BS. I’m about to ban four or five folks from my inbox because they send me the same old junk over and over. I don’t need it, I don’t want it, and I don’t have time for it.

I also had an e-mail from a couple who have a fifteen year old gas powered Class C motorhome that they want to try fulltiming in this winter, before they spend big bucks on their dream rig. But they had heard from a couple of “experts” that “most” RV parks won’t let you in if your RV is more than 10 years old. These same experts had warned them that if they showed up anywhere in a rig that old, nobody would want to associate with them. They were worried that it was going to be a long, lonely winter.

I would be willing to bet that these “experts” are either RV salespeople trying to hustle them into a purchase, or else elitist jerks whom we could all do well without. For years we traveled in a 1976 homebuilt bus conversion, and we were never turned away anywhere we went, and we have never had a shortage of friendly neighbors in any campground from border to border and coast to coast.

Yes, there are a few RV “resorts” that have, and exercise, the ten year rule, but those are usually not the kind of places where I’d want to hang out anyway.  And as for being shunned due to the age of their RV, it just doesn’t happen most places. Sure, there is the occasional snob, just like anywhere in life. But overall, fulltime and extended travel RVers are some of the friendliest, most open and accepting people you’ll find anywhere. They don’t care what you drive, or what you do or did for a living. All they care about is if you’re friendly, if you have a couple of good campfire stories to tell, and if you want to ride along with them to the nearest buffet, or do you want them to ride with you!

Thought For The Day -  A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when memory fails.

Register Now For Our Arizona 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.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

In our nearly eleven years as fulltime RVers, we have stayed at many of the Escapees RV club campgrounds, from Washington state to Florida, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Arizona, to name just a few. One we had never visited was the Escapees Pair-A-Dice co-op in Pahrump, Nevada.

Pahrump is about 50 miles west of Las Vegas, via State Route 160, a good, mostly two lane road that passes through the Toiyabe National Forest, climbing from 2300 feet in Las Vegas to 5500 feet at Mountain Springs Summit, before dropping down to about 2300 feet in Pahrump. Locals call this drive “going over the hump.

Yesterday, after an excellent brunch at Blueberry Hill Restaurant, one of a small chain here in Las Vegas, we took the trip “over the hump” to Pahrump. I’m sure glad we never tried to make this trip in our old MCI bus conversion! The V-8 engine in Greg White’s Dodge pickup was getting a workout as we made the climb.

We know a lot of folks who really like Pahrump because it is quieter and much more laid back than busy Las Vegas. But I have to be honest and say that we were just not impressed. There is little, if anything aesthetically pleasing in the community, just a lot of businesses stretched out along the main highway, a casino or two, a scattering of RV parks, and lots of subdivisions springing up out of the desert.

The office was already closed for the day, but we drove through the Escapees RV park, which was pretty full. But the few people we saw out and about didn’t seem too welcoming as we drove past and waved. Basically, the campground is all gravel and dirt, with some desert landscaping. It’s just not our cup of tea.

We did stop to check out another RV park that had been recommended to us, Terrible’s Lakeside Casino RV Park, a short drive off the main highway, and not far from the Escapees park.

This place was was pretty impressive. Many of the RV sites are situated around a small man made lake, there was plenty of grass, and lots of trees to provide shade. The view of the snowcapped mountains in the distance added to the ambience. The only drawback some people would find is that is that there were a lot of kids running around, though they all seemed to be well behaved.

Pahrump is in Nye County, where prostitution is legal, and Pahrump is home to two legal brothels, the Chicken Ranch and Sheri’s Ranch, which are located next door to each other.  Well, who can go to Pahrump and not at least drive by to check something like that out?  Not us, obviously.

We stopped to take pictures of both houses of ill repute, and noted that both offered free tours, and that ladies are welcome. Terry and Jan decided that seeing the places from the road was probably just fine, thank you very much!

Business seemed to be rather slow, there were just a few cars in the parking lot at either place, and I don’t know how many were there just to shop the souvenir stores that both businesses have. But if you saw me there, that’s all I was doing, shopping for souvenirs! That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

Actually Miss Terry is pretty open minded, and said I could go in and take the tour. But then she said something about me having to go into quarantine for 30 days afterwards, so I decided to pass.

Terry has the sharpest eyes of anybody I have ever known, and she constantly amazes me by pointing out wildlife I would never have seen as we zip down the highway. She spotted this hawk in a tree at the Chicken Ranch, and I told Greg it was probably a chicken hawk.  Hey, I have to get my material where I find it!

All too soon, or not soon enough, depending on whom of us you ask, it was time to get on down the road. So we waved goodbye to the brothels and headed back to Las Vegas. Judging by their signs, they’re friendly folks, aren’t they? They welcomed us to uhhh… return.

Bad Nick Doesn’t have time for such nonsense, so while we were out exploring the seamier side of life, he was home writing a new Bad Nick Blog titled Dumb A$$ Report, Vol. 2. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.

We’ve enjoyed watching the new Who Do You Think You Are? series on NBC, in which experts help celebrities trace their families’ history. Isn’t it amazing what a person can accomplish with the knowledge, experience, and the right tools?

I have been researching my family tree on Ancestry.com for a few months now, and while I have been able to trace my maternal grandfather’s line back to the 10th century in England, I have run intro a stone wall on my dad’s side. With both of my parents and all of my siblings gone, as well as all of my uncles and aunts, I had very little to go on. Basically, everything stopped with my paternal grandfather.

I asked my friend Judy Bayless, who presented two excellent seminars on genealogy at our Yuma rally, for advice, and she volunteered to look into it, since she happened to be in Salt Lake City, which has the largest genealogical research facilities in the world at the LDS Family History Center. Their extensive records are not just limited to Mormon histories, and anybody can go there to conduct research.

Within 24 hours Judy sent me my grandparents’ wedding certificate, and information she found out about them from census records and city directories dating back to 1892! Wow! Thanks for all of your hard work,  Judy.  You helped me make a big step forward.

Judy also discovered a possible connection between my paternal grandmother’s family and her own husband Walt’s! How cool is that! I always liked “Cousin” Walt!

Genealogy is a hobby that fits perfectly with the RV lifestyle, because besides doing online research, we can go back to the places where our ancestors lived and research local records, find their graves, and even walk on the land where they worked and lived.

It can also put you in touch with long lost family members. Over the years, I had lost track of my older brother’s family, and though I have tried to find them many times, I never got anywhere. Recently, while doing some research on Ancestry.com, I came across his name in someone else’s family tree. I sent a message to that person, who turned out to be my brother’s granddaughter. As it turns out, my brother’s sons and daughter had also been searching for me, and we plan on visiting them all when we get down to Florida later this year. Hmmm…. I wonder if I can convince one of my nephews to install a full hookup RV site in his yard for his old Uncle Nick? Wouldn’t that be nice!

Thought For The Day – If you shake your family tree hard enough, some nuts are bound to fall out!