We were so tired Saturday night that we were in bed by 9:30 p.m. and I waited until Sunday morning to post the blog. We had a rainy night, and were wide awake before 7 a.m. Sunday, and on the road before 8 a.m., which was a new record for us.

We passed through Montgomery with only a few cars and trucks to keep us company, and pulled into the Flying J truck stop a few miles south of town to take on fuel, and decided to try their breakfast buffet, which was surprisingly good.

Back on the road, we had an easy run to the Escapees Plantation RV Park in Summerdale. We checked in at the office, where we got a warm welcome, and then were assigned to a site. As we were unhooking the van, Jack Mayer came by to say hello. The battery in our van is getting weak and didn’t want to turn over, so we got out our battery charger and Jack helped us put some juice into the battery to get the van started.

By the time I had backed the motorhome into our RV site and finished hooking up our utilities, several people had come by to say hello and welcome us back, and to commiserate over our recent misfortune. We had pretty much a steady stream of visitors until we went to the Activity Center a little after 5 p.m. for their Chocolate Decadence event, in which for $3 each we had our choice of dozens of chocolate goodies, everything from brownies and cookies, to fudge, and even chocolate covered chicken wings. I passed on the wings, but sure tried to sample as much of the rest as I could. 

Following that, they had the Sunday evening Ice Cream Social. And everybody managed to save enough room for ice cream too. RVers love to eat! It was nice to see so many folks we know, and to be made so welcome. And it is wonderful to be warm again! It was 72 degrees when we arrived at Summerdale!

After I reported in yesterday’s blog that we were spending the night parked behind the Moose lodge in Prattville, Alabama, I got three or four e-mails from people asking if we were not afraid of being victimized again.

We have dry camped all over this country without a problem for years, and though we will exercise more caution in the future and not allow ourselves to become complacent again, the reality is that we could spend another 20 years on the road (which we hope to do), and never have a problem again. Of course, we also realize it could happen again tonight. But, we refuse to live in fear, or to give up our freedom because of what “might” happen.

Keep in mind, too, that our crime did not happen while we were dry camping in some out of the way place. It happened at an established RV repair shop’s camping area, which had 24 hour surveillance cameras, which large signs plainly announced. Crime can and does happen at any time, anywhere. The luck of the draw was that we just happened to be the victims this time around.

Now that we are finally out of the deep freeze up north and getting the inside of our Winnebago back to normal, we are still discovering some other things missing, including the handheld Garmin GPS we use for geocaching, a digital photo frame with pictures of our granddaughters, and Leatherman pocket tool. On the flip side, we found a small digital camera we thought was gone, so that’s a good thing. Life goes on.     

Thought For The Day – Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

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After waiting way too long, due to last minute details we needed to get done, and then bad weather, yesterday we finally hit the road and gave our bad case of hitch itch a mighty scratch!

After a week of gloomy sky, wind, and rain, Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny, with no wind. A perfect day for traveling! Miss Terry stowed away the things inside the motorhome that needed to be secured so they didn’t become a deadly missile in the event of an accident, while I unhooked our water, electric, and sewer connection from the campground’s utility pedestal. Then we hooked up our Blue Ox tow bar, I disengaged the van’s driveshaft disconnect, and turned on the SMI auxiliary brake.

While we were doing that, Gypsy Journal subscriber Herb Staffenski came by to purchase several of our books. It was nice to meet Herb and his wife Anke, and they hope to join us at our Arizona Gypsy Gathering in Yuma, in March.

After running the slides in and pulling up our HWH leveling jacks, we said our goodbyes to Greg and Jan White, and I thanked Greg again for all of his help over the last couple of weeks. It was nice to have the time to get to know this fun couple better, and we look forward to many more good times together in the future.

After a quick scan of our PressurePro tire monitoring system, we pulled out of Elkhart Campground a little after 11:00 a.m., got on the Indiana Toll Road and headed east about 50 miles to the junction with Interstate 69, which we followed south to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and then got on U.S. Highway 30 eastbound, a nice divided four lane highway with little traffic.

We crossed into Ohio and continued east past Van Wert, and eventually came to Interstate 75, and took it south to Dayton. There was a lot more traffic on the superslab, and in Dayton we ran into a long stretch of road construction, with narrow lanes and concrete barriers instead of shoulders. I was glad to leave the interstate again and get onto U. S. Highway 35, another nice four lane limited access road that carried us 140 miles southeast through farmlands and rolling hills to Gallipolis, on the Ohio River.

I said in the blog a few days ago that an ideal driving day in an RV is 250 to 300 miles, but that sometimes when the traveling is good, we find ourselves going past that. And so it was yesterday. By the time we pulled into the Wal-Mart Super Center in Gallipolis and tucked ourselves into the far edge of the parking lot for the night, it was twilight and we had covered 387 miles. We had a bad case of hitch itch, and it just needed to be scratched!

After I wrote about their diesel engine monitoring systems for PC based computers a while back, and included a link to Norm Payne’s excellent article  on the Silverleaf Electronics moitoring system, the nice folks at Silverleaf loaned me one of their VMSpc cables to evaluate and review, and I had hooked it up to a small Acer netbook computer before we hit the road for this trip. The cable plugs into the data port under our RV’s dash, and the Silverleaf program monitors dozens of engine functions with digital displays that you can customize for your own needs.

According to the Silverleaf, we averaged 8.1 miles per gallon yesterday, most of it with the cruise control set at 63 miles per hour, though there were a few times when I was up around 66 or 67 MPH to keep up with the traffic flow.

The more I drive our Winnebago, the more I like it. Even towing our ¾ ton Ford van, the Cummins 350 horsepower engine had no problems coming up a few rather steep hills, down here in southern Ohio, at 60 or 65 miles per hour. I’m impressed!   

Today we’ll cross into West Virginia and continue our trek into new territory to explore and new adventures to discover. 

Thought For The Day – If you do what you enjoy and don’t harm other people, you’re living a beautiful life.

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We were out of bed earlier than usual yesterday morning and hit the ground running, and didn’t slow down until well past midnight. Sometimes there just are not enough hours in the day.

We’re leaving Elkhart Campground today and driving 150 miles to Muskegon, Michigan for a week to spend some time visiting with my cousin Berni and her husband Rocky. We had several last minute things to get done before we left, not the least of them being laundry.

Elkhart Campground has full hookup pull through 50 amp sites, but the site we prefer has just 50 amp electric and water. That’s not a problem, because we have a large waste holding tank, so we only have to hit the dump station every couple of weeks. But Terry can’t do laundry with our onboard washer and dryer,so I dropped her off at the campground laundry, then ran to the post office to mail out some orders.

Back at the campground, I stopped to check in on Terry, and she was just putting the clothes in the dryer. While she was finishing up the laundry, I checked our propane tanks, and one was empty, so I drove up to the office to have it filled. When we built the bus conversion, we opted for a pair of portable propane tanks instead of a stationary onboard tank, because it makes it easier to refill. Instead of having to drive the bus to a propane station, I just take one of the tanks, as needed.

By then Terry was finished, so we ran to Wal-Mart to pick up some items. A few minutes after we got home, Jack and Paula Conrad, from Arcadia, Florida stopped over to visit. Jack and Paula have a very nice MCI bus conversion, and every year they host a large New Years bus rally in Arcadia.

We had a nice visit, and by the time they left, it was time to unload some of the bundles of papers in the van so we could load our kayaks and bicycles back in, and then reload the papers around them. While we were doing that, longtime Gypsy Journal subscribers Pete and Patty Gioia stopped by to say hello. Pete and Patty are a neat couple that Terry and I both enjoyed meeting, and we look forward to seeing them again in our travels.

With the van finished, there was still laundry to put away, a bed to be made, and blogs to write before we could begin to think about getting to bed.

We have a lot planned in the next few weeks. We’ll spend a week in Muskegon, and then we will return here for a couple of days, and head over to Bowling Green, Ohio to be vendors at the big FMCA rally July 20-23. As soon as the rally is over we’ll be on our way to Traverse City, Michigan for Terry’s annual oncologist checkup. 

August 3-7 will find us vending at the Newmar Kountry Klub Rally in Goshen, Indiana, if the nice lady in charge of the vendors ever sends me the necessary paperwork. I’ve talked to her twice now and each time she was going to e-mail it to me immediately, but I’m still waiting. We’ll have a week or two to catch our breath, and then August 24 – 28 we’ll be back in Goshen to vend at the Carriage Travel Club Grand National Rally.

With those events behind us, we’ll be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania September 13 to 16 for the RV Lifestyle, Education & Safety Clinic held by the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF).

When we lost Gaylord Maxwell last year, Life on Wheels ended, which left a big hole in the education options for RVers. I was delighted when Walter Cannon, the head honcho at RVSEF, called to tell me that he was going to hold the new event, and asked me to present some seminars. If you have been lamenting the fact that you never got to attend a Life on Wheels conference, now is your chance. Several of my fellow Life on Wheels instructors will be participating in the RVSEF program. I hope we see you there.

As soon as we’re finished with the RVSEF educational clinic, we’ll be burning up the highway back to Celina, Ohio for our own Gypsy Gathering rally September 28 to October 2. This will be our second Eastern rally, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

I have posted a tentative schedule on the rally page on our website, just scroll down to the bottom of that page and check it out. This is NOT the final schedule, we’ll be adding several other seminars and doing some fine tuning before the rally date, but it will give you an idea of some of the offerings we have in store for you.

After that is all over, and after some appointments at the V.A. hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, we will be more than ready for some downtime.

We plan to head to Florida for a while, and I’m hoping that if I whine and snivel hard enough and long enough about needing a vacation, our pals Tom Owen and Diane Rojewski will invite us back to their houseboat in Key West for a week or three. By then, I’ll be ready for a tropical getaway.

Thought For The Day – I finally got my head together, now my body is falling apart.

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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.

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