Terry did a lot of pre-packing the motorhome Wednesday night, so yesterday morning it was a simple job to run in our bedroom and living room slides, pull up our HWH leveling jacks, unhook our utilities, and get ready to hit the road.

We pulled out of the Hershey Thousand Trails campground, drove west several miles on U.S. Highway 322, then got onto Interstate 83 for a short distance before we left that for U.S. Highway 15, a nice four lane road that took us south to Gettysburg.

We arrived at Round Top Campground about 11:30, and the helpful staff quickly led us to our full hookup RV site and made sure we had everything we needed.  It was an easy driving day of exactly 62 miles from our site at the Thousand Trails to our site at Round Top Campground. 

Our site here is a level back-in with 50 amp electric, and life is good. It’s been about three weeks since our mail has caught up to us, and there was a big box waiting for us when we checked in. Once we were settled into our site, we sorted through it, then made a run to the bank to make a deposit, and stopped for an early dinner before we returned to our motorhome at Round Top Campground. We spent the evening filling the orders that came in with the mail, and watching the season premiers of The Big Bang Theory and Gray’s Anatomy.

Round Top Campground seems to have a lot of seasonal sites, as well as RV sites available; at nightly or weekly rates. It’s just far enough away from town to be quiet, but still only about five minutes to the Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park. 

Gettysburg is, of course, the town where the pivotal Civil War battle took place in 1863. The entire town is a historical site, and over 1,300 monuments, markers, and memorials commemorate the intense fighting that took place here. Everywhere you look, there is a statue, a plaque, or a cannon. It seems like every unit that took part in the battle has its own memorial or statue. And of course, the generals who led those units are also honored with statues, like this one of Union General Meade.
We toured Gettysburg and did a feature story on it, as well as one on President Eisenhower’s farm, a few years ago. But the new expanded National Parks Visitor Center has opened since then, so we want to check it out, and maybe hit a couple of other places we missed when we were here before.

We’ll only be here a couple of days, because we have reservations at Cherry Hill Park in College Park, Maryland for next week, while we tour Washington, D.C. It’s about the most expensive RV park we’ve ever stayed in, but we can buy tickets for the metro in the park office, and a city bus comes through and takes you right to the station. On our last trip to Washington, we found that the convenience is well worth the extra cost.

Meanwhile, Bad Nick is at it again, with a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Being A Woman Shouldn’t Matter. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I thought about being born again, but my mother refused.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I spent quite a bit of time over the weekend finalizing things for our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally in Elkhart, Indiana. Can you believe that it’s less than a month away? It seems like we were just wrapping up our Western rally in Yuma, and here we are halfway across the country getting ready to do it all over again!

Yesterday, I e-mailed info letters out to all of the rally participants whom I have e-mail addresses for. We had several that bounced, even though we checked their addresses against their original reservations. So if you have registered for the rally and didn’t get a letter, it’s either because we have a bad e-mail address for you, or none at all. Please send me a quick e-mail and I’ll get a letter off to you.

Of course, no project is perfect, especially if I have anything to do with it. I had the wrong starting dates for the rally on the first letter I sent out. The rally starts on Monday, August 30 and ends on Friday, September 3rd. If your letter has an incorrect date, my apologies.

I talked to Gita Patel at Elkhart Campground yesterday. They have been busy upgrading a lot of their RV sites to 50 amp full hookups, but they are not sure the job will be completely done before the rally. So at this time, all we have left for sites that we can guarantee, are 30 amp water and electric, and a handful of 20 amp water and electric. If you register and more full hookup sites become available, we can upgrade you once you arrive at the rally, if you wish. But again, there is no guarantee.

Camping for the rally is for four nights, from Monday, August 30 to Thursday, September 2. You can arrive early or stay later if you wish, but those arrangements have to be made directly with Elkhart Campground at (574) 264-2914.  They will not take your reservation for the rally dates, that is handled through us. But for before or after the rally, they will be happy to reserve a site for you.

I also arranged for our entertainment for Wednesday night after the pizza party. Whitt and Judy McKinney, who perform as the McKinney Washtub Two, come highly recommended by several people we know, including Larry and Melissa Beahm of One More Time music, who have performed at our last two Eastern rallies. I think it’s going to be a fun show. Check out the Music Page on their website for sound clips of some of their original songs.

I talked to my buddy Greg White, who pulled into Elkhart Campground yesterday. Greg said the place is really busy, and quite a few folks are already there just waiting for the rally to begin. We’re really looking forward to seeing Greg and his pretty wife Jan again, because like I said, Jan is really pretty, and because I have a lot of projects for Greg to work on.

We also spent a couple of hours last night filling orders that came in with our last mail delivery, or from our website. I’ll be making a post office run this morning to get them in the mail.

It’s been a busy weekend, and it’s only going to get busier as we get closer to the rally dates!

Thought For The Day – Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

After our fast trip from Colorado to Iowa, then our busy week in Forest City getting our motorhome worked on, and then our fast trip to northern Michigan, we needed some time to catch up, both on our sleep, and our paperwork. Not to mention our laundry.

So yesterday morning we slept in, and then started whittling down our long “To Do” list. The first order of the day for Miss Terry was to begin reducing the pile of laundry that had accumulated. Since we hadn’t had full hookups since we left Colorado, it was threatening to spill out of the basket and take over the bedroom.

Terry hates laundromats, and is getting used to the washer/dryer combo in our Winnebago. She says it’s not as good as the separate Whirlpool washer and dryer units that we had in our MCI bus conversion, but it’s much better than the old Splendide we had in our first motorhome. An added plus for her while we’re visiting family here in Traverse City is that she doesn’t use our dryer, she hangs things out on the clothesline. Is there anything as crisp as freshly washed sheets that have dried outside in the sun?

I had a mountain of my own to deal with as I worked my way through an accumulation of e-mail. I have to say that I get pretty frustrated when I tell people that I’m in a poor internet service area, and not to send me any forwards or jokes, and they do so anyway. One fellow sent me 19 in one day, and 13 the next! When I wrote and asked him (again) not to do that, he just replied “If you don’t want them, don’t read them.” Here’s a better idea, fellow, I’ll just block all of your e-mail from now on!

Two weeks’ backlog of snail mail had arrived from our mail forwarding service, and we were also busy sorting that and logging in renewals, book orders, and rally registrations.  We also received back an order we sent out to J. Andrews of Mesa, Arizona, with a notation by the post office that it was undeliverable. If you’re reading this, please contact us with a current address, so we can get your items out to you.

One of the reasons we rushed here so fast is that we have a very dear friend who is fighting a tough battle with cancer, and things have been touch and go for a while now. When Miss Terry was going through that ordeal herself, our friend was a constant source of love and support, and we wanted to get here to spend as much time with her as possible and as her stamina allowed. So during the afternoon we paid a visit on her.

I also went to the Northwestern Michigan Fairgrounds to check out their campground and talk to the folks there about the possibility of  holding one of our Gypsy Gathering rallies there in the future.

They have 120 sites with 20/30/50 amp electric power, water bibs, and two dump stations. They told me that they can also put out portable power lines to provide electric to plenty more RVs, as needed. The buildings are a little small for our crowd, but it might be workable.

If you find yourself in Traverse City, this is the best bargain on camping anywhere in the area. Rates are just $20 a night, or $125/week. In this resort area, that’s a heck of a deal.

As these photos show, they can accommodate any size RV, and there is enough to see and do in this area to keep you busy all summer long. Check out their website for more information.  

In another of those small world syndrome things that happen so often, we discovered that the campground hosts, Henry and Kay Hauffe, just had their fifth wheel painted by our pal Michele Henry at Phoenix Commercial Paint in Elkhart, and that they know many of the same people that we do. The community of fulltime RVers may be spread out all across the land, but we are a close knit group.

It was my cousin Terry Cook’s birthday, so in the evening we took him and his wife Peggy out to dinner to celebrate. By the time we got back to the motorhome, we were tired and looking forward to climbing into bed again.

Thought For The Day – Keep your words both soft and tender, because tomorrow you may have to eat them.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We were up by 7 a.m. yesterday, which is way too early for us, but we had a lot of miles to travel. We pulled out of Pony Express RV Resort in North Salt Lake, took Interstate 215 around the west side of Salt Lake City to where it joined Interstate 15 on the south side of town. I-215 was a nice road, but as soon as we hit I-15, we ran into heavy traffic and road construction that lasted all the way south to Spanish Fork. By the time we left the interstate there and got onto U.S. Highway 6, I was sure glad to get off the superslab.

It was 133 miles to Interstate 70 at Green River, and a lot of it was two lane road. U.S. 6 is a good road, but not one where you’ll go very fast. In some places it is narrow, there are no shoulders, and it does some climbing.

It also has a couple of steep downgrades, but they are relatively short.

Did I mention it has a lot of twists and turns, especially as it goes through Price Canyon? Note the road sign. It didn’t exaggerate!

Price Canyon was pretty impressive, in spite of the bug on the windshield.

We also had several stretches of road construction to deal with. At one point, the road was down to one lane, and we passed a long line of cars and trucks headed the other way who were waiting for their turn to go.

We also saw a wind farm. Nothing strange about that, except most of them that we have seen are on top of ridges to get the most wind. But these were down low.

Miss Terry ran down the batteries in both of our Olympus digital cameras, but she got some great pictures. There were quite a few railroads tunnels through the mountains.

Once we passed the little town of Price, about halfway along U.S. 6, the road became wider and the countryside flatter. We even had some four lane stretches of roadway.

It was hot! When we got onto Interstate 70, my dashboard thermometer said it was 104 degrees, and later on, as we crossed into Colorado, it was 106! But, our Winnebago performed well and climbed up the steepest grades without hesitation.

We saw some gorgeous scenery in western Colorado, including lots of impressive rock formations.

The scenery was absolutely spectacular, and the highway had lots of curves and, of course, more construction zones.

The highway follows the river, and we saw lots of rafters and fly fishermen.

Did I mention the road construction?

The battery in the second camera died just as we got to Glenwood Canyon, which was disappointing, because it was breathtaking.  I want to go back and drive this stretch of road in the van, and see it again.

We arrived at River Dance RV Resort in Gypsum just after 4 p.m., covering 397 miles in one day. That’s a lot of driving, and we much prefer 250-300 mile days. But sometimes you just do what you have to do.

Rusty and Rebecca at River Dance are super friendly people and really made us feel welcome. There was a little snafu, because the full hookup site they had reserved for us was still occupied by the previous person, and he was off sightseeing somewhere.  Rusty had us pull into another site, with water and electric, so we could plug in and have our air conditioner on while we waited. They were both very apologetic, but what the heck, things happen. It was no big deal.

Once we got into our site, we had a great view out of our windshield. You can’t see the Eagle River in this picture, but it runs right alongside the campground, and if we had time, I’d launch our kayaks.

Here is the view behind us. I don’t think there is ten feet in flat land in all of the western half of Colorado!

By the time we were settled into our site and hooked up, we were famished. Terry drove the 7 miles to Pazzo’s Pizza, in Eagle, where we had one of the best pizzas we have had in years.

Between getting up earlier than usual, the long drive, and the elevation, we were really worn out by the time we finished dinner and got back to the campground. The mosquitoes here are about as big as sparrows, and as aggressive as hawks, so we made a mad dash for the RV. But I still got bitten two or three times before I could get the door unlocked and we could get inside.

Today we plan to sleep late, and then do a whole lot of nothing. We had a busy week in Salt Lake City, and we have a busy weekend ahead of us, so we need to take advantage of every quiet moment we can.

Thought For The Day – The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

I got an e-mail from a couple who have been bitten by the fulltiming bug and would love to sell their home and hit the road. However, they are afraid that they cannot afford the lifestyle. Their concerns are expressed in the following paragraph, cut and pasted from their e-mail:

“We have been looking at RV park websites here in our area of Ohio, and near our son’s home in Pennsylvania. With daily rates of anywhere from $35 to $40 for a full hookup site at  Surf Campground in Marblehead, Ohio; to $31 for a water and electric site at Huron River Valley Resort in Huron, Ohio; to $40 a night at the Kinzua Pennsylvania KOA near our son’s home, we just don’t see how we can afford it. That comes out to about $36 a night, or $1100 a month, or over $13,000 a year. That is about half of our retirement income.  Are most fulltime RVers really paying that much every night? If not, what is the secret to making it affordable?”

My first reaction to their e-mail was that they are looking for camping in all the wrong places. I looked at the websites of the three campgrounds they mentioned, and all three seemed more like weekend or vacation spots than the kind of places most fulltimers frequent.

Most fulltime RVers we know are paying a lot less than $36 a night. In fact, for most of our years on the road, we have averaged less than $5 a night, and we know many fulltimers who average $5 to $10 a night. Sometimes we do pay more per night, on rare occasions much more. But, the savings we get most of the time offset these costs and keep our nightly average low.

How do we do it? Through a combination of free campgrounds, weekly or monthly rates at commercial RV parks, discount campground programs, a Thousand Trails campground membership, camping at Elks and Moose lodges, camping at fairgrounds which have RV hookups, occasional nights dry camping at places like WalMart and truck stops, and occasional nights parked in the driveways of friends and relatives’ homes when we are visiting them. I think most experienced fulltimers would tell you they do things about the same way, with some combination of some or all of these options.

There are many, many free or very low cost campgrounds nationwide, usually located in small town city parks and county parks. We publish a guide to over 1,000 such places, and the Escapees Days End listing is also a good way to find many of them. You can find info on our guide in our RV Bookstore.

Most fairgrounds nationwide have RV hookups, and many of them make these sites available to the general public, usually at rates much lower than area RV parks. We also publish a guide to fairgrounds camping, which is available in our RV Bookstore.

We have belonged to Passport America ever since we hit the road, and it has saved us a lot of money. Members get a 50% discount at more than 1,600 campgrounds nationwide. Most are Mom and Pop type RV parks, and many of them have restrictions during their peak times, but if you read the campground guide and work within the system, it can be a real money saver.

Membership campgrounds can also save you money, if you use them enough to get your annual dues worth. The secret here is to know you’ll spend all of the days in the system that you can, under your membership, and not to buy a new membership, but rather to do your homework and buy a low cost resale membership directly from the previous owner.

I belong to the Elk and Moose, and many lodges nationwide either have an actual campground, or at least allow traveling members to dry camp in their parking lots overnight, usually for free or for a small donation. I’m also a VFW member, and we have found many VFW posts that allow us to park overnight, usually for free.

When we are on the road from Point A to Point B, we seldom pay for a campground, since all we plan to do is get some sleep and go on down the road. Our motorhome is fully self-contained, and all we need is a safe, level place to park overnight. We have spent many nights at RV friendly businesses like WalMart, at truck stops, in highway rest areas, all for free, and all of which helps us keep our nightly camping costs down.

We also save money by parking in the driveways of friends and relatives. Sometimes we don’t have hookups, but usually we can at least plug into a 20 amp outlet in a garage to keep our batteries charged up, and we can find a water outlet to fill our fresh water tank. It’s nice to visit people and enjoy their company, then be able to retire to our own home on wheels, giving them and us both our own privacy.

How about some of you other experienced RVers? What do your nightly camping costs average, and how do you keep your costs low?

While I was taking a nap yesterday afternoon, Bad Nick took over the computer and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled BP = BS. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The five most essential words for a healthy, vital relationship are “I apologize” and “You are right.”

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!