We had dinner with our friends Jim and Shar Lewis yesterday, and since they have been bitten by the RVing bug, most of our conversation was about our lifestyle, and specifically what kind of RV they should be looking at, a motorhome or a fifth wheel trailer.

This is a subject that is always good for a spirited debate among RVers. They have never built a “perfect” RV and never will. Each type of unit has its advantages and disadvantages.

While we prefer diesel pusher motorhomes, we have seen some great fifth wheels that we admired. But for us, a truck and trailer combination would not fit our needs or lifestyle. We carry a lot of stuff with us, we do a lot of overnight stops at WalMarts and truck stops, and for us, a motorhome is the best choice. However, as we told Jim and Shar, everybody is different, and when it comes to RVs, there is no “one size fits all.”

I have heard it said that while motorhomes typically give you more cargo space in the bays, fifth wheels give you more living space, because they don’t have a steering wheel and cockpit.

My friend, the late Gaylord  Maxwell, founder of Life on Wheels, once told me that if you are on the go a lot, stopping for a night or two before you move on, a motorhome was the best choice, because he felt it was easier to park, level, and hook up to campground utilities. But, he said, if you stay in one place for a couple of weeks or more at a time, the fiver made more sense.

However, I know many fifth wheel owners who would debate the fact that their rigs take longer to park and hookup. I have never been any good at backing up a trailer, but I have seen many RVers who can slip a fifth wheel into places I would never consider, and make it look like child’s play. As one fellow told me, “it’s a lot easier to get into places when your house bends in the middle.”

Of course, nothing is set in stone. We know former motorhome owners who have switched to fifth wheels, and fifth wheel owners who have gone over to the other side as their needs and lifestyle have changed. Our friends Mike and Pat McFall from PressurePro have spent the last couple of years in a beautiful Teton Reliance XT3 that they pull with a 2001 Volvo semi tractor. As much as they love their rig, they recently decided to sell it and get a motorhome because their traveling style has changed. If you’re looking for a top of the line, well maintained fiver, check out Mike’s For Sale webpage.

We have known a few RVers who seem to switch rigs every year or two, though I don’t know how they can afford it. We started fulltiming eleven years ago in a Pace Arrow Vision gas powered motorhome, and when it literally fell apart around us, we built a bus conversion that we lived and traveled in for over eight years, Last summer we bought a Winnebago Ultimate Advantage diesel pusher. Our current rig has every feature and option we could ever want, and I expect we’ll be in it for many years.  

Okay, I’m curious. What about you? Which do you prefer, a motorhome or a fifth wheel, and why? And do you expect to change rigs anytime soon?

Thought For The Day – If we are what we eat, I’m fast, cheap, and easy .

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Sunday evening the wind began to blow here in Celina, Ohio, and it got stronger by the hour all night long. I don’t think many people here at our Gypsy Gathering rally got much sleep, with our rigs rocking in the gusts.

Daylight brought no reprieve; the cold wind blew hard all day long, with gusts reported as high as 60 miles per hour in some areas. A couple headed in for the rally called to say that there were high profile vehicle warnings on Interstate 75 and the highway patrol was telling people to get off the road. They wisely decided to pull into a truck stop and wait it out, hoping to get in today.

Even with the wind, we still had 20 more RVs arrive yesterday for the rally, and our dauntless parking crew braved the gale to get them parked safely. I’m glad these guys are volunteers, because we sure could not afford to pay them what any sane man would want for doing their jobs!  

On the first day at all of our rallies, after we welcome everybody and introduce the vendors and seminar presenters, I moderate an RV Quick Tips discussion, where the audience can ask questions of a panel of RV experts. For this rally, the panel included Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School, RV authors and speakers Joe and Vicki Kieva, Mac McCoy from Fire and Life Safety, RV seminar speaker Ron Speidel, fifth wheel hitch expert Pete Peterson, and Kevin Mallory from Cruising America RV Service Company.

One question was whether Life on Wheels would ever be revived, and I explained that the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) had hoped to hold a similar program this year, but due to lack of industry support and student registration, they had to cancel the event. I was very flattered when Mac McCoy then said that as far as he and a lot of other people are concerned, our Gypsy Gathering rallies are the new Life on Wheels. When Joe Kieva concurred and the audience applauded, I really felt honored.

I could never hope to be compared with the late, great Gaylord Maxwell and his excellent RV education program, but we have worked very hard to make our rallies something more than the run of the mill RV get togethers. While we have vendors, entertainment, and a lot of fun at our rallies, we also strive to put together a lineup of real meat and potatoes seminars, not just fluff “buy me” presentations to sell products. Judging by the feedback we have been getting, it’s a winning combination.

With so much going on, and even as busy as she has been overseeing all of the rally details, Miss Terry still finds time to see the beauty in life that so many of us overlook. Monday she found these beautiful mushrooms growing at the base of one of the old oak trees here at the fairgrounds. Terry always amazes me; we can be cruising down the highway keeping up with traffic, or meandering along some two lane road, and she is always spotting hawks sitting on fence posts, or deer and antelope grazing in meadows. What an eye!

Thought For The Day – Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens.

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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 We have had a lot of feedback on the new blog format, most of it very positive. If you go to yesterday’s post in the new blog format, you can read some of the comments at the bottom. We appreciate everybody’s input.

One reader comment was that the pictures are too small. We have made an adjustment and now when you click on a small photo (called a thumbnail) it opens in a larger format for easier viewing, but the thumbnails make loading the blog faster. For our readers with a slow internet connection, this is a big improvement.  

Some people e-mailed to ask why we are making the switch to the new format. Actually, we are doing it for several reasons. A big reason for the change is to have individual post pages.  In the past, when a reader wanted to link to something in a particular blog, their only choice was to link to an entire month of the old blog and tell people to scroll through and find a particular date.  With the new format, readers can link directly to any particular blog post, because each post has its own internet address, or URL, also known as a permalink. So readers with their own blogs can link to particular comments we’ve made,  making everything much more accessible.

Another thing the new blog format will help us accomplish is making individual blog posts more accessible to internet search engines. While I love publishing the Gypsy Journal and the daily blog, it is also our business, and the income from those Google ads on the sidebar help us pay the bills. Improved internet search accessibility helps target more appropriate ads to the individual blog posts.

Allowing readers to post comments to the blog is also something we have wanted to do for a long time, and the new format allows readers to share their point of view on blog topics.

Last, but not least, with the old format, I had to use either my desktop computer, or my laptop, to make blog posts, because the software is on those computers. The new blog format uses  the WordPress software, and I can access the blog, approve reader comments, and post updates from any computer with an internet connection.

Now, a lot of this is geek speak to me, but fortunately we have our very own geeks to explain it all much better than I ever could, with the tutorial videos Geeks on Tour produces. Check out their website and you’ll learn more about computers and how to get the most out of them than you could ever believe was possible.

Okay, enough tech talk, let’s talk about the year 2008, which we say goodbye to today. It’s been a busy and successful year for Terry and I, a year filled with lots of good times. But the year also brought a lot of sadness into our lives. In February we lost our dear friend Dave Baleria, a man whom I loved like a brother. Time has eased the rawest edges of the pain, but the hole in my heart will never be filled. Even now I find myself reaching for the phone to call Dave to bounce an idea off of him, or starting to forward him some goofy e-mail joke.        

In September we lost another dear friend, and an icon to the RV world, when Gaylord Maxwell passed on to his next great adventure. Gaylord was my boss at the Life on Wheels program, and a mentor to many of us. The world lost a great teacher when we lost Gaylord. There will never be another one like him.

With Gaylord’s passing, Life on Wheels has ended, and that is another tremendous loss to the RV industry and to the new RVers who will never have the opportunity to experience such an intense educational experience about this lifestyle.

But while we must honor the past and remember those who are no longer with us, we have to look toward to the future at the same time. Tomorrow we start a brand new year. What new adventures does it hold for us? Where will it take us? How many new friends will we make along the way? I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to the trip.

Thought For The Day – You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.

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