I have to be honest, even though we have belonged to Thousand Trails for several years, I was in no hurry to come to the preserve here in Clermont, Florida. But we’ve been here a week now, and I think it’s fast becoming one of my favorite Thousand Trails/NACO campgrounds. Our site is great, they have all kinds of nice amenities, and we have run into several people we know since we’ve been here.

John and Sharon Mostollers, Gypsy Journal subscribers from Trout Run, Pennsylvania are parked near us, and yesterday John came by to tell me about a neat little restaurant that he thought we would enjoy, and we had a nice visit. 

A little later on, we had a late lunch at Santa Fe steakhouse with Dave and Jean Damon, fulltiming friends we know from the RV rally vendor circuit. We had a good time visiting, solving most of the problems of the world, and the food was pretty good too!

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer! 

My new Sea Eagle tall back kayak seat arrived on Friday from Inflatable Boats 4 Less, and back at the campground, Terry and I decided to end the day with a late afternoon paddle. The campground has a dock and boat launch on Lake Hancock, which is known for excellent largemouth bass fishing. And yes, the 4550 acre lake is also home to alligators, but if you are going to be on any freshwater lake or river in Florida, they are a fact of life. (As opposed to the sharks and barracuda in the salt water.) Here is a Google Earth view of the lake and the Thousand Trails campground.

The new seat is much better! We spent over an hour on the lake, until the sun started to drop behind the trees,  and my back didn’t hurt at all. I need to install a couple of D rings to position it properly for me, but Tim from Inflatable Boats 4 Less sent a kit with some extras with the boat, and they are easy to install.

The PaddleSki gets a lot of attention. A few people were fishing on the dock when we set it up, and they all watched the process, and commented on what a neat idea an inflatable boat is for RVers.

Back at the motorhome, I worked for a while on the seminar schedule for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally. I still have a lot of open time slots to fill, but as of now, seminar titles include Why Use Water Filters?, Gypsy Journal FAQs, Craft & Hobby Show and Tell, Fire Safety, What Insurance Do I Really Need As An RVer?, Insiders Guide To Get The Most From Your RV Service Center, Tips & Tidbits – Why Didn’t I Think Of That?, Accessories For Better Air Card Internet Access, RV Insurance – What Affects Your Rates, Starting A Business On The Road, For Women Only Roundtable, Illness Or Injury While Traveling – What Would You Do?, Transporting Firearms In Your RV, Laugh Your Way Across The USA, Geocaching, Yes You Can Drive That RV (For Ladies Only), The RVing Genealogist, Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems, Getting The Most Out Of Your Digital Camera, Testing Air Brakes, RV Safety Improvements For Him And Her, RVing Alaska, Swedish Weaving, Finding Your Satellite Signal, RV Weight Safety, Pros & Cons Of RV Extended Warranties, RV Quick Shades, RV Driving Tips & Techniques, Windshields – Repair or Replace?, Why Use Water Filters?, RV Tire Safety, Internet Genealogy, Preparing To Drive To Alaska, Boondocking Tips Roundtable, Kayaks & RVs, Care & Operation Of RV Awnings, and Computer Safety And Security For RVers. That’s 35 seminars so far, and we’ll have about 60 by the time we’re through!

My friend Brenda Speidel sent me some information about the Holiday Mail for Heroes campaign yesterday. The American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes have teamed up for the fourth year in a row to help brighten the holidays for our brave men and women in uniform. From now until December 10th, you can send holiday cards to service members, their families, and veterans all over the world. Anyone can send a card, or as many as you would like, to: Holiday Mail for Heroes, PO Box 5456, Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456 and they will be delivered to military members. I still remember my first Christmas away from home, a young soldier in a very bad place, and the Christmas cards I got from an elderly lady in a nursing home, and a little girl from Oklahoma, sent out under a similar program. When you’re a kid far from home, it means a lot.

Speaking of the holidays, quite a few readers have taken advantage of our Holiday Subscription Special Offer. If you subscribe or renew your existing Gypsy Journal subscription for two years, we’ll also send a one year gift subscription ($20 value) to whoever you choose, with a note that it’s a gift from you. This applies to both printed subscriptions to U.S. addresses by Standard Rate mail, and digital subscriptions. Click the link above, and save money today!

Thought For The Day - An argument is like a country road, you never know where it is going to lead.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

There are already a lot of folks here at Elkhart Campground for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, and with the rally just a few days away, more are rolling in every day.

Wednesday afternoon, our good friends Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour arrived, having just driven across the country from Redmond, Oregon to get here. I was so happy to see them that I forgot myself for a moment or two, and actually scratched their French poodle, Odie, behind the ears.

Jim and Chris are presenting nine seminars at the rally, including Managing Digital Photos With Picassa, GPS Navigation & Trip Planning, Google Earth, E-Mail Issues On The Road, Every RVer Needs A Blog, Blogging – Beyond The Basics, Picassa – Beyond The Basics, Internet Love Story – Living & Working On The Road, and Internet Connections On The Road. That’s a lot of information to be shared. Jim and Chris have a tremendous following, and their seminars are always packed.

Then, yesterday evening two of our favorite people in the world, Stu and (Froggi) Donna McNichol, pulled in next to our Winnebago. We’ve known Donna for a long time, ever since she was one of our students at Life on Wheels, and we got to meet Stu at our Western rally in Yuma, Arizona in March. We instantly felt a bond with Stu, and we enjoyed our time together there. I have kept up with their blog, 2 Taking A 5th, just to see what new adventures they have had.

Another couple we have known a long time, Joe and Marcia Jones, also arrived a couple of days ago. We haven’t had time to tour their beautiful new to them Kountry Star diesel pusher, though we have seen plenty of pictures in their Chasing the 70s blog.

There are so many other folks here that I can’t remember everybody’s names, but it sure is great to see everybody.

Yesterday, I made what I hope are the final changes to the rally seminar schedule. Since we ran out of rooms, some of the seminars will be in the big tent we rented, and hopefully that will work out okay for everybody. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

While I was busy with that, Miss Terry went to Office Max to pick up the name tag blanks for the rally, then to Sam’s Club and WalMart to buy the coffee, hot chocolate mix, tea, sweetener, creamer, Styrofoam cups, and everything else we’ll need for the morning coffee and donuts at the rally.

It costs us over $1,000 for the coffee and donuts, cups, etc that we go through at a four day RV rally, so we were delighted when we got a message yesterday that the nice folks at Bradd & Hall furniture here in Elkhart wanted to sponsor them for one of the rally days, to help offset our costs. How cool is that? Bradd & Hall is a major retailer of RV furniture, and last summer when we visited their showroom, we found some great deals on chairs, sofas, and tables.  They also have RV flooring, day/night shades, and other goodies for your motorhome, bus conversion, fifth wheel, or travel trailer.

We’re getting down to the wire now, and there is still a lot to do before the rally starts. But we’ve got a lot done already, and a lot of folks here who are ready, willing, and able to pitch in for whatever needs done.

Thought For The Day – Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We slept soundly Tuesday night, and when we woke up, our three neighbors had already left the Wasco Elks Lodge. We pulled out a little after 9 a.m., and took State Route 46, a narrow two lane road, west toward the coast.

At first the land was pretty flat, and we passed a large field of oil wells standing on both sides of the highway.

Then we started to climb up a series of steep golden hills, where the trees actually grew sideways!  

State Route 46 carries a lot of commercial truck traffic, and is supposed to be one of the most dangerous roads in California. It is well known for the number of serious head-on accidents that happen on it as impatient drivers try to pass long lines of traffic.

One accident on this highway that made history took place on September 30, 1955,  when teen idol James Dean smashed his Porsche 550 Spyder head-on into another car near Cholame. Today a small memorial near the accident site commemorates the tragedy.

In Paso Robles, we got onto U.S. Highway 101 southbound, a busy divided four lane highway. In San Luis Obispo we passed the Madonna Inn, which has over 100 rooms, all decorated in a different theme, ranging from the Caveman to the Golfer’s Room, to an African Safari, as well as the frilly Dot and Daisy Room. I love my Winnebago, but there are a couple of rooms there I’d sure like to see!

We followed this tanker truck for several miles, and Miss Terry took a picture of our motorhome’s reflection in it.

A few minutes before noon, we arrived at the Oceano Elks lodge, where we we will be for the next five or six days. This was an easy driving day, only 128 miles. The Elks campground is pretty tight, though at this time we don’t have anybody on either side of us.

The cost is $20 a night for 30 amp electric and water, and there is a dump station. Considering that the cost of many area RV parks is over $45 a night, it’s a good deal. And here is a Google Earth view of where we are. Our RV is parked where the yellow push pin is, and we can walk to the beach! Location, location, location!

The central coast is experiencing what the locals call June Gloom, a period where daytime temperatures are only in the low to mid-60s, and heavy cloud cover hangs low over the hills. But when we drove to Pismo Beach, after getting the RV parked and hooked up, there were a lot of folks enjoying the water. The sun came out soon after we arrived, and the clouds you see in this picture began to burn off.

I love the pier at Pismo Beach, and we walked out on it to watch the people fishing. We met this pair of pigeons, who were busy with their mating ritual. The male would puff himself up and strut in front of his girlfriend, then run around behind her. I don’t know if you can see it in this photo, but he sure had a determined look on his face! But she was having none of his nonsense, and easily escaped his nefarious clutches. Being a typical male, after he struck out a time or two, he quickly ran off and found another lady bird to try to impress.

We also came across this pelican, who was busy mooching a fish one of the anglers had caught. He didn’t seem to like me or my camera, and every time he saw me, he spread his wings and let me know he didn’t like having his picture taken.

They sure stack the houses up close together here on the California coast!

Now here’s a great car for going to the beach. The fellow who owns this 1947 Ford Woody wagon told me he restored it himself over 25 years ago! How cool!

These two ladies had their own method of transportation! 

We poked around Pismo Beach for a while, had linner (that’s either a late lunch or an early dinner), then stopped at a Von’s grocery store to pick up some items before we went back to the  motorhome.

We were both still pretty tired from the long drive from Arizona the day before, so we had a quiet evening at home, answering e-mail, watching TV, and catching up on paperwork.

We love it here on the central coast, and we’re looking forward to spending a few days just goofing off. We need the break.

Thought For The Day – By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right about some things, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong about everything.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

With all of the fun things we did while were in Muskegon, Michigan this last week, I never had the time to report on a visit from Gypsy Journal subscribers Paul and Dennise Ziaja, from Weslaco, Texas. Paul and Dennise were staying at the campground at the Elks lodge and when they read in the blog that we were at Fisherman’s Landing, they came over to say hello. We had a very nice visit, and Dennise told Terry about all of the good produce for sale at the Farmer’s Market, which we checked out the next day. It was great to have the time to chat for a while before they had to go run some errands.

I have been busy working on the seminar schedule for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, and it is a tough balancing act to get everything to fit. We have a great lineup of seminars, and I have a few new ones to tell you about. The Geeks on Tour, Chris and Jim Guld’s seminars are always popular, and they have offered to present a couple of extra seminars at the rally.

They are going to present both beginner and advanced seminars on writing an RV blog, basic and advanced seminars on managing digital photos with Picasa, a seminar on creating digital slide shows with Photo Story 3, and a seminar on Google Earth. That’s six seminars in all, besides their excellent Computer Boot Camp before the rally starts! When will they ever sleep? When will they ever feed their yappy little French Poodle? Where does it all end? Will they be offering late night computer classes for insomniacs? Stay tuned to find out!

One topic we get asked for all of the time is a seminar on cooking in an RV. Subscriber Vera Andrews is a home economist with 14 years teaching experience, and she has presented seminars at Escapade rallies in the past. Vera will be doing two seminars for us in Celina; Cooking on the Road, and Healthy Eating – The Why and The How. I have not added these new seminars to our Rally Registration Page yet, but check it out and factor these new offerings in and I think you’ll agree that we’ll have something for everyone.

As I said, it’s a juggling act to get everything to fit into the seminar schedule, and when some of our speakers learned that Joe and Vicki Kieva will be presenting their excellent Alaska, The Ultimate RV Adventure and RV Travel and Camping Tips seminars, they begged me not to put them up against these two powerhouse speakers. Either they did not want to compete with such well known speakers, or because they wanted to see the Kievas’ seminars themselves. But I’ll figure it all out, one way or another.

Okay, enough of that and on to other things. Early Tuesday morning a nasty thunderstorm hit Muskegon and lasted for an hour or two. We were wondering what kind of weather we’d have to travel in, but by daylight it had calmed down, though the sky was still heavily overcast.

We pulled out of Fisherman’s Landing campground at 12:30 and had an easy run south, with just one little rain sprinkle that only lasted about ten minutes. Traffic was light and we arrived back at our regular site at Elkhart Campground at 3:30 p.m. They have an Avion rally going on, and there are quite a few of the silver trailers here. I hope to get over and check some of them out today.

We’ll only be here a few days before heading to Bowling Green, Ohio for the FMCA rally, if they can find a vendor booth for us. Then our next stop will be Traverse City, Michigan for Miss Terry’s annual oncologist checkup. We’re having a busy summer!

Thought For The Day – Sometimes happiness comes through doors you didn’t even know you left open. 

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally