So much for that little ditty “April showers bring May flowers.” Yesterday, May 1st, it snowed on us (again) in Show Low, Arizona. It was just flurries on and off, but it was still snow! I highly disapprove!

We were out and about all day long, and it was darned chilly! Our pals Don and Sharon DelRosario are going to be coming through this area in a few days, and Sharon had suggested that we might all go kayaking. Sorry kid, but the water in the local lakes is way too cold for me! I can’t seem to get in or out of  a kayak without falling on my butt at least once, which has nothing to do with the stability of my kayak, and a lot to do with my inherent clumsiness. I don’t know, the idea of chunky dunking in cold mountain lake water just isn’t all that appealing to me.

Something that we really appreciate on these chilly northern Arizona evenings are our new Teepee Creepers. Terry ordered us both a pair of these extremely comfortable sheepskin moccasin slippers, and they arrived the other day. Now, no matter how low the temperatures dip at night, our feet are toasty warm! I’ve had other sheepskin slippers over the years, and believe me, nothing else compares in comfort or quality.

Yesterday the Show Low Elks lodge had a gun show and a classic car show going on at the same time. Except for pretty women and junk food, there isn’t much in life I like more than good guns and old cars. so this was a great “twofer” for me.

Before we hit the road, I had four classic cars and displayed them at the local car shows. And, being a gun nut, I knew all of the shooters in the area. I never went to a gun show or a car show without running into several of my cronies to shoot the bull with.  I know I’ve been away from our old hometown for a long time, but that fact was really brought home to me when I wandered through the gun show, and then the car show, and didn’t see one familiar face.  I’m just a stranger now. 

The guns were all overpriced, and while there were a few nice cars that I drooled over, and one beautiful vintage Mustang convertible that I was trying to figure out how to drag behind the van that we drag behind the Winnebago, I came away empty handed.

We had planned to stay here at Juniper Ridge RV Resort until the end of May, but between the cold weather that won’t go away, and the need to spend some time with my cousin Beverly down in Tucson, we are reconsidering that. We may run down to Tucson for a few days to thaw out, and then pay a visit to Terry’s parents in Apache Junction before we come back up to Show Low. 

Bad Nick doesn’t like the cold either, so he stayed inside yesterday to post a new Bad Nick Blog titled It’s Becoming A War Zone. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – My mind is like a steel trap: rusty, dangerous, and banned in 37 states.

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We are confirmed night owls, never going to bed before midnight or 1 a.m., if not later. But Friday night, after a week of getting up early and going to bed late during the rally, Terry was sound asleep by 10 p.m., and less than an hour later, I was sawing logs too. Saturday morning we slept in, and then lay in bed snuggling and talking about how nice it was to be lazy for a while.

We finally opened the shades and greeted the world sometime close to noon, just in time to say goodbye to Tom and Barbara Westerfield, who were headed to Tucson for yet another rally. Talk about gluttons for punishment!

Soon after they pulled out, Miss Terry and Jan White loaded up a week’s dirty laundry and headed for a laundromat, while Greg White and I went back to the fairgrounds main building to check out the gun show. The place was packed with display tables holding every kind of firearm and accessory you could ever want or need, and people checking out the goodies for sale.

After we had drooled over everything on display, and agreeing that while we’d love to have a few dozen new shooting irons, Greg and I decided that our budgets and vehicle carrying capacities were both too limited to allow that. So we went back to our Winnebago, where Greg installed a new Star Light 1000 motion detector light that I got from one of the vendors at our rally, in place of our motorhome’s original equipment porch light.

About the time Greg finished up with that, the ladies came back from the laundry, and the four of us drove to Texas Roadhouse to meet Stu and Donna McNicol, who had helped on our rally parking crew, and served as room hosts during the rally. The six of us had a nice dinner while we discussed the rally, talked about the way things went wrong on Sunday when the Early Birds arrived in a pouring rainstorm, and planned ahead for next year’s rally and how we can handle the crowd more efficiently.

Stu and Donna followed us back to the fairgrounds, where we spent a few more hours visiting, and solving most of the problems of the world, or at least the RV world. Stu is a retired fire chief, and we loved hearing his stories about life in the station house.

Did I mention that the airplanes fly really low overhead as they take off and land at the Marine Air Station across the street from the fairgrounds? These photos my pal Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School took show what I mean! But after a couple of weeks here, we hardly even notice them any more. Some people at the rally found the noise of the aircraft to be too intrusive, but as I said before, that’s the sound of freedom, and I appreciate the men and women in the cockpits and on the flight line.

We have a lot of paperwork to catch up on from the rally, several orders to prepare to send out in Monday’s mail, and I need to wash off a thick layer of mud and crud that accumulated on our van while I was parking RVs in the storm Sunday. Monday we’ll settle our bill with the fairgrounds, try to find somebody to wash and wax our motorhome, and continue decompressing from our busy week.

Thought For The Day – The greatest grief is that which we cause ourselves.

Yesterday afternoon we had a delicious meal, courtesy of Dennis and Carol Hill from the RV Driving School. Dennis and Carol have been here at Elkhart Campground for a couple of days, after a summer RV trip to Alaska, and they invited us over for a cookout. The main course was deep fried halibut cheeks. Did you know that the cheek is the best tasting meat to be found on many fish? I know that now. Yummy!

Bill Joyce and Diane Melde joined us in the feast, and our good friends Ron and Brenda Speidel pulled into the campground about the time Dennis was taking the first round of halibut out of his deep fryer. Dennis told me to invite them to join us too, so as soon as they got their beautiful Winnebago diesel coach parked next to our bus and ran their leveling jacks down and their slides out, they came down.

There was so much food that I think that even though we all stuffed ourselves, there were more leftovers than we actually consumed. Thanks for the delicious meal and for your hospitality, Dennis and Carol!

I have to share this picture with you, which I took in the parking lot of the gun show in Shipshewana. This cool canine was relaxing in the seat of a Stallion, which is a very upscale trike style motorcycle, while his owner was inside shopping for goodies.

The dog seemed friendly as several people stopped to admire him and take his picture, but when one guy decided to check out the bike and got a little too close, the dog let him know that he needed to back off right now! Once he stepped away, it was all doggy smiles again.

I had hoped to get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal finished over the weekend, but between a lot of visitors and a fair amount of goofing off on my part the last few days, I still have a ways to go. But I’ll have it to the printer in time for them to do their thing this week.

The way registrations are coming in, Terry and I think this year’s Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally will be a lot bigger than last year’s event! Every day we get new reservations by mail or coming in online. And we are already starting to see several folks registering for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally next March! We have had some new vendors register for the Ohio rally, as well as several returning who were there last year. Once we get this new issue of the paper out, we’ll be concentrating on all of the final details that have to be handled to have a successful rally. It’s always a lot of work, but it’s always a lot of fun too!

Thought For The Day – Memory is more indelible than ink.

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We had another busy day yesterday. I had a lot of work to get done, but I decided to cheat and go play for a while first. There was a gun show in Shipshewana, the Amish center 20 miles east of Elkhart, and I have wanted to get out that way and drop some bundles of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal at the campgrounds in that area, so I decided to combine business with pleasure.

Shipshewana, best known for its flea market, is an interesting place. In the past I have called it sort of an Amish theme town, in that you will see lots of Amish people in their horse drawn buggies and plain clothes, but also shops packed with tourists buying everything from overpriced quilts and crafts, to delicious cheeses. You can even (for a fee) take a ride in an authentic Amish buggy!

And Shipshewana is always a busy place! The main street through the business district is only a mile or so long, but it can take you a long time to cover that distance with all of the traffic. Cars, tour buses, RVs, buggies, Amish riding bicycles, and people on foot create an obstacle course that you have to be very careful to maneuver safely through.

After an hour or so of wandering through the gun show, and wishing I had kept all of the shooting irons I have sold over the years, I dropped Miss Terry off at E&S Sales, an Amish bulk food store, and then backtracked to drop off a couple of bundles of newspapers at the Shipshewana South Campground. There is also a Shipshewana North Campground a couple of miles north of town, which we had hit on the way in. The northern campground is never as full as the southern, which is within walking distance to everything in town, and both places are always clean and have friendly people in the office.

E&S was packed with shoppers, and when I caught up with Terry we spent a while browsing everything from a huge assortment of flour and other baking goods, to bulk candy and a dozen or more varieties of cheeses.

We had spent more time in Shipshewana than we had planned to, and when we left we stopped at a roadside produce stand, and when we left there, I told Terry I had to get right to work as soon as we got home. Yeah, right!

Dennis and Carol Hill from the RV Driving School had arrived at Elkhart Campground while we were gone, and as we pulled up we saw them and they came over to say hello and tell us all about their summer adventures RVing in Alaska. We just have to make that trip one of these days! Sometime during their visit, somebody mentioned dinner, and Terry and I realized that it was 5 p.m. and we had not had anything to eat all day long. So we piled into their car and went to Ryan’s Buffet for dinner and more good conversation. 

When we returned to the campground, Ruth Fleck and Linda Jensen were waiting at the bus. We had met them in Albuquerque at the Affinity Rally, and ran into them again at the FMCA rally in Bowling Green, Ohio a couple of weeks ago. We visited with them for a while, and Bill Joyce and Diane Melde wandered over to join in the party.

Finally, about 8 p.m., I excused myself and went inside to get some work done. Sometimes you just have to throw your plans out the window and go with the flow.

Thought For The Day – Dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow.

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It seems like every time I turn around, we get news of the passing of someone else we know. I guess that’s what happens as we get older.

Unfortunately, we lost another dear friend yesterday, when Lue Reed passed away in California. We first met Lue over ten years ago in our first month on the road, when we attended Life on Wheels in Moscow, Idaho as students. Lue’s husband Dick Reed, is the founder of the RV Driving School, and we just seemed to click with both of them. Even then Lue was fighting a battle with Alzheimer’s, and though she didn’t always remember our names, she always knew Miss Terry by her pretty long hair.  

Lue was one of those sweet people who never had a bad word to say about anybody, and even if you had never met before, the first time she laid eyes on you, you were friends. I will always remember her gentleness and the smile that never left her face. Rest in peace, dear friend.

For a guy who makes his living with words, I never seem to know the right thing to say to someone at times like this, but Dick, there are a lot of us out here who care about you and share your loss. I hope you can feel all of our arms around you, surrounding you with love.

I spent yesterday doing the same thing I’ll be doing today and tomorrow, working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal to get it ready to take to the printer next week. I think the months are getting shorter, because it seems like I was doing this just a couple of weeks ago.

I may escape from the computer for an hour or two and drive out to Shipshewana to go to a gun show today, and Dennis and Carol Hill, who bought the RV Driving School from Dick Reed a couple of years ago, are due in sometime tomorrow too. They spent most of the summer in Alaska, and Dennis e-mailed me to say they had a hot grill and a big piece of halibut with my name on it, so Sunday I’ll have to drag myself away from my desk again for a cookout. Yeah, I know, it sucks to be me.

Thought For The Day – Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

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