We find that a day out running around or playing, balanced out by a day at home, seems to work best, when we can do it. After our day of kayaking Tuesday, we spent Wednesday here at the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve.

In mid-morning, our friends Dave and Jean Damon came by to say hello, and to welcome us to this area. We first met Dave and Jean when we were vending at an FMCA RV rally in Ohio a while back, and hit it off well with them.

They sell 303 Protectant products, and Jean is also an excellent masseuse, whose services are in great demand everywhere they go. A couple of years ago, Jean gave me a massage after our Gypsy Gathering rally in Celina, Ohio, and by the time she was done kneading and working on me, I was so relaxed that I could hardly walk back to our motorhome!

Dave and Jean spend a lot of time in this area, so they were able to fill us in on some good places to eat and shop, and because Dave is the kind of guy who doesn’t pull any punches, he also told us about a couple of places to avoid.

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer! 

While Dave and Jean were here, Terry happened to look outside and spotted a gopher tortoise. We have seen a lot of these critters over the years, and I am always amazed at how fast they can move when they want to.

Gopher tortoises have been around for over 60 million years, making them one of the oldest living species known to man. They  live in underground burrows that average 30 feet long, and can go down as deep as 20 feet. Can you see the dirt this guy is throwing up as he heads underground?

It’s burrow is right next to our RV site, and we’re happy to have it as a neighbor. It’s a lot better than a yappy little dog!

Terry spent much of the day catching up on paperwork, while I pretty much goofed off. I had several e-mails to answer from readers wanting more information on the PaddleSki inflatable kayak that I wrote about in yesterday’s blog, and also several from folks asking about our upcoming Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally. I don’t have the rally schedule ready to post yet, there is still a lot of finalizing to do, but I guarantee you that we will have some great seminars to meet every interest!   

During the afternoon, I went over to the Activity Center here at the campground and dropped off a bundle of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal, then drove down to the campground’s dock and boat launch to check things out. I arrived just in time to see a fellow coming off the water in a very nice paddle-drive Hobie fishing kayak. He showed me a couple of nice bass he had kept for dinner, and told me that during his last hour on the water, they were hitting on about every fourth cast he made.

The other day I wrote about discounts that businesses are offering veterans in honor of Veterans Day. The RV Business website reports that Carefree RV Resorts has announced a new veterans discount program.  The company is offering veterans a year round 50% nightly discount, on a space available basis, at 35 RV parks in Florida, Texas, New Jersey, North Carolina and California. Check it out, you might save some money on a very nice RV site for a few days.

Bad Nick was busy yesterday posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Like A Bad Rash. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Who says nothing is impossible? I’ve been doing nothing for years.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday was a short travel day for us. In fact, one of the shortest we’ve had in a very long time.

We enjoyed our time at The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida, and I took a photo of our Winnebago in Peter and Connie Bradish”s lot before I started unhooking our campground utilities in preparation for leaving.

This is a very upscale RV resort, where you can buy your own very nicely groomed lot, and enjoy every amenity you could imagine.

The resort has several small lakes, and I’m told the fishing in them is good, but I never got the opportunity to check that out.

The resort even has its own church! As you can see, most of the homeowners drive their golf carts everywhere, even to church!

We left The Great Outdoors just after 10 a.m., traveled south to the next exit on Interstate 95, and took State Route 407 a short distance until it merged with State Toll Route 528, which took us west around the south side of the Orlando metropolitan area to Interstate 4. We traveled just a mile or two south on Interstate 4, exited onto U.S. Highway 192, then took it west a few miles to U.S. Highway 27, where we turned north a couple of miles to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve. Peter Bradish had given us the directions, and they were perfect. 

Well, the directions Peter gave us were perfect. The directions we got from our GPS were not so perfect. We had entered the address of the Thousand Trails into our GPS, so we wouldn’t miss the turn into it, because somebody had told me that a condominium complex next door hid the sign until you were right on top of it. According to the GPS, we had over a mile to go, when I noticed the Thousand Trails sign, which was indeed hard to see. By then it was too late to make the turn.

U.S. 27 through here is a wide six lane divided highway, with designated left turn lanes. We drove a couple of miles, looking for a place to turn around, but I wasn’t sure that we could make a U-turn with the van in tow. I finally pulled into a left turn lane, and decided it would be too tight to make the U-turn, and the last thing I wanted to do was be jackknifed across three lanes of busy U.S. highway, even on a Sunday morning. There was a divided driveway leading into a housing subdivision on the far side of the road, and I told Terry I was going to pull into the subdivision instead, and we’d unhook the van from the tow bar and get pointed back in the right direction.

It wasn’t until we had pulled into the driveway that we discovered that it was a gated community. So there we were, with a locked gate in front of us, two cars that had pulled in behind us, and no place to turn around. Can you say “oh crap?”

Fortunately, the fellow in the first car gave us the gate code, we punched it in, and the gates swung open. I pulled in, parked along the curb, we unhooked the van, and got the heck out of there. A GPS is a handy tool, but never trust one completely.

We had never stayed at this Thousand Trails before, but I have to say that we’re impressed. The 255 acre campground has 850 full hookup RV sites, a swimming pool, activity center, and a 60 acre spring fed lake. The property also backs up to Lake Hancock, a large lake that is supposed to be home to some massive trophy bass.

We choose a site on a corner at the end of a road, with some trees on one side of us, a pasture behind us, and the sites next to us and across the street are empty. Gee, no neighbors. Maybe I’ll just run around in my BVDs. No, Miss Terry says maybe I won’t.

A sky writer was posting this message for us when we got into our RV site. Isn’t that nice? I love you too.

Even with the unexpected detour caused by the GPS, we drove exactly 70 miles, and I was in the office at the Thousand Trails registering by noon. That’s a short travel day!

Once we were parked and hooked up, we drove down to the campground’s boat launch at Lake Hancock, to check things out. It was windy and chilly, but the weather is supposed to improve by mid-week, and getting out on the water is a priority for us. Our kayaks haven’t been wet in over a year, and we need to correct that.

I bet some whopper bass live in these lily pads!

The lake isn’t home to just big bass. I don’t think I’ll be dangling my toes in the water!

Terry and I walked out on the floating dock, and we heard a loud thumping sound and a big splash of water in this little lagoon. Then several fish jumped. We didn’t see the gator, but we knew he was there.

We’re looking forward to doing some relaxing here, getting some paddling in, and I may just buy me a fishing rod and a license, and see if I can tempt one of those big bass to bite!

Thought For The Day – A bargain is something you can’t use, at a price you can’t resist.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We’re leaving The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida today and are going to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve, which is actually in Clermont. We owe a big thank you to our friends Peter and Connie Bradish for hosting us on their lot here for the last few days. We really appreciate your hospitality, dear friends.

We’ve had a nice time during our visit, and look forward to coming back here again one of these days. There is so much to see and do in this area that we could keep busy all winter long fishing, kayaking, touring the local attractions, and sampling the fare at the many area restaurants.

Though we sometimes find ourselves spending as much as two months in one place, especially when we visit our family in Arizona, we usually stay no more than a week or two in one location before we move on. Much longer than that, and I get bored and hitch itch sets in.

One complaint I hear frequently from fulltiming women is that their husbands are always in “go mode” and never want to slow down. I’m guilty of that myself all too often.

Sometimes Miss Terry has the need to settle in for a while, so she can do some serious cooking, get a shopping fix in, and just decompress. I think a lot of RVing couples are like us; the husband wants to be on the go all the time, and the wife needs to slow him down so her needs are met, too. It’s important to recognize each others’ needs, and to be willing to compromise so those needs get met. 

Once, while we were teaching at Life on Wheels, a wife told me that they never spent two nights in the same place. She said they drove over 500 miles, nonstop, to visit her sister in Maine. She said they arrived at 6 p.m., parked in the driveway, had dinner with her sister and her family, and at 7 a.m. the next morning they pulled out, because the husband was ready to go someplace else and see something new.

Another husband once bragged to us that they had been on the road for over a year, and had not spent one night in an RV park. It was always truck stops, WalMart parking lots, and roadside rest areas. He was having a ball and bragging about how much money he was saving. One look at his wife and you could see that she was miserable. Her idea of retirement was not seeing the world through a windshield, and living at Camp WalMart. I haven’t heard from either couple in a long time, but I wonder how long those relationships lasted in the fulltime RV lifestyle?

Of course, the flip side of the coin are the wives that “can’t be away from my grandbabies,” and insist that their travels never be too far away from wherever those young ones are. One fellow told us that he has always wanted to see Arizona, but never will, because his wife insists that they return to Illinois every few weeks, even in the winter, so she can see their grandchildren and keep track of what was happening in their adult daughters’ lives.

We have met more than one fulltiming woman who reluctantly gave in to their husbands’ desire to travel, but were damn sure going to make him pay a price for it. Nether the husband or wife was having a good time, and it was obvious in every case that they probably wouldn’t be on the road very long.

I’ve toyed with the idea of having a panel discussion at one of our rallies on Staying Married (And Happy) In An RV. What do you think?   

Thought For The Day – People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday was the final day of our 2010 Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, which consisted of morning coffee and donuts sponsored by Mac McCoy, one last chance to visit the vendors who had not already packed up and left, and the tour of the Heartland Recreational Vehicles factory. By noon we had all of the tables and chairs put away, and the building emptied out.

We spent most of the afternoon trying to get our motorhome back to some semblance of normality, stowing away rally materials in our bays, and sorting through leftover brochures, display materials, and notes we had hastily scribbled on slips of paper about interesting places to visit that our attendees had suggested, and good campgrounds they thought we might like to stop at someday.

Our dear friends Tom Owen and Diane Rojewski came by to chat for a while, and Frank Hinman popped in for a few minutes. Rumor control has it that there may be another visit to Tom and Diane’s houseboat in Key West in our future. Tom and Diane graciously invited us to stay at the houseboat two years ago, and we spent a wonderful week exploring Key West and the rest of the Florida Keys, kayaking, and playing tourist. We’re really looking forward to getting back down there again.

Soon after Tom and Diane left, Orv Hazelton stopped in, and we solved most of the troubles of the world; then Greg White came over to join us, and he had answers for the few dilemmas of mankind that Orv and I had not gotten to yet.

I spent a couple of hours reading over the rally feedback forms that we asked each attendee to fill out. There were a lot of glowing compliments about the rally, which are always nice, but also some good feedback on the different seminars we had, as well as suggestions for future rallies.

Terry and I read each and every feedback form, and give those suggestions serious consideration. We don’t always go with them, for various reasons, but we have incorporated several of our attendees’ suggestions into our rallies.

One comment that gets repeated frequently at every rally is that we have too many seminars at the same time, and that a person can’t attend one that interests them unless they miss another in the same time period.

One of the things that sets our events apart from many other RV rallies is that we focus on a broad spectrum of seminars. We had 60 different seminars at the rally, which is about average for one of our events. Not just vendor seminars, but also seminars on all kinds of other topics. At this rally we had seminars on bicycling, kayaking, traveling to Alaska, genealogy, Midwest travel destinations, RVing history, RV electrical systems, tire safety, weight safety, fire safety, and more!

True, sometimes there are conflicts when somebody wants to be at two different seminars held at the same time, but the flip side of that coin is that at least we offer plenty of options to choose from, to suit every interest. If we offered fewer seminars, and repeated them twice as some have suggested, we would drastically reduce the options for others who may be interested in something else. To us, more is better when it comes to seminars.  

Of course, we can’t please everybody; we had comments that people wanted more computer related seminars, such as the nine that Geeks on Tour presented, and comments from other folks who said they didn’t care about computer seminars, they wanted seminars on RV maintenance, or pet care, or crafts, or… you get the idea. The problem there is, of course, finding people qualified to teach those seminars. All we can do is to continue to find new seminar topics and new people to present them.

Comments were mixed on having the rally at a full hookup campground. Some people loved it, and some said they would have been just as happy at a fairgrounds, if the cost had been less. And, of course, there were folks who wanted the full hookups, but at fairgrounds prices. That just doesn’t happen!

We had 165 RVs registered the rally, as well as a dozen or so others that had not registered, but were here at the campground on a weekly or monthly basis, and signed up for the rally when they learned about it.

Most of our vendors reported good sales, and a few said that they made more money at our rally then they did at the big Newmar Kountry Klub rally the week before in Goshen, which had over 600 RVs.

With rally week behind us, Miss Terry and I plan to sleep late today and spend some time recharging our minds and bodies. We’re worn out, but we’re gratified that we have another successful rally behind us.

Thought For The Day – A ton of regret never made an ounce of difference.

Back when we were doing the bus conversion thing, we knew several bus nuts who took their coaches to Mexico to have them painted. We never considered it, because even at bargain Mexican prices, we just didn’t feel comfortable taking our MCI into Mexico.

Yes, I know that a lot of RVers, even some of my blog readers, enjoy traveling in Mexico. and sing its praises. That’s fine for them, but it’s not our thing. I’ve seen some Mexican paint jobs that looked pretty good, but I’ve seen some really botched ones too.

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one this bad until yesterday, when we stopped in to visit with Michele Henry at Phoenix Commercial Paint. Michele told us that this Country Coach was painted in Mexico, and by the time its owner was back across the border, the paint was blistering and peeling on the bumper.

Soon afterward, the gel coat on the rear cap started bleeding through. All because of a lack of good preparation before they started painting, and shoddy workmanship.

So yes, the owner saved some money by going south of the border to get his coach painted. But like most things in life, you get what you pay for. With the great work Michele and her crew do, for so much less than what other shops charge, I don’t know why anyone would drive all the way to Mexico and take a chance on getting  a paint job like this instead.

Here is one of Michele’s employees buffing a motorhome she is finishing up on. Now that’s a good looking paint job! We keep saving our pennies, and one of these days we may be able to have Michele work her magic on our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage.

Yesterday we dropped off the new issue of the Gypsy Journal at our printer in Allegan, Michigan, and since Greg and Jan White had never been up in that area, they went with us. Jan really liked all of the pretty country scenery and small towns we passed through along the way.

When we left the printer, we drove to Portage, Michigan to have lunch, and browsed in a couple of stores; Gander Mountain for Greg and I, Bed, Bath and Beyond for Miss Terry and Jan, and Barnes and Noble for all of us.

Back at Elkhart Campground, I caught up on e-mail, and checked some of the RV blogs I try to read on a regular basis, then went for a walk around the campground. Or at least I tried to go for a walk.

First I noticed a couple trying to get a small refrigerator into their fifth wheel, and I stopped to give them a hand. Once we had it inside, I resumed my walk, and was stopped by a couple who wanted to talk about their frustrating attempts to have the husband teach the wife how to drive their RV. They both agreed that it wasn’t working, and I strongly suggested that they go talk to Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School. Some couples just don’t seem to be able to work together on things like that, and though the husband didn’t want to spend the money on a driving lesson (which is a great investment, in my opinion), I told him that it was a lot cheaper than a divorce!

I didn’t make it far before another couple called me over to their awning to ask about the seminars at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. They didn’t have internet access to check the schedule at the bottom of the Rally Registration Page on our website, so I tried to remember all of the seminars we have scheduled. But with some 60 different seminars, I couldn’t remember each and every one. They wanted to know about as many as I could remember off the top of my head, and they asked a lot of questions about several of the seminars. I told them that I’d have the finished schedules printed up ahead of time, so they would have time to decide which ones they wanted to attend. Then the husband said, “Oh, we won’t be here. We’re headed for Pennsylvania in a couple of days, and then we’re going to New England to watch the leaves changing. We just wanted to know what we’d be missing.” Huh? I’m straining my brain and slapping bloodthirsty skeeters just so they could do some mental window shopping? I bit my tongue, and wished them a safe trip.

We’ve got a lot to do in the next few days, including picking up the new issue from the printer on Thursday, stuffing all of the envelopes and getting them mailed off,  proofing the design for the rally T-shirts, deciding on the layout of the vendor building, and a lot more. And I’ll probably need a nap or two somewhere along the way!

Thought For The Day – If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!