We left the fairgrounds in Sedalia about 10 a.m., followed U.S. Highway 65 north to Interstate 70 and took it east to Columbia, where we unhooked the van and left the bus in the parking lot of the Bass Pro Shop while we found a bank to make a deposit, and then had lunch at Culvers.

If you have never had a Butter Burger at Culver’s you have no idea what you are missing. There are only a couple of Culvers restaurants in Arizona, so we had only been to one since we left Indiana last year and it was long past due. In our opinion, they make the very best fast food burger in the world, hands down.

We had considered spending a couple of nights at the Boone County Fairgrounds in Columbia (listed in our RVers Guide To Fairgrounds Camping), which has 575 RV sites with water, electric, and dump stations for $10 a night. But they had two small RV rallies going on, one a Good Sam and the other a Holiday Rambler event. There were still a lot of RV sites left, but it was early afternoon and we decided to continue on to Mark Twain Lake.

We followed U.S. Highway 63, a good divided four lane highway, north from Columbia to Moberly, and then we took U.S. Highway 24 east. In Paris we were supposed to pick up State Route 154 and follow it to Perry, but somehow we got messed up and missed our turn. Five miles later I spotted Highway U and a sign for Mark Twain State Park, and turned off onto it.

Highway U is not exactly a super highway. It was a very narrow two lane road that climbed up one short hill and then dropped down another, but nine miles later we came to the state park and found State Route 154, which we followed to Perry. From Perry it was only a few miles north to Ray Behrens Campground, a Corps of Engineers campground on the shore of huge Mark Twain Lake.

Most of the sites are electric only, but we knew the campground had a few full hookup sites too. But since we arrived about 4 p.m. on a Friday, we really didn’t expect to find a full hookup site open. As luck would have it, they actually had three full hookup sites available! We chose a nice 50 amp site, got parked and settled in. At $12 a night with either a Golden Access or Golden Age pass from the National Park Service, it’s a heck of a deal.

I would never consider having an RV without an Electrical Management System (EMS) from Progressive Industries. Our EMS has saved our bus several times from bad campground wiring. When I plugged in at the campground, the EMS went through its setup procedure, and then shut down the incoming power because it detected a problem, showing an error code.

When this happens, you can bypass the EMS by flipping a switch on the model we have, and for some people I have known, that is their first response. But to me, that’s a recipe for disaster, sort of like ignoring your antivirus software alert and downloading a suspect e-mail attachment.

I called Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories, who is an EMS dealer, and described the problem. After making a phone call to the manufacturer, Daryl called me back and we deduced the problem was low voltage on one leg of the 50 amp power. We could have moved to one of the other open full hookup sites, but we really don’t need 50 amps to live comfortably. So I put on a 30 amp dog bone adapter, and we were good to go.

Daryl, thanks to you and Progressive Industries for your help and for such a great product. Folks, if you don’t have an EMS system in your RV, go to Daryl’s website and order one right now. You never know, the very next time you plug into a campground outlet may be the time you fry your RV’s electrical system and everything you have plugged in inside of it. Our EMS has saved us from damage more than once, and you’ll find very few companies in this industry that stand behind their products like Progressive Industries does.

Our friends Pam and Smokey Ridgely are workamping nearby at Mark Twain Landing, and we called to let them know we were in the area, and Smokey said they were just going to have dinner at the restaurant at their RV park. Never one to pass up food, I told him to give us a few minutes and we’d join them.

It was great to see our friends again after so long, and the food was as good as the conversation. Pam and Smokey introduced us to the campground’s managers and arranged for us to leave several bundles of sample issues for their guests.

By the time dinner and desert were finished, we were both tired from our long day, and the long week of vending we had just finished, so we said our goodbyes, promised to get together again while we’re here, and headed back to our bus and bed.

Thought For The Day – When you’re finally holding all the cards, why does everyone else decide to play chess?

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

A few days ago I posted a blog with photos of RVs damaged by a tornado that hit the NACO Natchez Trace campground near Hohenwald, Tennessee. That wasn’t Mother Nature’s only assault on the RV world lately.

On Friday another nasty storm, accompanied by a tornado, tore through Saint Francois State Park near Bonne Terre, Missouri, where our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel are camp hosts. Brenda said they had five inches of rain, and they had a hectic time evacuating people to storm shelters. She told me it was one of the most frightening experiences she has ever had.

Not much rattles my pal Ron, who has pretty much seen it all in his career as a police officer and police chief, but he said it was bad enough that he felt much better inside the storm shelter.

Fortunately for our friends, their beautiful Winnebago diesel pusher was parked on high ground, but nine visitors’ RVs were flooded out, and six of them were totaled.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll have good weather during our trip east this week, and while we’re at Escapade in Sedalia, Missouri. One reason we are giving ourselves over a week to travel the 1200 miles to Sedalia is to give us the leeway to hunker down and wait out any storms that lay in our travel path.

Our old MCI bus conversion came from the factory with just basic gauges – speedometer, air pressure gauge, oil pressure and temperature gauges, and battery gauge. I quickly got tired of using a wooden dowel rod to check my fuel level, so one of our first priorities was to add a fuel gauge. One gauge I really wish we had was a tachometer. 

At a bus rally last October I managed to pick up a digital tachometer for the bus, but the darned thing did not come with a mounting bracket. After looking at 4×4 and marine shops all over the country from the Florida Keys to Arizona, yesterday we went to Lowe’s here in Show Low and Miss Terry managed to come up with a couple of items that we could combine to create a makeshift mount.

That all came together fine, but when I hooked it up, the darned tach turned out to be dead! With power and a ground connected, we should have a reading of all zeroes with the engine off, but there is nothing. I checked the power going in, and it is good, so all I can figure out is that something must be bad inside the gauge itself.

As many of you know, we have decided it is time to upgrade from our bus to something bit newer and with a slide so we’ll have some room when the grandkids come to visit. Yes, I know it will be quite a change for us from a bus to a production built motorhome, but we’re ready. Several people have sent us information on used diesel pushers, and while we appreciate that, many have been way out of our price range.

We’re looking for a 38 to 40 foot diesel pusher with at least a living room slide, a minimum of a 300 horsepower engine, and somewhere in the $50K to $70K price range. Some of the brands and models we have looked at and liked include Winnebago, Newmar, Holiday Rambler, and Allegro. While we are not fans of Fleetwood, we have seen a couple of nice American Dream and American Tradition coaches we liked. We would prefer to buy from a private party instead of a dealership, but we would not rule that out.

If you know of something that fits into the above criteria that might meet our needs, I’d appreciate you sending me a quick e-mail. Maybe you have a friend who is thinking about trading their coach in and not getting anywhere with the dealers on a trade-in basis. If so, send them my way.

Thought For The Day – Don’t argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell who is who.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

I had two or three comments and e-mails from people warning me about the Holiday Rambler we are considering buying, because with the parent company, Monaco, now out of business, it will be an orphan unit.

I have never been a fan of Monaco, because their reputation for customer service has been pretty bad. However, that is not to say that every rig they ever built is problematic. As for the orphan unit concerns, the coach we are looking at is a 2000, so it is out of warranty anyway. The good thing about buying a used RV, besides the fact that someone else has already taken the depreciation hit, is that all of the bugs have already been worked out.

As it turns out, we may not have a buyer for our bus anyway, so the deal may not happen. Our potential buyer has some logistical problems that have changed the look of things, so if you know anybody looking for a nice bus conversion, send them my way.

There has been a lot of talk about orphan units around campfires and on the different RV internet forums. I’m not sure that all of this concern is really necessary. Even on a new RV, keep in mind that most of the components are covered under their individual manufacturers’ warranties, so the whole orphan unit thing doesn’t have to be a deal killer. If I were looking at a new orphan unit sitting on a reliable dealer’s lot, I would negotiate an extended warranty into the contract.  

Of course, keep in mind that my opinion of most RV manufacturers’ warranties is biased by the fact that Fleetwood never did address the problems we had on the Motorhome From Hell that we started our RVing life in. We had the factory warranty, for all the good it did us.

After a whirlwind weekend of stuffing envelopes, we’re driving back up to our mail service in Mesa this morning to get everything sent off. Poor Miss Terry has really been hitting it hard trying to make up for lost time.

After everything is in the mail, we’ll drive over to Apache Junction to visit with her Mom and Dad, Pete and Bess Weber. We’re pulled in so many different directions at times that it’s hard to squeeze in everything we need to get done. But family time is very important to us, and we take advantage of the opportunities we do have to spend with the people we love.

Thought For The Day - A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

With our rally over and our trip to San Diego behind us, it’s time to settle down and get some work done.

As I wrote a while back, the standard size of American newspapers is shrinking, and our regular printers here in Arizona have switched to the new smaller page sizes. This has required a complete rebuild of the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, setting us back on our print date. We’ll be sending the new issue out late next week, a little behind schedule, unfortunately.

One of the challenges to publishing America’s only on the road periodical that we are aware of, is that we don’t have just one newspaper we use to print every issue. We farm the actual printing out to different newspapers in different parts of the country, wherever we happen to be traveling. Sometimes they get us in and out fast, and other times we go to the bottom of the pile and wait while they take care of their regular customers. I understand why they do this, and when I was running my own print shop, I did the same thing. But it’s still frustrating to have to cool our heels and wait.

We’ll never be able to retire, but if I ever did, I think I’d still be just as busy. There is so much I want to do, but never seem to find the time for. As I wrote a few days ago, Dan Foshee gave me a book on drawing and some art supplies because I told him at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally how much I have always wanted to be able to draw. That is something that I’d really love to apply myself to, just to see if I could ever create more than lopsided stick people.

Something else I have always thought would be interesting to learn more about is genealogy. One of my cousin’ has done a lot of research on my mother’s side of the family, but I really don’t know a lot about my Dad’s side. My parents, grandparents, and all of my uncles and aunts that I ever knew have long since passed away. I am the youngest of my parents’ eight offspring, and the only one still alive. So except for some remembered family stories from long ago, I really don’t have a starting point. Or at least I didn’t think I did. 

At our recent Gypsy Gathering rally in Casa Grande, Judy Bayless put on an excellent seminar called The RVing Genealogist. I got busy and was not able to sit in on the seminar, but everyone who attended it gave Judy rave reviews.

As it turns out, Judy and her husband Walt are parked right in front of us here at Tra-Tel RV Park in Tucson, and last night they took Terry and I out to a wonderful Mexican dinner. Back at their Holiday Rambler motorhome, Judy fired up her computer, and logged into www.ancestry.com.

With just the sketchy information I could give her, she was able to pull up the 1930 and 1920 U.S. Census and locate information on my parents as young newlyweds living on a farm in Michigan, on my Dad’s parents, his brothers and sisters, and even my great grandmother! How cool is that?

Genealogy and RVing go hand in hand, and we have met many fulltimers who research their family trees as they travel. Judy has promised to come to our rally next year and present her seminar again, and you can bet I’ll be sitting right in the front row!  

Thought For The Day - There is no education like adversity.