Please be careful where you walk, because my butt’s dragging and I don’t want you to step on it! And our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally doesn’t even officially start until today!

Yesterday was the early vendor set-up day, and my friend Mike Loscher and myself were over in the big building a little after 9 a.m., getting a couple of final details wrapped up, before we opened the doors and let the vendors in to start getting their booths ready for the rally.

It’s great to see so many of our vendor friends here for the rally. We’ve worked alongside many of them for years while operating our own vendor booth at RV rallies coast to coast, so we understand what vendors need, and try very hard to provide it for them at our events.

Here is our pal Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories. Daryl has a brand new item, the Tire Traker Tire Pressure Monitoring System, as well as the excellent Progressive Industries Electrical Management Systems, which we have used for years, both in our MCI bus conversion, and now in our Winnebago diesel pusher.

You can see all kinds of goodies at an RV rally, from safety items like the automatic engine bay fire suppression systems that my pal Mac McCoy sells, to camping chairs and other goodies to make your RV travels more fun and more comfortable.

Flags Galore is offering every kind of flag you could ever want to find, in every size imaginable.

Dwane and Janet Trannum from Almost Heaven Micro Fibre spent most of the day hauling their inventory in and stocking their booth. I sure hope they sell a lot, because I don’t want to have to help them carry it back out to their van!

John and Karen Knoll stopped by the RVSEF weighing site here at Elkhart Campground to have Rick Lang weigh their truck and fifth wheel before they parked on their assigned RV site for the rally.

By the end of the day, everybody had worked hard, and most of the vendors were set up and ready to go. I locked the building up about 5 p.m., and then Dennis Haddix from Makarios RV and his pretty wife (whose name escapes me, I’m afraid) pulled in. They had the bed of their Itasca motorhome covered with inventory for their booth, so I opened the building back up long enough for them to unload enough that they could get through the night. Dennis is also the founder of ChatRV.com, a relatively new online forum for the RV community.

Of course, no RV rally has officially started until Red and Beth from Too Crazy Ladies have their booth set up and open for business!

Today is the official registration day, and Miss Terry and her crew of hardworking volunteers will be busy getting everybody checked in, passing out name badges, and answering questions.

One nice thing about having the rally at a campground instead of a fairgrounds is that we don’t have to have a parking crew. The folks just stop at the RV park office and check in, and Bob and Gita send them to their RV site.

When we were visiting with campground owners Bob and Gita Patel late yesterday afternoon, I think they were feeling a bit overwhelmed, but also delighted. They said that this rally will be the first time in all of the years that they have owned Elkhart Campground that they will be completely full! That should help their bottom line a little bit!

Thought For The Day – Count your life by smiles, not tears. Count your age by friends, not years.

I spent most of yesterday working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, making and receiving telephone calls about our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, and making plans for future rallies.

I had hoped to be almost done with the new issue by now, but I got lazy and didn’t keep on top of things, so now I have to push a little harder to make our deadline. It’s no big deal, we’re not behind schedule, I just have to knuckle down for a few days.

One call I got was from the manager of the Mercer County Fairgrounds in Celina, Ohio, to discuss the dates for our 2011 Eastern rally. That’s a long time from now, but it takes a lot of planning to get things arranged, and venues large enough to handle our size group book well in advance. We didn’t lock anything in yet, but right now we’re looking at either the third or last week of September.

We don’t want to go back to the same place over and over, but it’s not easy to find a venue that has the facilities that we need and that will work within our budget. We had a commitment with the good folks in Celina for three rallies, and we are looking forward to going back to the friendly little town. It’s a very nice fairgrounds, and they really bend over backwards to accommodate our needs. We have never found anybody we can work with as easily.

I also talked for a bit with Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories, and I already have his commitment to be a vendor at the 2011 Eastern rally. We are pleased that so many of our vendors return again and again. That tells us that we must be doing something right.

Daryl and I lamented the fact that it is very hard for vendors to make long range plans, because some RV clubs and organizations don’t seem to be willing to communicate with each other about rally plans, even after they have the dates and locations locked in. I’ve never been able to figure out that thinking. If everybody knows what everybody else is planning, we can work together, rather than planning events with conflicting schedules that only reduce the numbers of attendees and vendors, who can’t be in two places at once. It’s hard enough for vendors to make a profit in this economy as it is, but having to play silly waiting games to find out where and when some of the rallies are going to be held makes it almost impossible.

I also got a telephone call from my daughter Tiffany, to tell me that she and hubby Jim had stopped to check out some Indian petroglyphs on the banks of a dry wash about halfway between Snowflake and Holbrook, some 35 miles north of Show Low. They came around a bend in the wash and spotted a mountain lion feeding on something up ahead. The cougar quickly ran off, but Tiffany said its paw prints were as big as the palm of Jim’s hand up to the second knuckle. And that young man has big hands! They took their clue from the cat and took their leave too, in the opposite direction. Yes folks, some places remain where the West is still wild!

About 4:30 I escaped from my desk long enough for us to drive to Pinetop with Greg and Jan for dinner at the Chuck Wagon Steakhouse, which was a favorite of mine when we lived here. The restaurant is very rustic looking, with an Old West theme that includes an impressive bar, saddles, mounted big game heads, and a chandelier made from elk antlers.  

Greg and I had rib eye steaks, while Miss Terry and Jan choose the petite sirloins. I was pleased to learn that the food and service were both just as good as I remembered.  Greg, Jan, and Terry were all very happy with their meals also. When the waitress came by to inquire if we wanted dessert, we were all too full to say yes.

Back at the Elks campground, I worked some more on the new issue of the paper and then just before dark we decided that dessert wasn’t such a bad idea after all. So we all piled back in Greg and Jan’s truck and went to Dairy Queen!

Thought For The Day – When you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

The wind has not let up a bit here in northern Arizona, and as predicted, a cold front has moved in and dropped the temperatures quite a bit. The sky is very gray, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it starts snowing!

I talked to my buddy Mac McCoy from Fire and Life Safety yesterday. Mac is in Goshen, Indiana running around in shorts, and I’m freezing my butt off here in Arizona. Life is not fair!

Since it’s been too nasty to go anywhere, Terry and I have been getting a lot done at home. Most of yesterday was spent working on our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, which will be held August 30 to September 3 at Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, Indiana.

I have started putting together the seminar schedule, and early indications are that we’ll have an excellent lineup once again. Mac McCoy will be presenting his RV Fire Safety seminar, the folks from Recreational Vehicle Safety and Education Foundation will be doing seminars on RV Weight Safety and RV Tire Safety, the Geeks on Tour have a great selection of computer seminars, I’ll be doing my two new seminars, Cemetery Stories and 100 Miles From Here. Orv Hazelton will present a seminar on Understanding RV Continued Service Plans, and there will also be seminars on bloggng, RV insurance, accessing the internet on the road, RV history, digital photos, RV maintenance, and lots more.

We already have several great vendors signed up, including AGS (recruiting RVers to sell advertising on campground maps) , Lawrence RV Accessories (Tire Traker tire pressure monitoring systems and Progressive Industries electrical management systems), Techno RV (computer accessories), Tastefully Simple (gourmet food mixes), Coyote Sales (Wilson antennas, cell phone accessories and PressurePro tire monitoring systems, Uniquely RV (solar lights), Good Sam Extended Warranty Service, Fire and Life Safety (fire extinguishers and fire alarms), Flags Galore & More (flags and flagpoles), Too Crazy Ladies (custom name tags), M&B Enterprises (diesel engine filters and supplies), Passport America (discount campground memberships), Geeks on Tour (computer education DVDs), MOR/ryde (suspension systems) and Precise Satellite and RV Electric (MotoSat dishes), to name just a few, and we have more vendors signing up every week.

RV sites are going fast for the rally. We only have 27 of our 50 amp full hookup sites left,  and we have 12 of the 30 amp full hookup sites available, and 23 of the 30 amp water & electric sites.  We also have quite a few sites available with 20 amp electric and water. To reserve your site, visit our Rally Registration Page. We’re looking forward to seeing a lot of old friends at the rally, and making some new friends too!

Thought For The Day – Earth First! We’ll strip mine the other planets later.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

The strong winds that had been hammering northern Indiana Friday continued all night long, and continued through much of yesterday. There was no question about it; we were not getting out on the highway. We really, really wanted to be on the go, but we really, really didn’t want to be blown all over the road and waste a bunch of fuel fighting the wind.

So we spent the day listening to music, cruising the internet and hoping that today would bring us better weather. About noon, our friend Michele Henry from Phoenix Commercial Paint stopped by to visit, and later on we went to dinner with Greg and Jan White. We all got a laugh about the fact that this was our third “farewell dinner” in as many days.

Back at Elkhart Campground, I spent some time studying our planned route, while Miss Terry decided to try making a batch of pumpkin cheese bread in her convection oven. This would only be her second attempt at baking in the oven, as she transitions from the gas oven we had in our bus conversion.

While Terry was using her electric mixer to blend the ingredients, we suddenly lost all electrical power in the motorhome. The Progressive Industries Electrical Management System (EMS) unit I got from Lawrence RV Accessories was showing 125 volts of power coming in. I pushed the button to turn our inverter on so we had power again from the inverter and battery bank, but the battery charger was not working.

I flipped all of the breakers on and off, went out to the campground’s electrical pedestal and flipped the breaker there off and on, but we still were not getting any shore power, just the inverter feed. If I turned off the inverter, we went dead again, though the EMS still showed incoming AC power.

Having exhausted my small store of knowledge, I called Greg and he came over. We ran through all of the things I had done already, and then Greg had me turn on our Onan generator. Still no power to the inverter, except what it was drawing from the battery bank. We both agreed that the problem might well be a blown transfer switch, which automatically switched between shore power and generator power.

After studying the books that came with our motorhome, I logged onto Winnebago’s website, where owners can download electrical and plumbing schematic drawings, along with paint codes and a ton of other valuable resource information for anything Winnebago has ever built.

With still no luck solving the problem at that point, Greg checked our inverter and pressed the reset button for the incoming breaker on it, and suddenly we had AC power again!      

Apparently all incoming shore power is routed through the inverter, which really doesn’t make any sense to me, because if the inverter goes bad, we’d be stuck with no power to the motorhome at all. The way I wired our bus, the inverter was a supplementary power source, and taking it out of the line would not disrupt power to the coach. But we have to learn all about living in a factory made unit again, including engineering designs that boggle the mind.

With power restored, Miss Terry finished making her pumpkin bread, and it came out looking great. She is her own worst critic, but even she said it was pretty darned good! I thought it was delicious!  

While I was enjoying a slice of yummy hot pumpkin bread, Bad Nick was busy with a new Bad Nick Blog post titled A Campaign Ad I’d Like To See. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to God. 

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We all want to get the most bang for our buck when we make a purchase. Whether you’re buying a pair of blue jeans, a television set, or an RV, you want to get your money’s worth, right?

I don’t think anybody I’ve ever met has managed to make a better deal than longtime Gypsy Journal subscriber John Culp, who is here at our rally in the 1947 Westwood West Craft Coronado travel trailer that he bought brand new, and still travels with 62 years later! Yes, you read that right. John has had his RV for over six decades, and the octogenarian and his old rig are still going strong!

John said he lived in the trailer fulltime before he got married, calling it his “bachelor pad,” but when he and his wife got married, they decided after a couple of months that it was too cramped for both of them. Alone now, John pulls the trailer behind a van, and brings it to a lot of the Tin Can Tourists events. I never met anybody whose RV is old enough to draw Social Security!

The wind finally died down yesterday, and by late afternoon we even had blue sky overhead. But it was cold! The thermometer dipped into the mid-30s overnight, and a lot of folks said that as soon as the rally ends Friday, they’re headed south.     

Yesterday evening we had our pizza party, and it always amazes me how fast Miss Terry and her volunteer crew can serve over 90 pizzas to a crowd of hungry RVers. Everybody complimented me on their efficiency.

After we all finished stuffing ourselves on pizza, Melissa and Larry Beahm, who perform as One More Time, entertained us with a wonderful concert that had everybody tapping their toes and singing along to the music.

Melissa and Larry are fulltime RVers, who make their living traveling the country performing at RV rallies, nursing homes, and other events. They will be performing for us again tonight, and have promised a lot of “belt buckle rubbing” slow songs to dance to.

We tried something different with this rally; moving our vendors inside, in the same building where we have the morning coffee and donuts, and where the vendors present their seminars. It has worked out very well, and several of the vendors said it has been an excellent show for them. In fact, Ben and Gay Miller from Coyote Sales sold so many of their Wilson cellular phone antennas and accessories that they had to have more merchandise sent in by overnight delivery!

We did some shopping ourselves here at the rally. One piece of equipment I consider critical in an RV is an Electrical Management System (EMS) from Progressive Industries. The unit is designed to shut down incoming power to an RV if it detects high or low voltage, an open ground or neutral, or other problems that could cause serious damage to the RV and its electrical systems.

The EMS in or bus conversion saved us from damage several times over the years, and as impressed as I was with the unit itself, I was even more impressed with the service from Progressive Industries and their vendor, Daryl Lawrence, from Lawrence RV Accessories.

Two years ago while we were in Quartzsite, a board went out in our EMS, and even though it had been out for warranty for years, someone from the company drove several miles from town to where we were parked in the middle of the desert and replaced it for us! So yesterday we had Daryl install an EMS in our Winnebago, and now I’ll feel a lot more comfortable when I plug into a campground’s electric pedestal. Thanks for the great service and peace of mind, Daryl.  

Thought For The Day – The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat sensibly, and lie about your age.