All fulltime RVers have experienced it. We will be talking to somebody about our life on the road, and invariably they will ask us where our favorite place in the country is. We always reply that just as we could not choose which one of our children is our favorite, it would be just as impossible to choose just one favorite location. But, we sure can tell you some our least favorite places!

While this list reflects just our impression, and we know RVers that love some of the same places we dislike, here are our Top (or actually Bottom) Ten, in no particular order.

1. The Rio Grande Valley in Texas – Most RVers just refer to it as “The Valley,” a stretch of land that begins down in southwest Texas at Brownsville, and stretches north past Mission. This is a popular snowbird roost, where you can find RV parks in every price range, and with every kind (or lack of) amenity. A lot of people love it, but to us it was just crowded, lacking in scenic beauty, and unappealing in every way. What grass there is was full of thorns that stab your feet, and the general RVer population is so old that people joke that “every time you hear an ambulance siren, another RV site just became available.”  

2. West Texas – Just because you drove north out of the Rio Grande Valley doesn’t mean you’ve entered the land of milk and honey. West Texas is endless miles of boring scenery, road kill, and not much else.

3. Chicago, Illinois – We’ll drive 75 miles out of our way to avoid Interstates 80 and 90 through Chicago, and have, many times. The traffic is always hectic, and it has some of the most aggressive drivers in the world.

4. Utah – How can I dislike an entire state? Well, easy… it is Utah, after all! Yes, there are some beautiful places, such as Zion National Park, but overall, my impression of the Beehive State is pretty negative. I remember a trip to Saint George years ago, when Miss Terry cut her arm on a broken rack in a supermarket. When she went up to the Customer Service counter to get something to contain the bleeding, the manager and his staff were more worried about who was going to pay for the paper towels than they were about the woman bleeding all over their store. Things like that leave a permanent bad taste in my mouth.

5. Southern California – With the possible exception of the coastline at La Jolla, I’d have no problem if we gave the rest of California, south of Pismo Beach, back to Mexico. It truly is the land of quakes and flakes.

6. Montgomery, Alabama – When we visited Montgomery a few years ago to gather some stories for the Gypsy Journal, we were amazed at how consistently rude so many people were. At the Rosa Parks Museum and Dr. Martin Luther King’s house, now a memorial to the Civil Rights movement, the people on duty absolutely refused to allow us to even take the standard tour of their facilities once we told them that we were there to do a feature story for our publication. We managed to get a few stories in Montgomery, but we would have loved to hang around longer and cover all that the city has to offer. But, we kept hitting brick walls at too many of the places we wanted to write about.

7. El Paso, Texas – I lived in El Paso for a short time as a kid, and I didn’t like it then. Time has done nothing to change my mind. Traffic is always terrible, the city has no aesthetic charm, and I would not be comfortable staying anywherin the city overnight. However, if you like truck stops, fast food restaurants, strip clubs, and rundown strip malls, your opinion may be different than mine.

8. Billings, Montana – Even before a local campground owner convinced the city to ban overnight RV parking (a move that was quickly rescinded when RVers from across the nation let the city fathers know that we would all boycott their town), I have not liked Billings. We have stopped there several times, and received anywhere from poor to rude service in restaurants, shops, and even motels when we were traveling without our motorhome.

9. Houston, Texas – This is another big city with nothing to offer except heavy traffic and rude drivers. It’s always a pleasure to be driving away from Houston, instead of toward it, and it’s even better when we can avoid the city all together.     

10. Lewiston, Idaho – While the surrounding area is beautiful, with some of the most impressive scenery in the West, we found Lewiston to be a dumpy little town, with the nauseating smell of the local paper mill permeating the air.

Okay, that’s my list of my 10 Least Favorite Places. What about you? What are some of the places you have visited and are in no hurry to get back to, and why?

While I was working on this list, which I admit some may find to be a bit negative, Bad Nick was on a roll, putting together a fun little Bad Nick Blog post titled I Need Therapy. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Worrying works! 90 percent of the things I worry about never happen.

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After reading the Thought For The Day in yesterday’s blog (When you go into court, your fate is in the hands of twelve people who aren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty), two different wannabe fulltimers e-mailed me to ask how fulltimers handle civic obligations such as voting and jury duty. Do they have to return to whatever town they are domiciled in to cast their votes, or if they are chosen for jury duty?

When we started our fulltiming lifestyle, we chose Texas as our legal domicile, and our mailing service was with the Escapees in Livingston. Two or three times over the years we received notices of jury duty. In each case we just called the Polk County courthouse, explained that we were Escapees and were traveling in another part of the country, and that we would not be back in the area for several months. In each case, we were dismissed, and asked to stop in and volunteer for jury duty the next time we were in Livingston for a while.

A couple of years ago, we switched our domicile to South Dakota. We have not received any jury summonses so far, but my understanding is that if we do, all it takes is a telephone call and an explanation that we are out of state, and we’ll be dismissed.

Voting, no matter where you are domiciled, can be done by absentee ballot. Just contact the local authority that handles such things and request an absentee ballot. Fulltimers do it all the time.

Another question I get frequently is how does one renew their driver’s license if they are fulltimers. It depends on the state. In Texas, we renewed online once, and most states have that service available. Some states allow you to renew your license online or by mail one time, and then require you to appear in person the next time around.

Some states require drivers past a certain age to appear in person and take an eye test to renew their licenses. License renewals usually fall on your birthday. In every state that I know of, you can renew your license anywhere from 30 to 90 days in advance, so if your birthday falls in the middle of the winter, you can usually go earlier and get it done, rather than returning to someplace like South Dakota (a popular domicile state for fulltimers) in the middle of January or February.

Texas also requires an annual vehicle safety inspection, and depending on which county you are registered in, you may also need an emissions test to renew your license plates. Polk County, home of the Escapees, does not require an emissions test. You do not have to return to Texas to renew your license plates, it can be done by mail or online. You are only required to get a safety inspection when you bring the vehicle into Texas, so if you are traveling, you do not need to return to get a safety inspection. Just get it done the next time you are in Texas. In our bus conversion, we once went several years without a safety inspection, because we were not in Texas during that time period. South Dakota does not require a vehicle safety or emissions inspection.

Life on the road is a lot of fun, and even though we do have to handle things like jury duty, voting, and renewing licenses, none of them are a major obstacle. With a little planning, a telephone call or two, or a few minutes online, any of our civic obligations are a piece of cake. 

Thought For The Day – Don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

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First of all, Miss Terry wants me to thank the many, many people who left birthday wishes on the blog or on Facebook or Twitter, and sent so many e-mails. You all really helped make the day special for her, and made her feel very loved.

After dropping the new issue off at the printer yesterday, we drove to Muskegon, Michigan to visit my cousin Berni Frees and her hubby, Rocky. Many of you will remember Rocky and Berni from their time on the road as fulltimers. Berni is a massage therapist who worked a lot of kinks out of the muscles of our RVing friends, and Rocky was an RV tech with many satisfied customers.

Unfortunately, it turned out that it wasn’t the right time in their lives to become fulltime gypsies, and they have settled down in Rocky’s old hometown. We miss sharing life on the road with them, but their trusty old Winnebago Adventurer is always packed and ready to go on a weekend trip.

There is family that you associate with because you have to, and then there is family you think of more as dear friends and would go out of your way to spend time with, and Rocky and Berni fit into the latter category. We always have a wonderful time with them, and it had been way too long since our last visit.

They greeted us with hugs all around, and we instantly fell into that comfortable teasing and banter we always enjoy together, like the many months apart never happened and we had just seen them last week.

Since it was Miss Terry’s birthday, we went out for a nice dinner, and then back to their place for cake and ice cream, and a game of Mexican Train that lasted well past midnight. Poor Rocky and Berni had to get up early this morning, but at least Terry and I could sleep in.

Just as I need my puppy fix every so often, Terry needs a kitty fix now and then, so she enjoyed their cat, Medora. We both love animals, though I’m a dog person and doesn’t like cats very much, and Terry is a cat person who is allergic to most dogs, but we have agreed that we will not have another pet as long as we travel. We spend too much time away from the bus chasing down stories for the Gypsy Journal, dropping off sample copies, doing speaking gigs, and working as vendors at RV rallies, and it is not fair to an animal to be cooped up inside alone for that much time. So we have loaner critters we visit with, scattered around the country. Think of it as furry grandkids – we get to come and play with them when we want to, and then we take off again and leave all the responsibility to someone else!

Thought For The Day – Whether you think times are going to get better or get worse, sooner or later time will prove you right.

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This is our last day here in Show Low, Arizona, so today we’ll be taking care of some last minute details like filling the gas tank for our generator, saying goodbye to our friends here, and mailing out some orders that just came in.

We have really enjoyed our time here in our old hometown, and we know there will be a lot of tears all around when we say goodbye to my daughter Tiffany and her family. Leaving the people we love is always the hardest part of the fulltime RV lifestyle. I know Tiffany would love to have us stay here forever, but she understands how much we love our life on the road, and how much we long to be on the move again.

We have found over the years that sitting still is always expensive for us. Not just in terms of camping costs, but also in terms of lost revenue. When we are moving around the country, vending at RV rallies, and dropping off bundles of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal at RV parks, we see a steady flow of orders coming in for new subscriptions, books, CDs, etc. But when we stay in any one place for a while, that drops off significantly.

We’ve been in Arizona since January, pretty much in three places all of that time, and while our subscription renewals are steady, orders for new subscriptions and our other products have suffered.

Speaking of subscriptions, here is the announcement many of you have been waiting for. We are now offering the Gypsy Journal online, as many of you have requested.

As you know, we have been experimenting with several different options to make this work, and thanks to my pal Chris Guld (who from this day forward shall be known as Mama Geek) of Geeks on Tour, we finally have a solution that will work.

The full paper, in PDF format, will be available online, and you can either read it online or download it to your computer for later reading at your convenience. Readers who subscribe to the online edition will be e-mailed a user name and password when a new issue is uploaded, and a link to the new issue. Readers can search for keywords, and zoom in and out to read a page easily. I’m excited about this new option for our readers, and I know many of you will be, too.

If you are already a Gypsy Journal subscriber, and would like to convert your subscription to the digital edition, just send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and I’ll make the necessary changes in our records. If you are not already a subscriber and would like to subscribe to the digital edition, you can click this link Digital Subscription. A one year subscription is $20, and a two year subscription is $35. New subscriptions to the digital edition will begin with the next issue of the Gypsy Journal.

Someone asked how we can control readers who would share their user name and password with others to cheat us out of subscription costs. We can’t, but I believe that most people are basically honest, and I have too many real things to worry about in life to lose much sleep over the few bad apples that may exist.

To see how the new digital edition will look, go to the top right side of this page and you will see a tab that says Digital Edition. Click it and follow the instructions provided.

And for our readers who do not want to go digital, don’t worry, this WILL NOT replace our normal printed edition of the Gypsy Journal. For you, everything will remain the same.

Thought For The Day – Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway!

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