My wife is a very hard woman to shop for, because she doesn’t want very much in the way of material things. Whenever I ask her what she wants for Christmas, her birthday, our anniversary, or whatever, she always says she has everything she wants.

Once in a while, she’ll let me buy her a bottle of perfume, and I’ve managed to get her a few pairs of earrings over the years, but that’s about it. I guess I should be grateful, she’s not only easy on the eyes, she’s easy on the pocketbook.

I, on the other hand, am easy to shop for. I want everything! I’m like a chimpanzee in a department store. If it lights up, makes noise, goes fast, or tastes good, I want two of each. Why do you think my friend Brenda Speidel calls me Gadget Boy?

I love wandering through the tool section at Lowes and Home Depot, even though I know it’s kind of like going to one of those stripper joints. Most of what I’m seeing I have no idea what to do with, and I’d probably just end up hurting myself if I tried.

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Of course, living in a motorhome (not to mention being of modest means) does put some restrictions on my wants and desires. I really miss my hot tub, from our life before fulltiming, but I just can’t figure out where to put one in a Winnebago.

Actually, there really is very little I want, and nothing I need, that I don’t have. Most of my wants are not things, but rather experiences. I really want to do some kayak fishing, someday I want to catch a fish from an ocean pier, I want to take a cruise, and I want to see Alaska one of these days.

But, if I had to choose one material thing I’d like Santa to bring me, assuming the big guy could figure out a way to slide down the chimney our motorhome doesn’t have, I guess it might be a DVR so I could record some of my favorite television programs. I know a lot of people don’t care all that much for television, but after a lifetime in the small town newspaper business, I’m a news hound and I like to watch the news, if for no other reason than to see who we’re at war with this week. And there are several silly sitcoms, and a drama or two that I enjoy watching. It’s kind of like junk food for the brain.

Of course, it wouldn’t do me any good to get a DVR anyway, according to Dish Network, who told me last week that you can’t watch TV in an RV! 

How about you? What do you want for Christmas?  A new RV? A flat screen TV? A GPS unit? Maybe a new laptop computer?

Or are you like me? Does your wish list include more experiences than things? Tell me about some of them.

Thought For The Day – Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to shop.

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Terry and I have been busy the last couple of days with some projects around the motorhome that we really wanted to get out of the way while we’re sitting still for a while.

One project was building a couple of kayak caddies to make moving our hard shell kayaks from the Explorer to the water’s edge easier. We got the idea from our friends Denny and Cindy Henderson, when we watched how easy it was for them to move their kayaks around.

We made the racks out of PVC, two threaded rods for axles, and some tires we bought at Harbor Freight. Putting them together was easy, and the entire project took about two hours over two days. We could have finished it in one step, except it was late in the day when we started on Thursday, and we had to run to Lowes for some nuts.

Here I am using a power tool! Everybody stand back! We have a couple of electric drills, a power saw, a miter saw, and some other neat goodies left over from our bus conversion days, but my Dremel tool is the only power tool Miss Terry lets me near. And there’s a very good reason for that! I’m the world’s biggest klutz.

Here are the caddies, all finished and ready to use. The upright sections go through the scupper holes in our Manta Ray kayaks, and make it easy to to move them around. Believe me, after a few hours of paddling, lugging a 65 pound kayak back to the truck is a lot of work! You can buy a kayak caddy for anywhere from $60 to $150, but these two cost us about $45 to build.

Of course, if it were up to me, we’d sell those heavy things and get Miss Terry a Sea Eagle inflatable kayak too. Don’t be too surprised if she comes around once she test paddles the model Tim from Inflatable Boats 4 Less has picked out for her!

While we were dragging tools out of the storage bays under our motorhome, we decided it would be a good time to get rid of some stuff we’ve been carrying around for way too long. We were ruthless, and by the time we were finished we had made a big dent in our load, and made a lot of free space in our bays.

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I put some stuff on eBay, mostly books on converting a bus, and there is a “yard sale” tomorrow morning here in the campground. Maybe I can sell some things there. If not, I’ll be listing more on eBay.

Speaking of selling things, the auxiliary brake I mentioned a couple of days ago has been sold and is on its way to the buyer in Oregon.

Somebody asked me how much the base plate connections show on the Explorer, and if it sticks out very far. Not far at all. Here are a couple of pictures of the front end of the Explorer. The guys at Camping Connection did an excellent job on the installation, and I would recommend them to anybody.

Hopefully, today at the yard sale I can unload some of the things I want to see go away, including a battery charger, a brand new electric buffer, two Malone rooftop kayak racks, and some other stuff. I’d much rather sell them, and carry around some nice folding money, than to have to spend time listing them on eBay.

Thought For The Day – It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

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After a chilly night in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart in Gallipolis, Ohio, we were up bright and early yesterday morning. There were several things we wanted to see locally, so I went inside the store and obtained permission to leave our motorhome there for a couple of hours while we went exploring in the van.

Gallipolis was settled in the late 1700s by French aristocrats who fled the old country to escape the guillotine. It is the hometown of Bob Evans, founder of the Bob Evans Restaurant chain, and the family farm is now a tourist attraction that includes an RV park offering water and electric hookups and a dump station for $15/night.

While exploring the friendly community, we noticed several back in RV sites with water and electric hookups at a Public Access boat launch on the bank of the Ohio River downtown. I stopped at City Hall to ask about the sites, and learned that RVers passing through the area can stay either for free, for $10 a night, or for $25 a night, depending on which secretary you want to believe. For free or $10 a night, I’d stay a while just to watch the riverboats going by, but for $25 a night, I’d pass.

This trip it didn’t matter, because we had a lot of miles to cover yet. We crossed the river on the Silver Memorial Bridge, and I think I may be getting over my bridge phobia, because I didn’t snivel once. The original Silver Bridge here collapsed in 1967, throwing 70 cars into the river below and claiming 46 lives. Maybe I’m not over my phobia after all, and I just figured lighting wouldn’t strike twice in the same place.

On the West Virginia side of the river, Point Pleasant is a charming little town with enough to see and do to keep visitors busy for several days. In 1774, a force of Virginia militia was ambushed here by Shawnee and Mingo Indians and the fierce battle lasted for hours. In the end, 75 militiamen were killed, along with an estimated 33 Indians. Many consider this to be the first battle of the American Revolution. Today a small park on the riverfront where the battle took place includes an 84 foot high granite obelisk honoring the men who fought and died here.

Point Pleasant also has a place in paranormal history. Here, in 1966, a strange winged man-like creature that became known as Mothman was reportedly sighted. Since then there have been several reported sightings of the creature, usually before disasters. Several people claimed to see Mothman perched high in the girders of the original Silver Bridge before it collapsed. Since then, Mothman has become a worldwide phenomenon, with mention in documentary films, movies and television specials.

Sure, it’s probably just the figment of imaginations gone wild, but the folks in Point Pleasant took it serious enough to erect a state of Mothman on Main Street downtown, and there is a Mothman Museum just across the street.

With our sightseeing over, we returned to Gallipolis, picked up the motorhome, and crossed the river again. On the Ohio side of the river, U.S. Highway 35 had been a very nice divided four lane, but  a couple of miles into West Virginia, it dropped down to a two lane road with no shoulders, and lots of curves for maybe 25 miles, and then it became divided four lane again.

Before long we joined Interstate 64 and followed it east a few miles into Charleston, where we picked up Interstate 77 south past the gold domed State Capitol building. Traffic was pretty heavy in Charleston, but before long we put the city behind us, and Interstate 77 became the West Virginia Turnpike.

For the next hundred miles we climbed up and around one mountain after another, the Winnebago doing just fine. I can’t believe the power this thing has! The constant climbing did affect our fuel mileage, though. The day before, we averaged 8.1 miles per gallon across relatively flat Indiana and Ohio, according to the Silverleaf, and yesterday our average was right at 7 miles per gallon.

It cost $10.50 in tolls to travel from Charleston to the state line, but I don’t think they spend much of that money on highway improvements, because that was one rough road in many places!

We crossed into Virginia, stopped for fuel at the T/A truck stop in Wytheville, and in less than an hour we arrived at Mayberry Campground in Mount Airy, North Carolina.  

Mount Airy is the hometown of television star Andy Griffith, and the picturesque town was the inspiration for the fictional town of Mayberry in the old Andy Griffith show.

Andy and his trusty deputy Barney Fife probably wouldn’t recognize the old town these days. It has a Wal-Mart Super Center, Staples Office Supply, Golden Corral Buffet, Lowes, and other major stores and restaurants.  Unfortunately, crime has come to Mayberry. The day before we arrived, a gunman killed four men in a shooting a few blocks from Main Street.

This is a beautiful area, with a lot to see and do, and we’ll be here a few days before we head on down the road. I’ll have a lot to share with you in tomorrow’s blog, so stay tuned. 

Thought For The Day – Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic.

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Miss Terry has wanted to use her Orion smoker for months now, but we just never seemed to have the time. That all ended yesterday when she smoked up three huge racks of ribs for a cookout with Rocky and Berni Frees.

We got the smoker at Lowes about a year ago, but this was only the second time we used it. We need to do that more often!

Unlike conventional smokers, with this one the charcoal goes into a ring around the outside and into a small holder on the top, while the meat is inside, along with, in this case, some apple juice and some mesquite wood chips for extra flavor. The smoker works on a convection effect.

It took about two hours from the time she lit the fire until Terry took the ribs out of the smoker, and they were just perfect! So tender they fell off the bone and mouth watering delicious. Don’t they look yummy?

And you can tell by the satisfied looks on everybody’s faces that they sure enjoyed their meal. Besides the ribs, Terry also smoked up a pork loin, made beans, her special pico de gallo sauce, and there were some other goodies that nobody had room for. We love coming here to Muskegon to visit with Rocky and Berni, but every time we do, I gain five or ten pounds! Now how in the world does that happen?

We had planned to go kayaking on the Muskegon River after dinner, but we were all so stuffed that we were afraid we’d exceed the boats’ weight ratings, so instead we went back to their house for yet another game of Mexican Train. This was a special game, because we probably won’t have a chance to play with Rocky and Berni again for at least a year, and Berni marked the occasion by winning by a tremendous margin. I’m not sure the rest of us were even in the game by the fourth or fifth round. 

On another subject, I guess some RV dealers haven’t been reading the newspaper, or else they are living in La La Land, because they just don’t seem to know that the market has changed and they can no longer play by the same old rules. Our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel called to give us a lead on a Winnebago Ultimate Advantage for sale at an RV dealer in Ohio.

This is our dream rig, although this particular unit was only a 38 footer and we really want a 40 foot model, and it only had a 300 horsepower diesel engine, and we have decided that we really need at least 330 horsepower with the size of the van we tow. Plus, it was about $5,000 higher than two different Ultimate Advantages we had looked at before, that were a year or two newer. But you never know, so I called anyway to see if it might be something we could live with.

The first thing out of the salesman’s mouth once I told him which rig I was interested in was “Are you going to buy today?” I told him no, since I was about 400 miles away, but that if the unit sounded like it might be able to fit our needs, we’d be interested in taking a look at it.

“Well, unless you’re prepared to give me a deposit by credit card, there’s no use wasting my time or yours,” he told me. “The used RV market has gone crazy in the last year or so and we can’t keep them on the lot. Every unit we have moves in 24 to 48 hours.”

I told him that I never gave my credit card out over the telephone, and that if the unit sounded good, we were a short day’s drive away. Then I asked a couple of questions about it’s equipment, and again he told me that he had too many customers waiting in line to buy it to waste time with someone who was not prepared to make a commitment right then.

I happen to know that this particular motorhome has sat on the same lot for over a year. I also don’t like clowns who think I just fell off the turnip truck, so I ended the call, and possibly a chance for him to sell an RV. Even if that particular coach did not meet our needs, they may well have had something else we’d have fallen in love with. I guess we’ll never know.

Thought For The Day – Even people who believe everything is predestined look before they cross the street.

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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.

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