Thank you to everybody who e-mailed get well wishes to us. We’ve come through the worst of it, and I think we’re going to live after all.

Yesterday afternoon we drove into town and dropped off bundles of sample copies of the Gypsy Journal at several RV parks. We stopped at four or five different RV parks, and it didn’t look like any of them were much more than half full. Is it going to be a slow season in Florida, or did everybody wait until after Turkey Day to hit the road?

After we finished with the RV parks, we stopped at WalMart to get some more meds, and a few things Terry needed to restock our larder. I try very hard to avoid going into any store between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but sometimes things get desperate, and a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. I was out of Pop Tarts and Jello pudding cups.

I was surprised that the store was no more crowded than it normally is. I guess all of the Black Friday shoppers were home sleeping off their ordeal of the day before. Or maybe they’re doing more of their shopping online.

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I’m curious. How many of you blog readers shop online for Christmas gifts, or for things you need yourself? We don’t do it a lot, but last night Terry ordered a pair of those comfy Tee Pee Creepers slippers for somebody, and I’m about to order a Kodak Vi8 camcorder from Amazon for a new project I’m working on. I’m also going to contact Tim and Crystal Ryerson from Inflatable Boats 4 Less and have them send me out an electric pump for my Sea Eagle PaddleSki 435 inflatable kayak.

For fulltimers who move around a lot, being in one location long enough to receive packages can be a problem. RV parks differ in their policies about accepting mail and packages. Some will allow you to have anything sent to you, in care of the office address, others will only allow FedEx or UPS packages, and some will not allow anything at all. I much prefer a campground where I can have both packages and my regular mail sent to me, instead of having to trudge down to the post office and stand in a long line to get my mail by General Delivery.  And since the post office won’t accept FedEx or UPS general delivery packages, it can be a hassle when ordering online.

Today we are leaving the Escapees Sumter Oaks campground and are headed back to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve so we’ll be ready to get the base plate installed in our Ford Explorer next week. We’re taking a different route back than the one we came in on a week ago, one that my friend George Sharrer tells me will shave about 15 miles off the trip. Once again, Terry will follow me in the Explorer. I’ll sure be glad when we have it set up for towing, I miss her when we travel this way. I don’t think I could enjoy being a solo RVer.

I booked us into the Thousand Trails for fourteen days, though I’m not sure we’ll actually stay that long. If we get everything wrapped up, I really want to get down to the Keys and play for a while.

Thought For The Day – Those that judge us don’t matter. Those that matter don’t judge us.

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Hey, give me a break! You try coming up with clever blog post headlines every day! It’s hard work!

After reading yesterday’s blog, some readers wanted to know if the new high back seat from Sea Eagle was any improvement for my bad back. Yes, after paddling 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon, I had no back pain at all, and felt great!

Somebody else wrote to ask why we keep deflating the kayak after paddling it, and then re-inflating it the next time we go out, and was it because the Sea Eagle PaddleSki was too heavy to carry inflated in our van. No, the boat only weighs about 40 pounds, and as this photo shows, I can easily drag it out of the water and stand it upright.

The problem is that our van is too tall for Terry and I to get it up there without using a ladder, and the inflated boat is over 14 feet long, so it won’t fit inside our van. Not counting the fact that our two hard kayaks are inside the van, as well as all of the newspapers we carry, and two Trek bicycles. It’s not all that much hassle to inflate and deflate the Sea Eagle, and it will be even less when I order the electric pump from Inflatable Boats 4 Less.

Yesterday morning, Dave Damon, who sells 303 products at RV rallies, came by to visit for a while, and we had a good time swapping lies. Then Terry and I had some running around to do, and drove down to Winter Haven, about 30 miles south of the Thousand Trails campground. 

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I have to be honest, I have never been enamored with Florida, but lately I have been thinking that with all of the water around here, and how much we love paddling and fishing, maybe we should switch our legal domicile to Florida. I could save some money on the cost of a resident fishing license over the much higher fees for a non-resident license. And getting back to Florida to renew our licenses would be easier than South Dakota, given our usual travel routes. 

There are three RV friendly states that seem to be home to most fulltime RVers – Texas, South Dakota, and Florida. There is an excellent mail forwarding service in Green Cove Springs, and the Good Sam Club has a mail forwarding service in Pensacola.

However, while talking to my car insurance company yesterday about another matter, I happened to mention changing domiciles, and was told that the higher cost of car and motorhome insurance in Florida would more than offset any savings on fishing licenses. We saved about a $1,000 a year on insurance when we switched from Texas to South Dakota, and I guess maybe we’ll stay right where we are.

Back at the motorhome, I had a long list of e-mails to answer, and an even longer list of forwarded junk, myths, and garbage that I just deleted without opening. I don’t mind a good joke now and then, and I’m guilty of forwarding one from time to time to a select group of twisted, sick people on my e-mail list.

But I really get tired of all of the stupid dire warnings of doom, the warm fuzzy stuff that is supposed to bring tears to my eyes, and the nonsense that anybody with half a brain cell could glance at and know is pure BS. I’m about to ban four or five folks from my inbox because they send me the same old junk over and over. I don’t need it, I don’t want it, and I don’t have time for it.

I also had an e-mail from a couple who have a fifteen year old gas powered Class C motorhome that they want to try fulltiming in this winter, before they spend big bucks on their dream rig. But they had heard from a couple of “experts” that “most” RV parks won’t let you in if your RV is more than 10 years old. These same experts had warned them that if they showed up anywhere in a rig that old, nobody would want to associate with them. They were worried that it was going to be a long, lonely winter.

I would be willing to bet that these “experts” are either RV salespeople trying to hustle them into a purchase, or else elitist jerks whom we could all do well without. For years we traveled in a 1976 homebuilt bus conversion, and we were never turned away anywhere we went, and we have never had a shortage of friendly neighbors in any campground from border to border and coast to coast.

Yes, there are a few RV “resorts” that have, and exercise, the ten year rule, but those are usually not the kind of places where I’d want to hang out anyway.  And as for being shunned due to the age of their RV, it just doesn’t happen most places. Sure, there is the occasional snob, just like anywhere in life. But overall, fulltime and extended travel RVers are some of the friendliest, most open and accepting people you’ll find anywhere. They don’t care what you drive, or what you do or did for a living. All they care about is if you’re friendly, if you have a couple of good campfire stories to tell, and if you want to ride along with them to the nearest buffet, or do you want them to ride with you!

Thought For The Day -  A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when memory fails.

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None of us like wasting money, and in today’s economy, a lot of people are finding ways to save every penny they can. But when does thrift become less advantageous than the effort or inconvenience required to achieve it?

One example is an RVer I know who never purchases fuel at stations near an interstate exit, because he says that more often than not, he can save two to three cents per gallon by driving an extra mile or two into town. Okay, so let’s say he has a 100 gallon fuel tank, and he waits until the gauge is at the 1/4 tank level. He puts in 75 gallons of fuel, and saves $2.25 (based on 3 cents per gallon savings). But how much fuel did he burn driving the mile or two into town and back to the highway? Not to mention the hassles of dealing with surface street traffic in a big rig. And again, he tells me that more often than not he saves money. That means there are times when he doesn’t pay any less. Then those extra miles actually cost him more than if he filled up at the exit!

When it’s convenient, we usually fill up at Flying J truck stops, because they traditionally give RVers a penny a gallon discount on fuel, most have dedicated RV fuel islands, an RV dump station, and allow RVers to park overnight. I don‘t go to Flying J because of the discount, although I am happy to get it. I go because I appreciate their RV friendly-attitude.

However, there are some Flying J locations, such as Kingman, Arizona, that I will bypass to pay a little more somewhere else, because the layout of that particular Flying J makes it extremely difficult to get in and out with a big rig. Since we have a 100 gallon tank, and I seldom let our fuel level get below half, saving 50 cents is just not worth the hassle.

We all know that we can save fuel driving at 55 miles per hour, as opposed to 65 or faster. But just how much fuel can we save, and is it really worth it? A few days ago, while driving along Interstate 95 in southern Georgia, I did a test. I set our cruise control at 65 miles per hour and carefully monitored our Silverleaf VMSpc engine monitor. Over a 20 mile distance, we averaged 7.3 miles per gallon.

Then I dropped our speed down to 55 miles per hour, and reset the cruise control. Over the same flat terrain, we averaged 7.7 miles per gallon. So yes, at 55 miles per hour, we can save fuel. (By the way, ignore the 101 MPG rolling MPG on the readout, that was because I coasted into the rest area where Terry took this picture. Also ignore the 0% coolant level, my rig doesn’t have a sending unit for that, and I need to reconfigure the Silverleaf display to remove it.)

I’m terrible at math, but if I punched the right buttons on my calculator, that means that on a 1000 mile trip, on all flat terrain, we could save just over 7 gallons of fuel. Let’s assume that fuel is $3 per gallon. That’s a saving of about $21.

However, at 65 miles per hour, we were keeping up with traffic on the busy freeway. At 55 miles per hour, we had traffic piling up behind us waiting for an opportunity to get into the left lane and pass, and several times eighteen wheelers rushed up on our rear end and tailgated until they could get past. We did not feel safe driving at 55 in that kind of traffic.

Dry camping is another example.  We often pull into a WalMart, truck stop, or highway rest area to spend the night when we’re on the road. But we do it for the convenience more so than the economy. I don’t want to have to get off the highway and drive two or three miles to an RV park, unhook our tow vehicle, and back into an RV site, then hook up the campground utilities. And then in the morning I have to reverse the entire process.

When we dry camp like that, we usually run our generator for an hour or two while we watch TV and I use my desktop computer to check e-mail. That’s a couple of bucks worth of fuel, and worth it to me. However, if there is a convenient Passport America campground with pull-thru sites for $10 to $12 a night just off the highway, I’d as soon go there and have hookups.

If there is no handy WalMart or truck stop, I know RVers who will drive past that $10 or $12 campground and drive as much as five for six miles into town to dry camp at an Elks or Moose lodge. Again, is the effort worth the savings?

So what about you? What will you do to save a buck?

Thought For The Day – Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

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Yesterday was a girls’ day out for Terry and our friend Ann Moran, while Ann’s husband Tim and I had a boys’ day in. It worked out well for everybody.

We had told our friends that we’d come down to their place in Rockledge about mid-morning, and spend the day together. The plan was that Terry and Ann were going to do some shopping and hit some of the  craft supply stores, while Tim and I visited a local museum, and then we’d meet up with the ladies for a late lunch.

My back was acting up the night before and I didn’t get a lot of sleep, and when we got to Rockledge, Tim was feeling under the weather. Plus, the electric motor on the well pump that they use for watering their lawn had failed, and a repairman was on the way to replace it.

So, we made a change in plans. Terry and Ann went ahead and did their thing, while Tim and I stayed at the house waiting for the repairman to get finished with the motor. When the job was done, Tim and I decided to just hang out at the house and visit for the afternoon. So that’s just what we did, and I think that between the two of us, we solved most of the problems of the world by the time Terry and Ann returned about 4 p.m. I really enjoyed having a quiet day with my good friend, doing nothing at all.

The space shuttle is supposed to launch Wednesday afternoon, and my buddy Greg White had e-mailed me about a good place to watch the launch, from the causeway that connects Titusville with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Greg told us where to park, and said we’d have a nice unobstructed view of the launch across the water.

Either we went to the wrong place, or else Greg didn’t know about the new bridge they are building next to the causeway, but the view sure seemed “obstructed” to us!

No problem, we just drove a little further out the causeway, which has parking areas on both sides, and we found several places from which we can watch the lift off, if we get there early enough to beat the crowds.  The signs along the causeway say No Overnight Camping, but we saw several RVs parked there that look like they are settled in until the launch. Maybe the rules are relaxed when they have a launch, I don’t know.

We spent some time watching people fishing, or just enjoying being near the water, and Miss Terry got some very nice sunset pictures.

We wanted to have dinner at Dixie Crossroads again, but when we arrived the place was packed and people were standing in line waiting to get seated. Wow, when we were there Saturday night, we walked right in! The hostess told me the wait was about 30 minutes, and that they would stay this busy until after the crowds who came to town for the launch have left. We drove a mile so to a little Mexican restaurant called La Bamba II that we discovered on our last visit here, and had no problem getting a table. The food was excellent, and we were stuffed when we left.

Back at The Great Outdoors, there was a note on our door warning us to boil the water before we used it for drinking, brushing teeth, etc. for the next 72 hours. Apparently they had a broken pipe, and were worried about any contamination that might have occurred. We always keep at least a half tank of water on board, so it won’t be a problem, just a minor inconvenience.

A major inconvenience here is the terribly slow service we’re getting on our Verizon air card. We are only a couple of miles from town, but we are on the fringe of the signal area, and sometimes we can’t get online at all, or we get thrown off repeatedly. So much of our work is done online that this presents a real problem for us.

Hopefully today my back will cooperate and Tim will be feeling better, and we can get that museum trip in.

Thought For The Day – Be careful about reading health books. You could die of a misprint.

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One of the nice perks of our business is that from time to time we get to try out neat new products, and tell our readers about them. Occasionally we get a product that’s a dud, and I make somebody mad because I say so, but most of what comes our way is pretty cool.

We’ve recently received several new goodies to review, and I’m impressed with all of them. Since I didn’t have anything else to write about today, and with Christmas coming, I thought I’d tell you about them now, and maybe you can make one of your RVing friends (or even yourself) very happy. I don’t make a commission off of any of these, they are just good products I think you might want to know about.

The first is the Dandy Duster, from Cliff’s Custom Crafts, in Bay City, Michigan. Measuring over eight inches long and made of static free hog bristles, mounted in a beautiful wood handle, they are perfect for cleaning everything from computer keyboards to musical instruments, fans, air conditioner vents, and lots more around the home or RV.

I keep one with a handsome Brazilian cherry handle in my desk drawer to clean up after myself, and Miss Terry’s is a light oak, and also gets a lot of use.  Cost is just $19, with free shipping. You can find out more by e-mailing company owner Cliff Atwater at  cliffscrafts@chartermi.net.

Another product that I am impressed with is the Eyelog Personal Wireless Mobile Camera, supplied by our friends Phil and Tracey May at TechnoRV. I first became aware of this nifty tool at our Indiana Gypsy Gathering rally, when Phil called me late in the evening to tell me that somebody was in his booth in the locked vendor building. We immediately ran to the building, only to find it empty. Phil showed me the picture on his cell phone, which turned out to be the campground’s owner, who had been setting the air conditioner thermostats on the wall behind Phil’s display.

The Eyelog uses AC and/or battery power, and is motion sensitive. When armed, if an intruder is detected it will send either a photo or a video to your computer and cell phone. If we would have had one of these a year ago, we would have been forewarned and would not have walked in on an armed burglar in our RV! For more information, contact Phil or Tracey through their website or by phone at (866) 324-7915.

The Adalite is a handy wireless LED light that is perfect for RV storage bays, closets, kitchen cabinets, truck toolboxes, storage sheds, and anywhere else where you need some extra illumination.

The Adalite comes with a detachable mount for emergency use, and wireless sensors. The light operates when a storage compartment or closet is opened, and the sensors are separated. The “sending unit” sensor sends a signal to the Adalite that can be mounted anywhere within a 30 to 45 feet range of the sensors. Once the sensors are separated by opening the compartment, a signal is sent to the Adalite, which has (33) multi-directional bright LED lights that light up any area automatically. This is a great new product that is handy in dozens of ways around the RV or at home. Look for Adalite at your favorite RV rally or show.

Maybe I didn’t have anything to write about, but Bad Nick did. While I was playing with new toys, he was busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Choose Your Poison. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that!

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