After suffering intolerably for way too long, today we’re going to scratch our hitch itch, at least a little bit. We’re off on a road trip to historic Hubbell Trading Post and Canyon de Chelly National Monument, on the Navajo Indian Reservation in far northeastern Arizona.

This is familiar country to anybody who has ever read any of bestselling author Tony Hillerman’s books, but I’m ashamed to say that as many years as I lived in this area, I have never been there before. I guess it’s like the people who live in New York City all their lives and never visit the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State Building. Or, for that matter, the folks right here in Arizona who never get to the Grand Canyon.

We’re looking forward to the trip, and to sharing it with all of you. We’re not sure if this will be a long day trip, or if we’ll spend the night in a motel someplace. I also don’t know, if we do stay somewhere overnight, what kind of internet access we’ll have, if any. Much of the Navajo Reservation is still a pretty remote place.

So if there is no blog tomorrow or the next day, we haven’t fallen off the end of the earth, been eaten by a coyote, or fallen victim to any of Tony Hillerman’s villains. But do check in, and if I’m not back online in a couple of days, send out a search party. Or at least a Domino’s Pizza delivery guy.

If you aren’t tired of seeing what Miss Terry has been accomplishing with the new Levolor blinds in our Winnebago motorhome, here is one final picture. She installed the blinds over my desk yesterday, and we think that they really change the look of our home on wheels.

Since I couldn’t get to my desk most of the afternoon, while she was installing the blinds, I stayed out of the way and played Scrabble on my iPad. And I’m proud to say that I’ve finally gotten to where I can beat the computer more than half the time! It’s a small victory, but I take them where I can get them.

Now, I can hear some of you saying how lazy and worthless I am, letting my wife do all the hard work while I goof off. But that’s not true. Terry and I have a very good relationship because we each have our own strengths and weaknesses, and we understand them. If I had tried to hang the blinds, Terry would have been calling somebody to replace the RV’s window with one hand, while she tried to stanch the bleeding I was doing all over the place with the other hand, all the while using her knees to steer as she drove me to the emergency room.

So instead, I stayed on the sofa, complimented her skills, and played word games. Well, I wasn’t exactly playing. I’m a wordsmith, and I was just honing my own skills. At last that’s what I told Miss Terry, and don’t you dare tell her otherwise!

I may have been goofing off, but Bad Nick was hard at work, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled I’m All About Overkill. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I like you. You remind me of when I was young and knew everything.

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One of the great things about the RV lifestyle is having the opportunity to eat so many different kinds of food in so many different places. Whenever we can, we pass up the chain restaurants in favor of the local fare. Let’s face it, a Grand Slam breakfast is going to taste the same, whether you order it at a Denny’s in Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, or Paducah.

But in the local restaurants, you find great dishes like the Especial, the world famous hot dog/cheeseburger combo at Lute’s Casino in Yuma; or the Five Cheese burger at Burgers & Beer, also here in Yuma. I’ve had both, and they beat the heck out of anything you’ll ever find at McDonald’s or Burger King.

Move over Long John Silvers and Red Lobster! For real seafood, you need to go to places like Moondog Seaside Eatery in Rockport, Texas, pictured here, or Keys Fisheries on Marathon Key in the Florida Keys. Yeah, you may have to wave away the seagulls when they try to steal your food at an outside table, but once you have had a blackened grouper sandwich at either place, you’ll be spoiled for any of the chain eateries.     

Regional food is another treat for travelers. I had never heard of a Cuban sandwich, which is a delicious combination of ham, roast pork, pulled pork, cheese, and a pickle, served on Cuban bread, until I first tried one in Florida a few years ago. I was immediately hooked. My two favorite places to order a Cuban are at El Siboney in Key West, and Mykonos, in Brooksville, Florida.

For a real taste of local food, you need to find a place like the Boiling Pot in Rockport, Texas, where they bring you a Cajun boil of shrimp, crawfish, sausage, new potatoes, and corn, pour the entire concoction out on butcher paper, and tell you to dig in! No frills, no silverware, just good food you’ll never forget! 

I love pizza, and I’ve had delicious pizzas everyplace form New York City to Chicago to Seattle. But I don’t think you can beat the brick oven pizzas we had at several different places around Berlin, New Jersey. Those folks know how to make pizza!

We’ve been busy sampling the local restaurants here in the Yuma area, and yesterday we joined Tom and Barbara Westerfield, along with David and Lynn Cross, at the above mentioned Lute’s Casino in Old Town Yuma. The place isn’t really a casino, but rather a funky little restaurant with all kinds of antiques, artifacts, and junk hanging from the ceilings and decorating the walls. Did you ever notice that food always tastes better when you dine out with good friends?

Fortunately, we have plenty of friends here in Yuma, and plenty of local restaurants to try out yet. I can’t wait to see where we eat tonight!

Bad Nick must be on a diet, because while I was out chowing down, he was busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled I Don’t Get It. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Everything is funny if you wait long enough.  

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The rain stopped long enough yesterday for us to enjoy mostly blue sky, but the temperature dropped quite a bit, and the next week or so is supposed to be much cooler. I won’t complain about that, it’s still better than we had in Indiana. Now I wish it would just dry out!

I have been furiously pounding away at the keyboard, working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, except for an hour or two we spent yesterday meeting with an insurance adjuster, and then going into town to make more copies of forms for the insurance company, getting them notarized, and mailed off to National Interstate.

I love small town folks. Somebody here at the Escapees campground said that there was a notary public at City Hall in Foley, but when I stopped in she was out of the office, so they sent me next door to the library. The lady who usually does notary work there was also out, so they sent me upstairs to Library Director Steve Horn’s office. Steve is a very nice man, and after he notarized my papers, we must have talked for a half hour or so about small town life, and our fulltime RV lifestyle. Try getting that kind of one-on-one friendliness in the big city!

Back at the campground, I worked some more on the new issue, and then we stopped long enough to go to the 4 p.m. Social Hour, which actually took about 35 minutes. I always like attending Social Hour at Escapees RV parks. It gives us an opportunity to visit with folks, meet the people who recently arrived, and just relax.

Soon after we returned to the motorhome, Greg and Judy Bahnmiller came by to pick up a bundle of Gypsy Journals to pass out at an RV rally they will be attending, and at other RV parks they will be visiting in their travels. Many of our readers help us spread the word about the paper this way, introducing it to people in parts of the country where we don’t have an opportunity to get to, and it really helps us a lot. We always print a couple thousand extra copies of each issue just for this purpose. So if we cross paths and you have room in your rig for a bundle or two of newspapers to distribute wherever you’re headed, we’d be happy and grateful to make you an honorary “paper boy” (or girl).

Longtime subscribers and Gypsy Gathering rally attendees Jim and Mary Gallivan are here at the campground, and they have been inviting us to dinner for years, but we never seemed to have the time when we met up with them. So yesterday evening we all went to an excellent local restaurant called Big Daddy’s Grill.

Tucked away at the end of a small road on the bank of the Fish River, the restaurant may not be fancy by New York City standards, but who wants to go to New York City anyway? But if you want excellent food, especially seafood, it should be on your list of places to go. Jim and Mary introduced Miss Terry to fried pickle slices, which she said were delicious. I was glad they all liked them so much, because it left more of the fried crab claws for me. And those were just the appetizers! I had the shrimp and oyster combo basket, Terry had a shrimp quesadilla, Mary had a grilled shrimp salad, and Jim ordered a huge cheeseburger with sweet potato fries. We all loved our selections, and Big Daddy’s is now on our list of places we can’t wait to get back to.

As good as the food was, having time to sit and visit with Jim and Mary was even better. We share an interest in genealogy, though I have barely gotten my toes wet, while they have been poking the limbs on their respective family trees for decades.

By coincidence, Mary mentioned that she used to write a column for the Lapeer County Press newspaper in Michigan, which has been considered one of the best small town newspapers in the country for as long as I can remember. Back when I was still a wet behind the ears kid starting my own first newspaper, I met the publisher of the Lapeer newspaper at a newspaper convention, and he gave me tons of valuable advice to help me get my publication off the ground. A lot of the things he taught me, I continued to use throughout my newspaper career and it came in far more useful than anything I ever learned in a college journalism classroom.

The weather reports say that yesterday’s break was going to be fleeting, and we have another inch of rain predicted today and tonight. I think my “love handles” are going to turn into giant gills if this keeps up!

Thought For The Day – People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which “overnight success” is achieved.

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