I’ve said many times before that saying goodbye is the hardest part of the fulltime RV lifestyle. Yesterday evening when we took our leave from my daughter Tiffany and her family, we all had tears in our eyes. Seven year old granddaughter Hailey clung to us until we almost had to pry her arms loose, and we promised her that we will be back again, and that we’ll send her postcards and call her from the road. I love my family, and I always feel terrible for leaving them, but I know, as does Tiffany, that I’d be miserable living in one place all the time.

Today we will leave Show Low, where we’ve been for over two months, and travel 170 miles to Williams, Arizona, where we’ll hang out for a few days getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal ready to mail out. As soon as that’s done, we’re headed for the California coast. We have enjoyed our time here in our old hometown, but we stayed longer than we planned to, and we are really looking foreyard to seeing some new territory.

Except for winds predicted at 15 to 25 miles per hour, we should have an easy drive today. But in northern Arizona, that’s not really windy, it’s just a breeze. We have to pick the new issue of the paper up from our printer in Flagstaff, which is 30 miles east of Williams, but we’ll probably go on to Williams first and get the motorhome parked, then drive back in the van. I don’t like driving a big rig in Flagstaff, and besides, there is a Chinese buffet there that I’ve wanted to try for years.

I have had several people ask us if we will have rally T-shirts available at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally in Elkhart, Indiana. Yes, we will, and it would really help us plan our order if you reserved your shirts before the rally. Cost is $15 per shirt, and 2x and 3x sizes are $17. You don’t need to pay us right now, but knowing who wants what helps us make sure we get enough shirts in the right sizes, and that we reserve shirts for those who ordered in advance.

I was contacted by longtime readers Ray and Nancy Fassbender yesterday, asking if I could reach out to blog readers to help them with a problem. They have been stuck for several days while a repair shop tries to diagnose a problem with their 2001 Serengeti Safari motorhome, built on a 2000 Magnum Chassis with a Cummins diesel engine.

If anybody out there has an electrical wiring schematic for a coach like this, please contact these folks at 520-280-4715  or e-mail them at nfass@earthlink.net. Neither they nor the shop has the wiring diagrams, and they are at a standstill. Please contact them directly, not me, because we’ll be on the road, and it will only delay matters for them. RVers are the nicest folks there are, and I know if anybody can help them, it will be my blog readers.

I promised Bad Nick that I would let him play with the computer, now that I have the new issue of the paper finished, and he jumped right on it, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled I’m Sorry, BP. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of far off rain, and then I realized that it wasn’t rain after all, but rather the sound of the wind in the tall pine trees here at the Show Low Elks lodge campground.

Yes, it was windy again in northern Arizona, as it is all too often this time of year. The weather report included a high wind advisory for the entire region until 8 p.m., and  they were monitoring more dust storms along Interstate 40, which has been closed numerous times in the last few weeks. I don’t like driving a motorhome in the wind, so I was glad we drove up from the Phoenix area the previous day!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, we have a nice site here at the Elks campground, but it isn’t very level, and even with our jacks extended all the way, we were still decidedly low in the rear. We weren’t in danger of anything falling off the walls, but we were out of balance enough that our shower wouldn’t drain correctly. We’ve encountered this before and I wanted to do something about it.

So we went to Lowes and bought an eight foot long piece of exterior grade treated 2×12 board, and I had the store cut it into one foot lengths, giving me a total of eight squares.

Back at the motorhome, I pulled in our slide rooms and retracted our HWH leveling jacks, and then we put four of the wooden squares under each rear jack. Then I hit the automatic jack button, and we leveled right up. 

I was wondering how speeds would be on my my iPad here in Show low, as compared to in Apache Junction. While our Verizon phones and air card are on high speed EVDO here, the iPad is on AT&T’s extended network. There is a noticeable reduction in speed, no doubt about it. But it is not as slow as our air card is when we’re away from an EVDO signal and are on Verizon’s slower National Access service. The GPS and all other functions on the iPad work fine here, even on the slower extended network service.

Later on, Tiffany came by with her girls, and we had a nice visit. Here are Hailey and Destiny relaxing on the couch after a hard day at school and preschool. Destiny always looks to her big sister for direction on how to act like a big kid. Hopefully she won’t copy Hailey and break her arm too!

Tiffany’s husband Jim works the night shift, and he was up all day helping Tiffany with her job, so he was home sleeping before his shift started. We took the girls out to dinner, and by the time we left the restaurant, it was getting really chilly. Note to self – keep a jacket or sweater in the van.

Bad Nick was busy yesterday too, posting a new Bad Nick Blog edition of the Dumb A$$ Report. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Okay, I am officially fed up with the wind, snow, and cold here in northern Arizona! All night Saturday the wind rocked our motorhome, and our slide topper awnings  flapped like they were going to tear themselves apart.

Sometime about dawn the wind finally stopped, and then it became very quiet. We lived here long enough to know that this usually means snow, and sure enough, when we opened our day/night blinds, the world had turned white again! We groaned, then rolled back over and fell asleep!

We got up a few hours later to discover about two inches of wet, heavy snow covering everything in sight.  The wind had blown so hard that the snow was plastered to our windows on the driver’s side of the motorhome! I am so out of here!

We spent the early part of the day answering e-mail and watching it snow, and about 3 p.m. we drove into Show Low to visit with daughter Tiffany and her family. My daughter is a lot of wonderful things, but a cook is not one of them. Her hubby Jim, on the other hand, loves to cook. But both of them will happily defer to Miss Terry’s culinary skills any chance they get, so Terry made some delicious pork loin sandwiches, which were outstanding.

We hung out with Tiffany and the kids until about 7:30, when it was getting close to the girls’ bedtime, then headed back to our motorhome at Juniper Ridge RV Resort.  The snow had stopped falling by then, but it was darned cold.We have a lot of little things we need to get done today, and hopefully UPS will deliver a couple of things Terry has been waiting on.  Tomorrow we plan to head down to Tucson for a few days. Maybe by the time we get back up here, spring will have finally arrived.

Thought For The Day -  By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was actually right, he usually has a son of his own who thinks he’s wrong.

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! 

It’s windy again here in Northern Arizona, go figure. Yesterday,  for the fourth time in four weeks, Interstate 40 east of Flagstaff was closed due to high wind and blowing dust. Will it ever stop?

The wind blew hard all day yesterday, with gusts over 60 miles per hour. It never let up all night long,and today we have more of the same. The weather report says we can expect sustained winds at 25 to 40 miles per hour, and gusts over 60 miles per hour. I think I know what the Oakies in the Dust Bowl must have felt like.

The storm system is also bringing more cold weather, with highs in the upper 40s and low 50s the next couple of days, and Friday night it is supposed to get down to 29 degrees! This sucks. I love visiting with my daughter and her family, but I’m already looking forward to getting someplace warmer. Hopefully someplace where I can open the motorhome door without the wind trying to rip it off its hinges.

I spent yesterday loading a new version of QuickBooks Pro into my computer, and then setting it up for our bookkeeping.

Then I loaded Family Tree Maker 2010. I have been using Ancestry.com for my genealogy research, and since this is an Ancestry product, I was looking forward to adding its capabilities to my family tree search. To be honest, so far it hasn’t really impressed me. I don’t see what I can do with it that I couldn’t already do just with my Ancestry.com subscription. Time will tell.

The new 3G Apple iPads are scheduled to hit the stores on Friday, and I really, really wish there was a Best Buy or Apple store nearby. The closest Best Buy is in Flagstaff, and the closet Apple store is in Gilbert, Arizona. Hmmm…. road trip time? I know I could order one online and have it delivered, but I’d prefer to purchase it from a store and have the techno-geeks there set it up for me so it’s done right.

While I was doing my thing yesterday, Miss Terry caught up on a bunch of paperwork, and logged in some new registrations for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. In the evening she made a wonderful supper of fried chicken and wild rice. It sure is nice being married to a woman who is beautiful, smart, and a great cook too! How’d I get so lucky?

Bad Nick doesn’t like the wind either, so he stayed inside and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled It’s Working Already! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!