Yesterday was a short travel day for us. In fact, one of the shortest we’ve had in a very long time.

We enjoyed our time at The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida, and I took a photo of our Winnebago in Peter and Connie Bradish”s lot before I started unhooking our campground utilities in preparation for leaving.

This is a very upscale RV resort, where you can buy your own very nicely groomed lot, and enjoy every amenity you could imagine.

The resort has several small lakes, and I’m told the fishing in them is good, but I never got the opportunity to check that out.

The resort even has its own church! As you can see, most of the homeowners drive their golf carts everywhere, even to church!

We left The Great Outdoors just after 10 a.m., traveled south to the next exit on Interstate 95, and took State Route 407 a short distance until it merged with State Toll Route 528, which took us west around the south side of the Orlando metropolitan area to Interstate 4. We traveled just a mile or two south on Interstate 4, exited onto U.S. Highway 192, then took it west a few miles to U.S. Highway 27, where we turned north a couple of miles to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve. Peter Bradish had given us the directions, and they were perfect. 

Well, the directions Peter gave us were perfect. The directions we got from our GPS were not so perfect. We had entered the address of the Thousand Trails into our GPS, so we wouldn’t miss the turn into it, because somebody had told me that a condominium complex next door hid the sign until you were right on top of it. According to the GPS, we had over a mile to go, when I noticed the Thousand Trails sign, which was indeed hard to see. By then it was too late to make the turn.

U.S. 27 through here is a wide six lane divided highway, with designated left turn lanes. We drove a couple of miles, looking for a place to turn around, but I wasn’t sure that we could make a U-turn with the van in tow. I finally pulled into a left turn lane, and decided it would be too tight to make the U-turn, and the last thing I wanted to do was be jackknifed across three lanes of busy U.S. highway, even on a Sunday morning. There was a divided driveway leading into a housing subdivision on the far side of the road, and I told Terry I was going to pull into the subdivision instead, and we’d unhook the van from the tow bar and get pointed back in the right direction.

It wasn’t until we had pulled into the driveway that we discovered that it was a gated community. So there we were, with a locked gate in front of us, two cars that had pulled in behind us, and no place to turn around. Can you say “oh crap?”

Fortunately, the fellow in the first car gave us the gate code, we punched it in, and the gates swung open. I pulled in, parked along the curb, we unhooked the van, and got the heck out of there. A GPS is a handy tool, but never trust one completely.

We had never stayed at this Thousand Trails before, but I have to say that we’re impressed. The 255 acre campground has 850 full hookup RV sites, a swimming pool, activity center, and a 60 acre spring fed lake. The property also backs up to Lake Hancock, a large lake that is supposed to be home to some massive trophy bass.

We choose a site on a corner at the end of a road, with some trees on one side of us, a pasture behind us, and the sites next to us and across the street are empty. Gee, no neighbors. Maybe I’ll just run around in my BVDs. No, Miss Terry says maybe I won’t.

A sky writer was posting this message for us when we got into our RV site. Isn’t that nice? I love you too.

Even with the unexpected detour caused by the GPS, we drove exactly 70 miles, and I was in the office at the Thousand Trails registering by noon. That’s a short travel day!

Once we were parked and hooked up, we drove down to the campground’s boat launch at Lake Hancock, to check things out. It was windy and chilly, but the weather is supposed to improve by mid-week, and getting out on the water is a priority for us. Our kayaks haven’t been wet in over a year, and we need to correct that.

I bet some whopper bass live in these lily pads!

The lake isn’t home to just big bass. I don’t think I’ll be dangling my toes in the water!

Terry and I walked out on the floating dock, and we heard a loud thumping sound and a big splash of water in this little lagoon. Then several fish jumped. We didn’t see the gator, but we knew he was there.

We’re looking forward to doing some relaxing here, getting some paddling in, and I may just buy me a fishing rod and a license, and see if I can tempt one of those big bass to bite!

Thought For The Day – A bargain is something you can’t use, at a price you can’t resist.

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We’re leaving The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida today and are going to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve, which is actually in Clermont. We owe a big thank you to our friends Peter and Connie Bradish for hosting us on their lot here for the last few days. We really appreciate your hospitality, dear friends.

We’ve had a nice time during our visit, and look forward to coming back here again one of these days. There is so much to see and do in this area that we could keep busy all winter long fishing, kayaking, touring the local attractions, and sampling the fare at the many area restaurants.

Though we sometimes find ourselves spending as much as two months in one place, especially when we visit our family in Arizona, we usually stay no more than a week or two in one location before we move on. Much longer than that, and I get bored and hitch itch sets in.

One complaint I hear frequently from fulltiming women is that their husbands are always in “go mode” and never want to slow down. I’m guilty of that myself all too often.

Sometimes Miss Terry has the need to settle in for a while, so she can do some serious cooking, get a shopping fix in, and just decompress. I think a lot of RVing couples are like us; the husband wants to be on the go all the time, and the wife needs to slow him down so her needs are met, too. It’s important to recognize each others’ needs, and to be willing to compromise so those needs get met. 

Once, while we were teaching at Life on Wheels, a wife told me that they never spent two nights in the same place. She said they drove over 500 miles, nonstop, to visit her sister in Maine. She said they arrived at 6 p.m., parked in the driveway, had dinner with her sister and her family, and at 7 a.m. the next morning they pulled out, because the husband was ready to go someplace else and see something new.

Another husband once bragged to us that they had been on the road for over a year, and had not spent one night in an RV park. It was always truck stops, WalMart parking lots, and roadside rest areas. He was having a ball and bragging about how much money he was saving. One look at his wife and you could see that she was miserable. Her idea of retirement was not seeing the world through a windshield, and living at Camp WalMart. I haven’t heard from either couple in a long time, but I wonder how long those relationships lasted in the fulltime RV lifestyle?

Of course, the flip side of the coin are the wives that “can’t be away from my grandbabies,” and insist that their travels never be too far away from wherever those young ones are. One fellow told us that he has always wanted to see Arizona, but never will, because his wife insists that they return to Illinois every few weeks, even in the winter, so she can see their grandchildren and keep track of what was happening in their adult daughters’ lives.

We have met more than one fulltiming woman who reluctantly gave in to their husbands’ desire to travel, but were damn sure going to make him pay a price for it. Nether the husband or wife was having a good time, and it was obvious in every case that they probably wouldn’t be on the road very long.

I’ve toyed with the idea of having a panel discussion at one of our rallies on Staying Married (And Happy) In An RV. What do you think?   

Thought For The Day – People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.

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This part of northern Indiana is a stronghold of the Amish people, and wherever you travel around the communities of Elkhart, Goshen, Nappanee, and the surrounding area, you are likely to see Amish women  in their simple handmade dresses, their heads covered in white kapps, and men wearing black straw hats or stocking caps.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Amish people, including that they will not ride in automobiles, use electricity, or telephones. Drive anywhere around here and you will encounter horse drawn buggies and wagons on the roadways.

But, while they do not drive automobiles, the Amish will ride in them, and they frequently hire a non-Amish driver to take them to restaurants, stores, or other places too far to conveniently reach by buggy.

Drive any Amish back road in this region, and you will see small white structures in some yards that look like an enclosed telephone booth, and that is exactly what they are! Their religion does not permit a telephone in the house, and the “phone haus” is built for function, not comfort. There is no heat or cooling, and usually no chair. This is a place to do business, not sit and gab! If an Amish person advertises something for sale, they will include the telephone number and instructions to “call between 7 and 8 a.m.” or whatever time suits their schedule.

Yesterday, we drove out to Nappanee to visit with our friend Carylye Lehman at Focal Wood Products. Carlyle is a fantastic craftsman who built the desk units in our Winnebago motorhome last year, and he has a fast growing reputation with RVers for top quality custom wood furniture.

The tools in Carlyle’s shop are all powered by electricity, courtesy of a huge 40 KW diesel generator.  So as you can see, while the Amish do avoid many of the “modern” conveniences of our way of life, they have embraced some technology to give them the ability to conduct business.

We have also found it interesting to see Amish buggies lined up at the drive through window at McDonald’s, or to note such goodies as Pepsi and potato chips in their shopping carts at WalMart.

All day yesterday the wind blew hard, with gusts up to 40 miles per hour. If the wind lets up a little bit, we plan to leave Elkhart Campground today and start making our way eastward toward the Hershey (Pennsylvania) Thousand Trails preserve, where we will have a vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show next week.

It’s about 600 miles to our destination, and we’ll do it in two days. I have no idea where we’ll be tonight, but there is always an RV friendly WalMart, a truck stop, or someplace else to get off the road for the night.

Thought For The Day – Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after.

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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Life gets in the way while you’re making other plans. We had originally planned on being vendors at the FMCA rally in Albert Lea, Minnesota next week, but decided against that and came over to Indiana to take part in the Heartland Owners Rally at the Elkhart County Fairgrounds in Goshen today and tomorrow. As it turns out, we’ll miss that event too.

Terry is on her fourth day of antibiotics, but still feeling bad, and Wednesday night it hit me hard too. I woke up feeling like I had been rode hard and put away wet.

I went to see the same nurse practioneer Terry did on Monday, and she said no, it’s not the flu after all, just colds that have turned into really bad sinus, ear, and upper respiratory infections. So now we’re both on a diet of antibiotics and other meds.

I called Jim Beletti, head honcho at the Heartland Rally and expressed our regrets, but told him we are going to skip the rally. We are just not up to vending for eight or nine hours a day and we don’t want to run the risk of making everyone else at the rally sick just to sell some books and subscriptions. We dropped off some door prizes and a few bundles of sample copies of the Gypsy Journal, and hopefully folks will pick them up and read them, which could result in an order or two.

When we stopped at Wally World to get one of my prescriptions filled, we were disappointed to see two RVs, a fifth wheel and a big diesel pusher, with their jacks down on the pavement and the slide room out on the motorhome. We were even more disappointed to see Escapees RV Club stickers on both rigs. It was just after 5 p.m. and the people from the motorhome were crawling into a car to drive away as we saw them.

Folks, this kind of thing does more to hurt us being welcome to park on private business parking lots, and to make us look bad in the eyes of the public, than a lot of RV park owners complaining to city councils that we are taking money out of their pockets. In fact, it gives those same RV park owners more ammunition to use against us. If you are not familiar with the Escapees’ Good Neighbor Policy on overnight parking, check it out at the link provided. It is up to all of us to be good guests so we will be welcomed back again. 

Thought For The Day – Nothing’s impossible for those who don’t have to do it.

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