We had dinner with our friends Jim and Shar Lewis yesterday, and since they have been bitten by the RVing bug, most of our conversation was about our lifestyle, and specifically what kind of RV they should be looking at, a motorhome or a fifth wheel trailer.

This is a subject that is always good for a spirited debate among RVers. They have never built a “perfect” RV and never will. Each type of unit has its advantages and disadvantages.

While we prefer diesel pusher motorhomes, we have seen some great fifth wheels that we admired. But for us, a truck and trailer combination would not fit our needs or lifestyle. We carry a lot of stuff with us, we do a lot of overnight stops at WalMarts and truck stops, and for us, a motorhome is the best choice. However, as we told Jim and Shar, everybody is different, and when it comes to RVs, there is no “one size fits all.”

I have heard it said that while motorhomes typically give you more cargo space in the bays, fifth wheels give you more living space, because they don’t have a steering wheel and cockpit.

My friend, the late Gaylord  Maxwell, founder of Life on Wheels, once told me that if you are on the go a lot, stopping for a night or two before you move on, a motorhome was the best choice, because he felt it was easier to park, level, and hook up to campground utilities. But, he said, if you stay in one place for a couple of weeks or more at a time, the fiver made more sense.

However, I know many fifth wheel owners who would debate the fact that their rigs take longer to park and hookup. I have never been any good at backing up a trailer, but I have seen many RVers who can slip a fifth wheel into places I would never consider, and make it look like child’s play. As one fellow told me, “it’s a lot easier to get into places when your house bends in the middle.”

Of course, nothing is set in stone. We know former motorhome owners who have switched to fifth wheels, and fifth wheel owners who have gone over to the other side as their needs and lifestyle have changed. Our friends Mike and Pat McFall from PressurePro have spent the last couple of years in a beautiful Teton Reliance XT3 that they pull with a 2001 Volvo semi tractor. As much as they love their rig, they recently decided to sell it and get a motorhome because their traveling style has changed. If you’re looking for a top of the line, well maintained fiver, check out Mike’s For Sale webpage.

We have known a few RVers who seem to switch rigs every year or two, though I don’t know how they can afford it. We started fulltiming eleven years ago in a Pace Arrow Vision gas powered motorhome, and when it literally fell apart around us, we built a bus conversion that we lived and traveled in for over eight years, Last summer we bought a Winnebago Ultimate Advantage diesel pusher. Our current rig has every feature and option we could ever want, and I expect we’ll be in it for many years.  

Okay, I’m curious. What about you? Which do you prefer, a motorhome or a fifth wheel, and why? And do you expect to change rigs anytime soon?

Thought For The Day – If we are what we eat, I’m fast, cheap, and easy .

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With summer finally here, a lot of us who have been sitting still much of the winter are hitting the road, and weekend warriors are getting their RVs ready for vacations and summer camping trips.

RVs are complex machines, and while I am far from a technical person, even I am capable of taking a few steps to make sure our motorhome is in the proper shape for the long miles ahead. It doesn’t take a mechanic or an RV tech to prep an RV for hot weather travel.

It takes just an hour or so to inspect your RV or tow vehicle’s chassis systems, which is time well spent, and can avoid hours sitting on the shoulder of the road waiting for a tow truck to arrive, and even more time spent in a repair shop.

The first step is to check all fluid levels: engine oil, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, brake fluid, radiator coolant level, and windshield washer fluid. While you’re in the engine compartment, check your air filter. A dirty air filter can really cut down on your fuel mileage, and make your engine work harder, too. Also, check all of your belts and hoses, as well as hose clamps, for cracks or worn spots that can lead to failure (and expensive repairs) on the road. Spend a few moments looking over your wiring. Is anything frayed or loose? Did critters spend the winter nesting in your engine compartment, gnawing on the wire insulation?

Step two is to check your windshield wiper blades for wear, and then turn them on and be sure both are working properly. Then, check all exterior lights, including headlights, turn signals, emergency flashers, brake lights, and marker lights.

Next, check your starting and house batteries to be sure they are filled with distilled, that all cables are tight, and that there is no corrosion on any connections.

Walk around your RV, looking for any leaks, and if you spot any suspicious spots on the ground, check to see where they came from.

Your tires are next. Check for uneven wear, any cracking or weather checking, and use a good tire pressure gauge to be sure all are properly inflated. I use a PressurePro tire monitoring system to make this chore easier, and to monitor my tires when on the road.

Next, deploy all of your awnings. Are they working properly? Are they worn or frayed? Are the anchor clips on your window awnings secure?

Once you are done outside the RV, go inside and make sure that your air conditioner(s) are working properly. Extend and retract your slide rooms. Do the same with your leveling jacks. Check your refrigerator and water heater for proper operation if the RV has been stored all winter. When things sit for long periods of time, the gremlins seem to go to work on them.

No matter where you live, or where you spent the winter before starting your summer travels, it is always easier and cheaper to get a problem fixed at home than it is when you are broken down on the road.

Now that you have your RV ready for the road, take a minute to check out Bad Nick’s latest blog post, Oops! and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – You can only be strong and useful for the people around you if you honor your needs as much as theirs.

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Our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel call me Gadget Boy, because I always want to check out the newest electronic gizmos. But I have an excuse; I want to be able to tell all of our great readers about them, both the good and the bad. At least that’s what I tell Miss Terry when she rolls her eyes at me when I start salivating over some new toy.

I write about the things when I try them out, but I get a lot of questions from readers asking how I feel about something down the line, after I’ve used it for a while. So here we go, we’ll call this the Gadget Boy Report.

Blackberry Storm – I’ve been using this “smart phone” since last summer, and I have a love-hate relationship with it. Being able to access my e-mail anywhere I am during the day, and respond if necessary, is wonderful. The phone saves me a lot of time and trouble with just that feature alone. The text display and keypad are both large enough to read and use easily, unlike many cell phones I have seen. It has features and applications that can do a number of great things that I could appreciate, if I only had the time to learn how to do them.

The biggest downside for me is that the darned phone is almost worthless anytime I’m any distance from a cell tower. The signal is just too weak. At the Escapees RV park in Summerdale, Alabama, we were maybe four or five miles from town, at most. Terry’s cell phone, and the old LG that we use for business calls, both worked fine, but the Blackberry constantly dropped calls and cut out. I also have problems with the display. If you are making a call, you have to jump through a couple of hoops to get the keypad back on the screen in case you need to “Press 1 for English.” Another problem is that, during a call, it is very easy to move the phone in such a way that your cheek presses the Mute button, and all of a sudden, the person on the other end cannot hear you.    

Amazon Kindle – I absolutely love the concept of the Kindle, the Sony e-book reader, and the similar devices on the market. They make great sense for RVers, where weight is an important consideration. They are lightweight, easy to read, and you can store a ton of books on them.

That being said, I sold my Kindle a while back. I found that I just wasn’t using it enough. I love prowling through bookstores, I love the feel of a real book in my hands, and I gravitate to used book stores like a duck to water. Most fiction paperbacks for the Kindle cost about $10, but I can’t sell or trade them after I read them. I can buy the same book for $7.50 to $10 at Wal-Mart, then get ¼ the cover price in trade when I take it to a used book store, or I can pass it on to a friend when I’m finished with it. I also read a lot of non-fiction books, and the quality of photographs, charts and illustrations on the Kindle was very poor.

Silverleaf VMSpc Engine Monitor – This is one addition to our motorhome that I would not be without. Besides providing more accurate information than my dashboard gauges, it monitors our diesel engine’s performance, computes fuel mileage, explains any error codes that might show up, and a lot more. One RVer told me that when his engine was giving him an error code, a shop wanted $3,000 to fix the problem, and the Silverleaf revealed that it was a quick and easy (and cheap) fix. It more than paid for itself right there!

Verizon Air Card – Air cards have pretty much killed the satellite internet industry for RVers. Ours has provided excellent service coast to coast, and there were more times we couldn’t get online with our Hughes dish than there have been with the air card. Coupled with a Wilson Trucker antenna, Wilson amplifier, and a Cradlepoint wireless router, we can both be online on our own computers. It is a hard combination to beat.

Progressive Industries EMS System – The EMS system in our bus conversion saved us from damage a couple of times, and getting another installed in the Winnebago was the first order of business when we bought it. If you don’t have an EMS system, you are playing Russian Roulette every time you plug into a campground’s electrical pedestal.

PressurePro – If you have read more than a few of my blog posts, you already know how much I rely on our PressurePro tire monitoring system. It’s another “must have” for every RV, in my opinion. It can save your tires, your RV, and even your life!

We have a couple of other items that we haven’t installed yet that we want to get to, if the weather will ever cooperate. One is an automatic engine bay fire suppression system from Mac McCoy, and the other is an automatic fire extinguisher for the refrigerator compartment. Both are easy installations, and both can save your RV from becoming a total loss in a fire. We want to get them installed very soon.

Thought For The Day – Happiness is an inner emotion; it is being at peace with who you are.

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We wanted to be on the road by about 9 a.m. yesterday, but that didn’t happen. We were up early, and Miss Terry got the inside of our Winnebago ready for the road, while I made a stop at the dumpster, and then went up to the office at the Thousand Trails campground to tell them we were checking out a couple of days early. Our case of hitch itch just needed scratched.

Back at our RV site, I unhooked the utilities, and then Terry ran in our slides. The bedroom slide went fine, but when the living room slide started coming in, big chunks of ice started falling down from the top, along with cold water. The slide suddenly came to a stop about eight inches away from being all the way in.

I was outside, and had Terry run it back out, and then try to bring it back in again. It came another inch or so more than the first time, then stopped again. The problem was that the rain we had a few days ago had frozen and formed thick chunks of ice on the slide topper, which were jamming the slide. Terry went up the ladder on the back of our motorhome, I handed her up a broom, and she swept the top of the slide topper clean, dislodging chunks of ice about ¾ of an inch thick and up to six inches across.

With that chore done and Miss Terry safely back on terra firma, we retracted our leveling jacks, and then Terry noticed that our automatic Carefree patio awning was out about four inches. We had not used the awning since we arrived at the Thousand Trails, and I suspected that water had also accumulated inside and frozen, pushing the awning out. Sure enough, we extended the awning and more water and ice fell out. Did I ever mention that cold weather RVing sucks?

With everything finally buttoned up, I scrolled through the display on our PressurePro tire monitoring system, and then pulled out of our RV site and made a stop at the propane station to fill our tank, then Terry drove the van back up to the office to pay for the propane, came back, and we hooked the van to our tow bar. With all of the delays, it was 10:30 by the time we finally got on the road.

I really don’t like driving through San Antonio, so this trip we tried the Loop 1604 around the east side of the city. The first five miles or so were regular two lane road, with a couple of traffic signals, then the loop became a divided highway two to three lanes wide. There was still a lot of traffic, but we rolled along fine, and eventually rejoined Interstate 10 on the north side of San Antonio. I think the loop was better than driving through town on I-10, but I’d still rather avoid the city altogether.

Once we were out of the metropolitan area, the rest of our day was just a lot of long, boring miles counting the road kill. We pulled into a couple of rest areas for potty stops and to do a walk around the motorhome and van, checking our tow bar connection, tires, etc. Late in the afternoon, with the sun sinking slowly into the western sky (sorry, I couldn’t resist that one), we pulled into the WalMart in Fort Stockton, hoping to dry camp for the night.

Terry had called ahead and asked permission, and the lady she spoke to said we were welcome to park overnight, and to please park at the western end of the parking lot. This is a small WalMart, not a SuperCenter, and when we arrived, there were a half dozen or so motorhomes and fifth wheels, and there was no way we could park without the rear end of the van sticking out into a lane of the parking lot. We decided they had enough RVs at Camp WalMart that evening, so we got back onto the highway and drove another 45 miles to Saddleback Mountain RV Park, a Passport America park a few miles west of Balmorhea. We had covered 485 miles in a little over eight hours of driving, which is a long day on the road.

This is a small campground with nothing much to recommend it, except for price and convenience. It is just off the highway, and has long pull through full hookup sites with 30/50 amp electric, for $10 a night with the Passport America discount. It’s not a place we’d spend any time, but for a safe overnight stay, it was a good deal.

Today we’ll go on to Salt Flat, where we’ll spend a day or two visiting our friends Mike and Pam Steffen, before we continue our westward trek.

Thought For The Day – I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

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When we got up yesterday morning it was 12 degrees in Elkhart, Indiana! That’s to damned cold for any sane person to be living in, which apparently explains why my pal Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum is spending the winter there. 

But, at least the wind had died down, the sky was clear, and they got the repaired driver’s seat reinstalled. With even colder temperatures on the way, Terry and I decided to make our escape while we could. We settled up with Duncan RV Repair, hooked our van to the back of the Winnebago and pulled out about 11:30 a.m.

When I first plug in our PressurePro tire monitoring system, we get a warning signal if the tire pressures are low, which they will be after a cool night. But we had been in very cold weather for days now, and it took forever for the tires to warm up enough for the warning alarm to stop beeping. Terry scanned all of our tires pressures to be sure they were okay and we kept on rolling. Nothing short of a wheel falling off the rig was going to make me stay one minute longer.

We retraced our route south on U. S. Highway 31 to Indianapolis from a week earlier, picked up the I-465 bypass to the east, and got off on Interstate 74 eastbound. For the first 75 miles or so we had some snow blowing across the highway, but the roads were pretty dry overall. There were a few wind gusts that caught us by surprise, but nothing so bad as to be dangerous.

We entered Ohio for a few short miles, and then took the I-275 loop around Cincinnati, veering back into Indiana for a short stretch before we crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky.

Our Ultimate Advantage has a digital thermometer on the dashboard that measures outside temperature, and as it climbed from 12 degrees in Elkhart up to 18 in Indianapolis, and then 28 degrees as we drove south on Interstate 75 in Kentucky, I told Miss Terry we were having a heat wave. The temperature had risen by over 100% in just a few hours!

We stopped at the Flying J in Walton, Kentucky, and got another scare as some idiot in a small car went flying out of the parking lot as we were pulling in, driving up on the curb with two wheels to get past us, with inches to spare.

While I was filling our fuel tank, I saw an older couple with an Allegro Bus who were having problems trying to dump their holding tank. The man apparently has some physical problems, so his wife was bent over fighting something inside the sewer bay. I asked if I could help, and discovered that the plastic access hole cover in the bottom of the bay had been wet when last screwed in and was now frozen in place.

Since the configuration of the bay was such that the sewer hose had to come up from the bottom to attach, there was no way the lady could hook up her hose. I got a large screwdriver and a hammer out of our toolbox, and after several hard whacks on the end of the screwdriver was able to free the cover. Then the hose was too cold and stiff to want to stretch enough to reach the dump station, so I helped them with that and held it in place until the husband could get his foot on the end of the hose to secure it. My good deed for the day done, I finished filling our tank, shivered my way back into the motorhome, and off we went.

We pulled into Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington about 5:30, just as the sun’s last light was disappearing from the sky. Every year they decorate the Horse Park for the Southern Lights Christmas display, and it is pretty impressive. But not so impressive that I want to stay any longer. Its a few degrees warmer than Elkhart, but still way too cold. I have some medical stuff to deal with at the VA hospital this morning, and we hope to be back on the road quickly. I know that somewhere there is a palm tree with my name on it, and I’m gonna find that darn thing even if it kills me! 

Thought For The Day – A short pencil is better than a long memory.

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