Please be careful where you walk, because my butt’s dragging and I don’t want you to step on it! And our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally doesn’t even officially start until today!

Yesterday was the early vendor set-up day, and my friend Mike Loscher and myself were over in the big building a little after 9 a.m., getting a couple of final details wrapped up, before we opened the doors and let the vendors in to start getting their booths ready for the rally.

It’s great to see so many of our vendor friends here for the rally. We’ve worked alongside many of them for years while operating our own vendor booth at RV rallies coast to coast, so we understand what vendors need, and try very hard to provide it for them at our events.

Here is our pal Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories. Daryl has a brand new item, the Tire Traker Tire Pressure Monitoring System, as well as the excellent Progressive Industries Electrical Management Systems, which we have used for years, both in our MCI bus conversion, and now in our Winnebago diesel pusher.

You can see all kinds of goodies at an RV rally, from safety items like the automatic engine bay fire suppression systems that my pal Mac McCoy sells, to camping chairs and other goodies to make your RV travels more fun and more comfortable.

Flags Galore is offering every kind of flag you could ever want to find, in every size imaginable.

Dwane and Janet Trannum from Almost Heaven Micro Fibre spent most of the day hauling their inventory in and stocking their booth. I sure hope they sell a lot, because I don’t want to have to help them carry it back out to their van!

John and Karen Knoll stopped by the RVSEF weighing site here at Elkhart Campground to have Rick Lang weigh their truck and fifth wheel before they parked on their assigned RV site for the rally.

By the end of the day, everybody had worked hard, and most of the vendors were set up and ready to go. I locked the building up about 5 p.m., and then Dennis Haddix from Makarios RV and his pretty wife (whose name escapes me, I’m afraid) pulled in. They had the bed of their Itasca motorhome covered with inventory for their booth, so I opened the building back up long enough for them to unload enough that they could get through the night. Dennis is also the founder of ChatRV.com, a relatively new online forum for the RV community.

Of course, no RV rally has officially started until Red and Beth from Too Crazy Ladies have their booth set up and open for business!

Today is the official registration day, and Miss Terry and her crew of hardworking volunteers will be busy getting everybody checked in, passing out name badges, and answering questions.

One nice thing about having the rally at a campground instead of a fairgrounds is that we don’t have to have a parking crew. The folks just stop at the RV park office and check in, and Bob and Gita send them to their RV site.

When we were visiting with campground owners Bob and Gita Patel late yesterday afternoon, I think they were feeling a bit overwhelmed, but also delighted. They said that this rally will be the first time in all of the years that they have owned Elkhart Campground that they will be completely full! That should help their bottom line a little bit!

Thought For The Day – Count your life by smiles, not tears. Count your age by friends, not years.

After boondocking in the parking lot overnight, we pulled out of the Flying J in North Platte, Nebraska just after 9 a.m. and headed east on Interstate 80. There were some clouds overhead, but no rain coming down.

For years I have driven under the huge wooden arch that spans Interstate 80, near Kearney, Nebraska, and wanted to stop. Yesterday seemed like the perfect time to do so.

The official title of this impressive work of architectural wonder is the Great Platte River Road Archway, and if you like history as much as we do, you just have to stop here! Displays and audio descriptions inside tell the story of the pioneer trails that all came through here, headed west, and the brave people who set off for a new life in the wilderness.

More contemporary displays cover early auto travelers and tourist camps.

Executive Director Gary Roubicek greeted us, told us a little about the history of the archway, and then sent us off to explore. We had a wonderful time, and I’d love to tell you all about it, but I’m saving this story for a feature in the next issue of the Gypsy Journal!

But I do have to tell you one very impressive fact about the arch. It was constructed in two halves, one on each side of the interstate, and then when it was time to put it all together, the highway was closed at 11 p.m. one night, huge cranes lifted everything into place, set it all up, and twelve hours later traffic was flowing again! What an engineering feat!

Here is a view from the arch, as traffic speeds past under us.

After touring the arch, we browsed the gift shop, where we picked up some excellent local history books, and then walked outside and across a bridge to view a Pawnee earth lodge. Very impressive.

A huge school of large carp live in the river, and we paused on the bridge to drop some food down to them, and watched as they made the water boil, fighting for it.

Just a short walk from the Archway is the Nebraska Firefighters Museum, and though we didn’t have time to stop, we made a mental note for our next trip. If you are traveling through central Nebraska, take the time to stop and check out the Archway. They have lots of room for RVs to park, and even welcome you to dry camp overnight!

Back on the highway, we continued east, crossed the Missouri River at Omaha, and on the Iowa side we got onto U.S. Highway 30, which took us through several small towns until we connected with U.S. 59 at Denison.

Now, I love traveling the two lane roads, but I have to say that U.S. 59 sucks. I have been on cow paths that were wider and better maintained. We bounced and rattled our way north for 15 miles or so, then the highway suddenly ended in a construction zone and we found ourselves detoured onto a series of narrow county roads that were still much better than the U.S. Highway. Where the heck are our highway tax dollars going, anyway?

Somehow we managed to escape being eaten by a Holstein, and wound our way north to Spencer, Iowa, where we pulled into the city-owned East Leach Park Campground about 7:30 p.m. We had driven 441 miles, which is a long day even on a good road, let alone some of the trails we covered in western Iowa.

We love the campgrounds in small town city parks that we have stayed in from coast to coast, but we were really disappointed in this one. For $15 a night, we got an RV site with water and 30 amp electric, which sounds like a good deal. We had lots of room, since there were only a half dozen RVs in the campground, but even though we were the only RV in our section, the electric power was terrible.

Our Progressive Industries electrical management system (EMS) showed 123 volts of power, then it would drop down to below 106 volts and the EMS would shut done to prevent damage to our coach, which is what it is designed to do. The power would come back on at 123 volts, and then start dropping again any time we turned anything on. We shut down the air conditioner, put the refrigerator on propane, and turned off the battery charger, and at  one point we were only drawing two amps, but the circuit kept tripping. I tried two other outlets with the same results.

If it hadn’t been so late, and if we were not so tired, we would have moved to another section of the campground, but it didn’t look like any of the other places available were any better.

We only have 90 miles to go to get to Forest City, and if we don’t get stuck in the grass from the storm that is just rolling in as I post this at midnight, we should be there early enough in the day to get our names on the list and a head start toward a factory service slot.

Thought For The Day – Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers; what you do today, might burn your butt tomorrow!

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

By yesterday morning there were only a handful of RVs left at the Mercer County Fairgrounds, and several of those left by mid-day. Mike and Elaine Loscher were the first to pull out, headed for Elkhart, Indiana to get some service done on their Winnebago Class A motorhome.

Soon after Mike and Elaine left, Ron Speidel fired up the Caterpillar diesel engine in his Winnebago Journey motorhome, and while Ron and Brenda hooked up the Saturn they tow behind them, Larry and Carolyn Stover stopped to say goodbye before they headed on down the road with their Carriage fifth wheel.

Ron and Brenda have been with us for seven weeks now, first at Elkhart Campground and then at Celina, helping us get settled into our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, and then in Celina, doing 101 things before, during, and after our Gypsy Gathering rally to make sure it was a success. We couldn’t have done it without them, and we appreciate them more than we can ever say. Now it was time to say goodbye, as they headed off to begin their winter travels. There were lots of hugs and loving words as we said our goodbyes and saw our friends pull out.

Then it was time for Terry and I to take our leave. We had debated leaving the motorhome at the fairgrounds, and driving the van down to Lexington, Kentucky for my annual appointment at the V.A. hospital today. But at the last minute, we decided that we wanted to take our home with us and avoid a night in a hotel. While we were hooking up the van to our Blue Ox tow bar, Ken Barker came over to say goodbye. He and wife Billie were staying over another night at the fairgrounds in their gorgeous 1991 Safari motorhome. We had only met Ken and Billie once before, but we became so close to them this year that we look forward to our next time together.

It’s always sad to say goodbye, and in the fulltime RV lifestyle, we have a lot of goodbyes. But the good news is, we also have a lot of hellos in this lifestyle, and we know we’ll see all of our friends again somewhere down the road.

All that was left was a quick scan of our PressurePro tire monitoring system to make sure our tires were all properly inflated, and we pulled out of the fairgrounds and drove east on State Route 29, hooked up with U.S. Highway 33 and continued east, and in less than a half hour we were on Interstate 75, headed south.

It being Sunday, we chose to stay on Interstate 75 right through Cincinnati, rather than taking the longer I-275 bypass around the city. Traffic was light, and except for several stretches of road construction where we had to slow down to 45 miles per hour, we cruised along just fine. Before we knew it, we were crossing the Ohio River and were in Kentucky.

This was the first test for the Winnebago’s big 350 Cummins diesel engine on a familiar route. There are several hills south of the river, and we’ve taken this route in our old MCI bus conversion many times, towing the van. On a couple of the climbs, we used to have to get over in the right lane and let everybody pass us as the Detroit diesel chugged right along, pushing us up faithfully, if not quickly.

In the Winnebago, we got down to 48 miles per hour on one hill, and that was only because other traffic slowed us down. On the others, I was passing eighteen wheelers, just to see what the big Cummins engine could do. Normally I try to keep my speed between 55 and 62 miles per hour, if I can safely do so without getting run over by speeding trucks, but this trip I ran a bit over that most of the way, just to see how the new rig performed.

We arrived at Kentucky Horse Park Campground, on the north side of Lexington, and backed into the same site we had last year. I hooked up to water and electricity, and said a silent thank you to Daryl Lawrence from Lawrence RV Accessories when I glanced at the Electrical Management System (EMS) he installed at the rally, and saw that everything was fine. I know from experience that not all campground power is reliable, and the EMS in our bus conversion saved us from damage several times in the past.    

This was our fist solo trip in the Winnebago, and I have to say that we were both very pleased with its performance and ride. It has lots of power, holds the road great even in the curves, and is comfortable at every speed we’ll be driving at.  

Thought For The Day – Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem.