We can tell it’s a holiday weekend, because the traffic is terrible in this little mountain community as people escape the heat of the desert and come up here to cool off. Up until now, besides the campground host, we have usually been sharing the Elks campground with only  one or two other RVs.

But beginning yesterday, we have seen one RV after another pulling into the campground. We have a Class C Grayhawk parked two sites over from us, a beautiful new Newmar diesel pusher is behind us, another motorhome and a big fifth wheel are a few sites down on the other side, and there are a few others scattered around.

Compared to commercial RV parks, we still have lots of room and privacy, but it has been interesting to see so many new arrivals. I don’t know how many are here for extended stays, and how many are just here for the holiday weekend, but since they all seem to be retired, I don’t think they have to be anywhere in a hurry.

I seem to find a way to get into mischief everywhere I go. Case in point, Friday I went up to the Elks lodge to extend our stay. As with every other lodge we have been to, registration is done at the bar, and there was an older lady there registering for a campsite at the same time. I have never met a stranger, so while they were completing our paperwork, I said hello and asked where she was coming in from. She said Tucson, and I mentioned that it must be getting pretty hot down there by now. She must have thought I was trying to pick her up, despite the 15 or 20 year age difference between us, because she said “Look, I’m married, okay?”

Ouch! And here I thought I had my very own cougar! When I got back to our Winnebago and told Terry and my daughter about the incident, they both had a good laugh at my expense.

Hoping to avoid all of the holiday traffic, yesterday we hung around the motorhome all day. I dumped our black tank, and spent most of the day doing genealogical research online. I was surprised to learn about a daredevil in my family tree. On the Genealogy Bank website, I discovered an 1889 newspaper article reporting that my grandfather, Joseph Russell, then a 16 year old boy, had jumped 110 feet into the Ohio River from a railroad bridge in Cincinnati, on a bet. The story said he was uninjured, and I had to laugh as I remembered my mom saying things like “If so and so jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” If I had known this back then, I could have shot back “Why not, Grandpa did!” On second thought, maybe not. My mom was little, but she was feisty. She may have thrown me off a bridge for smarting off to her!

While I was goofing off, Miss Terry was hard at work, hanging this Levolor blind in the window over her workstation. The three windows in the front of the motorhome are much larger than the ones she already did in the bedroom and bathroom, and the first one was a learning experience. Hanging the blinds is not as easy as the folks at Lowes would have you believe.

But Terry loves a challenge, and she’s so darned stubborn that she never gives up. So even though she had to do some physical contortions to get to everything, and she had to back up and attack the problem from a different angle a time or two, the result came out great, don’t you think?

We are really pleased with the new look they give our Winnebago. Terry has two more windows to go, and she said the lessons she learned on this one will make those a little easier. 

I may not have accomplished much yesterday, but Bad Nick was working just as hard as Terry, pounding out a new Bad Nick Blog titled It Wasn’t About Slavery. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Rehab is for quitters!

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That old Boy Scout motto comes in handy in the RV lifestyle, just as it does in the rest of the world.

Early one morning this week, the campground host here at the Show Low Elks campground came to our door to tell us that a construction crew had broken a sewer line near the campground, and city workers had asked that nobody flush their toilets or use their sinks until repairs were made, which could be up to four hours.

Not a problem for us, we had lots of room in our black tank, and since we are in a full hookup RV site, I had the valve to our gray tank open, so it was empty. I closed the valve and we were just fine. I don’t know what the folks in the houses near the campground did, but for us life went on like normal.

We’re not survivalists, but we always try to be prepared for whatever happens, so that things that cause inconveniences to others aren’t even a speed bump for us. We keep our fresh water tank at least half full, even in a full hookup campground, because we’ve had the water shut off for repairs more than once. We keep our fuel tank close to full, even when sitting still for a few weeks, because if the electricity goes out, our generator can supply all the power we need.

We try to be prepared for the unexpected when we’re on the road too. We very seldom make advance campground reservations, because we like the freedom of not having to be on a schedule, but we usually have a general idea of where we plan to spend the night. Before we pull onto the highway, I also have an idea of alternate stops, usually every 50 miles or so apart, along the way that we can get into if bad weather, traffic delays, or mechanical problems delay us. These may be truck stops or RV friendly businesses, a city park or fairgrounds that allows RV parking, or an Elks or Moose lodge.  That way we’re never pushed to drive into inclement weather or past dark to get someplace.

We are also aware of what is happening around us as we travel. If we see traffic starting to slow down, we monitor the CB radio to find out if there is an accident or bad weather ahead, so we can find an alternate route or get off the road into a safe place until the crisis has passed.

As RVers, we usually have the ability to avoid or drive away from areas where bad weather threatens us. But if we happen to find ourselves in some ungodly place like Tornado Alley, a good weather radio will alert us to approaching storms. If we are in a campground that is new to us, we always find out where the storm shelters are, and if we happen to be in a Wal-Mart parking lot or some such, we try to scope out a secure building we can hide out in if things get out of hand.

It doesn’t take much to be prepared, and when you are, it can negate ordinary inconveniences, and help us avoid or survive potential emergencies.

Of course, Bad Nick is always prepared, at least to give us things to ponder. Check out his new Bad Nick Blog post titled You Can’t Make This Stuff Up! and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Make it idiot proof, and someone will make a better idiot.

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We woke up to wind and pouring rain yesterday morning, and it didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon. But we had an appointment at the Camping World in Mesa at 11:30 a.m., so I went outside and slogged through puddles of water to empty and flush our black tank, top off our fresh water tank, and disconnect our utility hookups. By the time I was finished, I was soaked.

With everything ready to go, I fired up our Cummins diesel engine, retracted our slide rooms and HWH leveling jacks, and we were ready to go. Well, almost ready to go. The indicator light and warning beeper said the right rear jack had not fully retracted. Sure enough, it was down about two inches. I hit the automatic leveling button to deploy the jacks again, and this time when I retracted them, they all came up fine.

It was only twelve miles to Camping World from Patio Gardens, so Terry drove the van behind me. After six weeks of sitting still, it was good to be back behind the wheel of our motorhome. 

I don’t think I have ever seen any Camping World as busy as the one in Mesa was yesterday. The entire parking lot was jammed, and Terry could not even find a place to park the van, let alone me the motorhome. I finally left it double parked and went inside to check in with the service department, and they pulled it right into one of the work bays.

I have been shopping for tires and batteries for our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, and had narrowed the tire choices down to the Michelin X7A3 and the Goodyear G670 RV. In my opinion, there really isn’t any real difference in quality between the two, and I have had a lot of RVers recommend both tires.

In the end, I chose the Goodyear tires, even though the price for all six, mounted, balanced, and out the door, was $200 more. My reasons may not make sense to a lot of people, but I have hated the Michelin Company ever since Vietnam, and Goodyear is an American company, as opposed to Michelin, a French outfit.

The only French things I like are fries, toast, and kisses. My not buying their tires will not affect Michelin’s bottom line one iota, but it was worth the extra money to me not to give them my business.

We also needed new house batteries, because the previous owner of our motorhome had installed regular starting batteries instead of deep cycle RV batteries. We went with Interstate batteries, which many RVers use and seem to be happy with. Since we don’t plan to do as much dry camping as we once did, we could not justify the price of absorbed glass matt (AGM) batteries like we had in our bus conversion. 

It had rained hard off and on all day long, but it finally started to clear up about 2 p.m., and there was quite a bit of blue sky showing. Of course, by the time they were finished working on the motorhome about 3:30, it had started pouring again. That lasted until we got the van hooked up to our Blue Ox tow bar, did our light check, and were ready to take off. Then the rain stopped. Go figure.

We had planned to boondock in the Camping World parking lot if it was getting close to rush hour when they were finished with our work, but the lot was still packed, and there wasn’t anyplace to park. So we drove 86 miles to Gila Bend, where we spent the night dry camping in the huge gravel parking lot at the Elks lodge. It was a windy trip, but we made good time, and at last the rain had stopped.

There were half a dozen other RVs at the Elks lodge, and when I went inside to register, we ran into longtime readers Bob Parker and Donna Huffer, who are also on their way to Yuma for our rally.

We will continue on to the fairgrounds in Yuma today, and get settled in so we can start working on the final details for the rally. It won’t be long now, folks!

Thought For The Day – I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. – Douglas Adams  

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This is our last day in Apache Junction, or AJ, as the community is known locally. The last six weeks have gone by in a blur, and while we are more than ready to scratch our bad case of hitch itch, we wish we had more time to spend with Terry’s parents and sisters, who live here. There are still some folks whom we have not been able to get together with, and we’re sorry that we just ran out of time.

We had a few beautiful days last week, but yesterday dawned gray and wet, with temperatures fifteen or twenty degrees below what we had been enjoying. Here I was, thinking that winter was over, but apparently we just had a temporary reprieve.

Yesterday, our friends John and Karen Knoll stopped by to visit for a while, and to pick up a couple of bundles of newspapers to take to a Newmar fulltimers rally they will be going to, as well as to a couple of RV parks they will be visiting. We always appreciate it when folks help us spread the word about our work.

About 4 p.m. we went over to visit Terry’s parents, and took them out to dinner. By the time we left the restaurant it was pitch black and raining hard. Terry’s mom, Bess, was driving, and she was having a hard time seeing and dodging deep puddles in the road. We were all glad to get back to their place safely.

We only stayed a few minutes, because it was getting late, but by the time we left, it had stopped raining and the moon and a few stars were breaking through the clouds.  

If the weather cooperates today, we have several chores to do. I want to flush our black tank, rearrange some things in the back of our van, and we have to get things inside of the Winnebago packed and stored. Whenever we sit in one place for a while, we tend to leave things like books and small appliances out to make them more accessible, instead of putting them back each time we use them. So now we have to remember where everything goes, and put them there. We also have several orders to fill and get ready to send out tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow we have an 11:30 a.m. appointment to get new tires on the motorhome, and depending on what time that gets finished, we’ll head out toward Yuma. I doubt that we’ll make it all the way, so we’ll probably spend the night somewhere between here and there.  

We’ve had a nice visit to Apache Junction, but all good things must come to an end, and it’s time to get on down the road.

Thought For The Day – You’re getting old when your wife gives up sex for Lent, and you don’t know until the 4th of July.

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I got an e-mail yesterday from a couple who bought a new motorhome last year and have been unhappy with it ever since. They said that both the dealer from whom they bought the coach and the manufacturer have both refused to address their complaints. This is not uncommon, and it is part of the reason why I have said for years that the worst part of the RV lifestyle is the poor quality of so many RVs on the market, and the total lack of support from so many dealers and manufacturers after the sale.

However, there is a flip side to this coin, and in this case, after reading the detailed e-mail the couple sent me, my first response was “huh?” Their first complaint is that the motorhome only has a 75 gallon fresh water tank and a 50 gallon black tank. They do not feel that this is adequate for their needs and they want the manufacturer to put in larger tanks.

Huh? Didn’t they read the specs on the rig before they bought it? That’s about average for most motorhomes, and about what we have in our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage. We get along just fine. Assuming that there is even room to do so, why in the world would they expect the manufacturer to change out their standard tanks for larger custom tanks, and absorb the cost?

Another complaint is that the rooftop air conditioners did not keep the motorhome sufficiently cool during a trip through Arizona, Nevada, and southern California last summer. The fact is that RVs are not terribly energy efficient, they have poor insulation, and on a very hot day, their air conditioners will typically only lower the ambient temperature about 20 degrees. So on a 100 degree day, which is not at all uncommon in the Southwest during the summertime, the best they can expect is about 80 degrees inside the RV.

Their third complaint is that the motorhome is only rated to tow 5,000 pounds and they want to tow their full size pickup behind them, with a full size Honda Goldwing motorcycle in the bed. The combination far exceeds their towing capacity. Their e-mail says that they were aware of the towing capacity when they bought the motorhome but “any motorhome sold today should be able to pull at least as much as we want to.”

I wrote back and told this couple that they really needed to be realistic. I think they are expecting way too much, and if I were running the dealership that sold them the RV, or the company that built it, I would not be able to help them either. I think they bought the wrong coach to start with, based on what they want to tow, and I wonder how much experience they have with RVs and how much research they did before they bought it.

They reminded me of two other unhappy RV owners I have come across in the past; one was a guy whose cats clawed up his sofa, and he wanted the factory to give him new one under warranty; and the other was a fellow who made several modifications to his rig himself, and butchered the job, then wanted the manufacturer to make it right under warranty.

I think one of the good things that will come about from the downturn in the RV industry is that several companies who made shoddy products and ignored customers’ valid complaints have fallen by the wayside, while the companies that made quality products and stood behind them have survived. But there are some customers that no company will ever be able to satisfy, no matter how hard they try.

Before I close, I want to tell you about an interesting new program that I just learned about called Harvest Hosts, which is developing a network of RV friendly farms and wineries that invite RVers in self-contained rigs to visit and stay overnight (no more than 24 hours) for free. The farms and wineries don’t provide any services, just a safe and unique setting where you can park overnight, shop for local products, and experience what the local farm or winery has to offer.

It sounds like it would be an interesting change of pace from typical RV parks and campgrounds. As I said, they’re new and have some growing to do, but check out their website at www.harvesthosts.com and let me know what you think. I like the idea.

Thought For The Day – When you go into court, your fate is in the hands of twelve people who aren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

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