There is an ongoing thread on the Escapees Forum about the fact that Flying J truck stops are now charging RVers $5 to dump their holding tanks. Some of the people who have commented about Flying J’s new policy, as well as some who have written to me about it, are really ticked off, calling it corporate greed and vowing to buy their fuel elsewhere from now on. One fulltime RVer who e-mailed me said “I have bought fuel at Flying J for 8 years, used their dump stations, and spent the night many times. But I’ll go out of my way to avoid them from now on!”

Well, I don’t blame you, brother. The nerve of those guys! After years of giving you free camping and free dumping, now that the economy has changed and businesses are scrambling to cover their costs, let alone make a profit, you deserve to be able to continue to freeload. How dare they start charging you for the same things that commercial campgrounds have been charging for ever since they first opened!

I remember a similar thread last year before the Escapade rally in Sedalia, Missouri, when folks were complaining that barriers in the parking lot of the Sedalia Wal-Mart prevented RVers from entering to dry camp overnight, and there were comments about boycotting the store. 

Where is it written that a business has to give its customers anything for free! Good service, yes; a fair price, absolutely; but free camping and the free use of an RV dump station? I guess I missed that memo.

I served many years on my town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, and I remember codes requiring businesses to jump through a lot of hoops if they wanted to set up shop in our community. But I can’t ever remember demanding that a business give something away to customers.

For the most part, RVers are pretty special people, and I’m proud to count myself among their numbers. But every barrel has a few bad apples,including ours.

My friend Bill Joyce sent me a link to a blog post yesterday about Wild Horse Casino near Chandler, Arizona. It seems that in the past, RVers had abused the casino’s hospitality by setting up housekeeping for weeks, even months on end. That has changed, and now casino security is clamping down on the RV slobs who take unfair advantage of the casino’s free RV parking. I’m sure that there are some who feel this is unfair too. Probably the same jerks who caused the problem in the first place.

I just don’t get this idea that somebody owes us anything and we deserve to get it. I appreciate it when a business gives me a break, whether it be free camping, free dumping, or a discount on a purchase. But I don’t expect it, and I don’t demand it. And if a business has been generous in the past, but things change and they have to start charging me for a service that was free in the past, I certainly don’t feel offended, I don’t boycott them, and I don’t whine and complain. I appreciate the courtesies of the past, pay up and figure I’m still ahead because of prior savings,and continue to support them. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Bad Nick has been busy, by the way, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Our Tax Dollars At Work. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I want to know – therefore I go.

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.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We got a slow start yesterday morning and it was a little after noon when we pulled out of the Moose lodge in Myrtle Beach. I immediately set the theme for the day by turning north instead of south on U.S. Highway 501, and it took three miles to find a shopping center where we could turn around and get headed back in the right direction.

Once on U.S. Highway 17, the first order of business was to find someplace to take on some fuel. I had been looking all the way from Morehead City, North Carolina the day before, but didn’t find any place I felt comfortable trying to navigate our big motorhome into and out of. We were not at the critical stage, but we were getting lower than I like to be.

It was 100 miles to Charleston, all of it four lane road, with a lot of traffic and a lot of traffic lights along the way, so we didn’t make very good time. We kept looking for a gas station that sold diesel and looked big enough to accommodate us, but the few we saw were either on the other side of the road, or we saw them too late to stop.

As we neared Charleston, I got on the CB radio and asked a truck driver where we could find a truck stop, and he recommended a Hess on the south side of Charleston. He also recommended that we take the Interstate 526 loop around the city instead of staying on U.S. 17, which would add a few miles but be much quicker and easier driving.

By then I was tired of stop and go driving, so we did just that, and I was proud of myself as we drove over two high bridges, first over the Wando, and then the Cooper River. I didn’t snivel once! If I keep this up, Miss Terry may let me start wearing big boy pants!

By the time we got off the bypass and back onto U.S. 17, I was starting to get uncomfortable with our fuel situation. The Silverleaf engine monitoring system said I still had a range of just over 100 miles before empty, but judging by what I had seen in the last 300 miles since we left Morehead City, I didn’t want to press my luck much further. We didn’t see the truck stop, but after another fifteen miles or so, we did spot a station with separate diesel pumps on the side. It was a tight squeeze, but we managed to get in and fill the tank. If my calculator is right, we got 7.8 miles per gallon on this tank, which is just what the Silverleaf shows.

Another 60 miles, most of which was slow going, brought us to Interstate 95. Usually I like traveling on the back roads, but U.S.17 isn’t a route I’ll be taking anytime again soon. Yesterday, driving it was more work than fun.

The sun was getting low in the sky, making it hard to drive with the glare, and the truckers on the CB were complaining about it. Since we’re not truck drivers and don’t have a schedule to keep, we don’t have to drive in conditions like that. We had covered 206 miles since leaving Myrtle Beach, and that was enough for me.

We pulled into the Georgia State Welcome Center, where signs were posted that said no overnight parking. I went inside to ask the attendant on duty if there was a truck stop or RV friendly WalMart nearby, and she said “Just stay out there overnight, nobody will bother you. Our state troopers who work this area know you’re not sleeping, you’re just resting. That’s what rest areas are for, right?” I like Georgia!

Thought For The Day – Ignore the overwhelming size of the task; just take the first step. The rest will follow, one step at a time.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, Michele Henry from Phoenix Commercial Paint peeled the faded, chipped up graphic stripe off of our Winnebago motorhome and repainted it in the original color.

After getting the old stripe off, Michele and her crew moved the RV into their paint booth and masked off the area to be painted to protect it from overspray. It looked even larger all covered up in paper! 

I picked the motorhome up yesterday afternoon, and it looks great! We are very pleased with the results of Michele’s work. It really sets the RV off, and everybody who has seen it has been impressed. Now you can count us among the many satisfied customers of Phoenix Commercial Paint! 

Today is going to be a busy day for us. We have to pick up the T-shirts for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, which I got busy and forgot to do yesterday. Then Miss Terry has some laundry to take care of, and I need to get the motorhome’s propane tank filled, and then air up all of the tires to accommodate the weight of everything we now have in it. After that, we need to load our bicycles into the van so we’ll be ready to leave for Ohio Sunday morning.

I also need to move our bus conversion to the storage area here at Elkhart Campground. Owners Bob and Gita Patel have been gracious in allowing us to leave it parked next to our regular site while we moved everything out and into the Winnebago and then stayed in it last night while the motorhome was in the paint shop. We are disappointed that the bus has not sold yet, but we know the right buyer is out there somewhere.

Several people asked if we are going to take the bus with us when we leave for the winter. Probably not, because it gets awfully expensive driving two RVs around the country. We’ll either store it here at the campground, or at my pal Butch Williams’ place at Twelve Mile, Indiana. Or, you could just buy it for a really good price and save me the hassle of draining the tanks and winterizing it.

That reminds me of a funny story from when we first bought the bus, and still had our original RV, the Motorhome From Hell. We were taking the bus to Michigan, where we spent the summer at my cousin Terry Cook’s place getting the first steps of the conversion project finished.

I was driving the bus and Terry was driving the RV, and we pulled into a Flying J for fuel. The RV island was empty, so I stopped at one pump and stuck a diesel hose in the bus tank, then a gasoline hose in the RV, and gave Terry a kiss as she walked inside to pay. A fellow in a Class C had pulled in behind us, and as I was pumping the fuel, he came up and said “I couldn’t help but notice that you and your lady there travel in two RVs.  Doesn’t that get expensive?”

Well, you know Bad Nick wasn’t going to pass up an opening like that, so I looked him right in the eye and said “Well, that’s my wife, and I love her, but we just don’t get along well enough to spend that much time together. So yeah, it’s expensive this way, but it’s still a lot cheaper than a divorce!”

I mentioned weight above, but I don’t mean we are overweight. The Winnebago has a cargo capacity of 3451 pounds, and I don’t think we’re near that. I’ll know for sure once we get to Celina, because we are the first on the list to have Rick and Joyce Lang from RVSEF weigh us at the rally.

If you have not had your RV weighed yet, be sure to print out the Motorhome Work Sheet or Trailer Work Sheet from these links and fill them out so you can have your rig weighed at our rally. The small fee is well worth the investment in your safety and in avoiding breakdowns caused by overstressing your RV’s components with excess weight. For weighing fees and information, or any questions, call Rick Lang at (207) 522-3336, or e-mail him at ricklang46@hotmail.com.

Thought For The Day – Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally