We are into our annual slowdown in our printing schedule.

We try to have each issue of the Gypsy Journal printed and mailed by the middle of the month preceding the issue date, and five issues a year, we are usually able to meet that deadline. But every year, when it’s time to print the January-February issue, that schedule goes out the window. No matter where we are in the country or which newspaper we are using to do the printing, and no matter how far we plan ahead, we run into scheduling problems.

This is caused by several factors, including heavier than usual printing schedules, as stores are printing and mailing out special holiday advertising inserts, at the same time that press rooms are shorthanded as employees take vacation days. Because we are not a weekly or even monthly job on their schedule, we get shoved to the bottom of the pile while they take care of their regular customers’ needs. We understand it, we expect it, but it’s still frustrating.

So, like every year, the newest issue of the paper is going out later than we want it to. It’s at the printer now, and hopefully they’ll have it back to us early next week so we can get it mailed out. In the meantime, we appreciate everybody’s patience.

We have made a change to the way we do our printing, starting with this issue. Until now, we have used different printers in different locations around the country, wherever we happened to be when it was time to go to press. This has been problematic at times, and with the changes in the industry, it has only gotten worse. We never know what kind of quality we’re going to get with a new printer.

Another major problem is that the size of most newspaper pages is getting smaller and smaller, and we have resisted going to the newest size reduction. But, it has been increasingly hard to find newspapers that continue to print on our size paper at times. Last year we had to leave Alabama earlier than we had planned and drive all the way to south Texas to get printed, after last minute changes at the printer we had used in this region in the past. This year we thought that we’d have to go all the way back to Indiana from Washington, DC to get printed, when the newspaper we had planned to use switched paper sizes on us. Fortunately, we found a printer in Virginia at the last minute, but it was stressful.

So we have contracted with one of the newspapers who prints us in Michigan when we are in the Midwest to do all of our printing in the future. They have recently upgraded their systems and added the ability to allow us to upload our files to them via the internet, and once each issue is printed, they will ship it to us by truck.  They could actually handle our mailing too, but in addition to the papers we mail out, we also have several thousand extra printed of each issue, which we distribute as samples at RV rallies and RV parks we visit in our travels.

This will add quite a bit to our cost for each issue, but it will give us consistent quality from a printer we are comfortable with, and who understands our unique needs.  I’m sure we’ll have a glitch or two along the way, but we’re confident that in the long run, it will all work out.

I’m still adding new seminars to the schedule for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally, March 7-11 in Yuma. I still have quite a few time slots to fill in, but it’s coming together. I have posted a very preliminary seminar schedule on our rally registration page to give you an idea some of the offerings we will have. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check it out. We’ll have over 60 different seminars by the time we’re done, so there’s sure to be plenty to meet everybody’s interest. As I said, this is just a preliminary schedule, and there will be lots of changes and additions by the time the rally starts. Be sure to register early, we’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Thought For The Day – We can’t go back in time and have a different beginning, but we can start today to make a new ending for ourselves.

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When we checked into the Peace River NACO campground on Sunday the office was closed, so the ranger said to go up to the office anytime Monday morning and pay for our stay. Apparently “anytime” is first thing in the morning, because at 10 a.m. somebody was knocking on our door.

Since we seldom get to bed before 2 a.m., we don’t get up early, so by the time I threw on some clothes and got to the door, the person was driving away in a golf cart. After I brushed my teeth and combed my five or six hairs, I went to the office and paid for our stay. Geez, we’re here for fourteen days, it’s not like we were going to stiff them out of $70.

Over the years, we have gotten a lot of flack from other RVers who seem to be offended by our sleeping schedule. More than once some older RVer has said something about “lazy” people sleeping the day away. I usually tell them I’m not lazy, I was up late working hard so I could pay into Social Security so they can get their check next month. I mean, really, is it anybody’s business when we go to bed or get up, as long as we don’t make any noise or disturb them when we’re up and they’re in bed?

Since the rain had stopped and we had a nice blue sky overhead, even if it was still rather cool, we went down to check out the boat ramp to the Peace River, here at the campground. The river was nice and calm, and if it warms up some more, we want to get our kayaks wet.

Okay, maybe we want to get our kayaks wet! I saw a sign about alligators at Lake Hancock at the Orlando Thousand Trails, and that didn’t bother me. But snakes? That’s taking things a little bit too far! I’ve heard of people wrestling alligators, but this fat boy don’t do snakes!

The Spanish moss that hangs from the live oaks trees all over Florida is even on the palm trees here at the campground! 

Our South Dakota license plates and registration for the Explorer came yesterday. The nice folks at our mail service in Sioux Falls, Alternative Resources, handled all of the paperwork, got the plates and registration, and sent them to us by Priority Mail. Since the 30 day temporary plate from the dealer where we bought the SUV expired Saturday, I was glad the plates arrived.

After picking up the license plates in the office, we drove into town to make a stop at the post office to mail off an order, then on to WalMart for a few things, and back to the campground. As we were driving back to our RV site, we stopped to take a picture of this motorhome with steer horns mounted on the front end. I wonder if this guy is from Texas?

We spent the rest of the day at home. I answered e-mails, had a long exchange with a lady in Oklahoma who is looking at a used RV and was asking my advice because she had some concerns. After hearing them (105,000 miles on a 1999 gas powered Class A, many stains on the ceiling from obvious roof leaks, a musty smell inside the coach, a generator that would not start, and a broken windshield), I told her to run, not walk, away. She still wasn’t convinced, because at only $25,000 the seller tells her it’s a heck of a deal. Yes, it is. I’m just not sure if it’s a heck of a deal for him, or for her!

Thought For The Day – Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

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We spent yesterday exploring the back roads of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and what a wonderful time we had!

This is the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish country, and on every back road we traveled we saw Amish farms, usually with laundry hanging on clotheslines, and livestock in their pens. 

This swaybacked horse looks like he’s seen better days, and is living out his golden years in retirement.

We always love wandering around the back roads, because we never know what we’ll find around the next bend in the road.

The Amish are enterprising people, and besides farming, they operate a lot of little cottage industries. We saw signs for fresh produce and flowers, eggs, root beer, handmade quilts, brooms, and furniture.

We saw a lot of horse drawn Amish buggies sharing the road with cars and trucks. The horses amaze me, because they don’t seem to be bothered at all by cars speeding past them.

The Amish also work their fields with horse powered equipment. Isn’t this a handsome team of work animals?

I didn’t know that the Amish grew tobacco as a cash crop until yesterday.

It’s harvest time, and we pulled off the side of the road to watch them cutting and stacking the tobacco on wagons.

Just a couple of fields away, this fellow was harvesting corn.

We passed several groups of Amish schoolchildren on their way home after a long day of lessons. Almost all of them seemed to be carrying coolers instead of lunch buckets like we did as kids.

This boy seemed to be in a hurry, running past all of his schoolmates. He must have had chores that needed doing.

I got a chuckle out of some of the names of the towns we visited, including Blue Ball.

If that names makes you uncomfortable, you probably don’t want to know that Intercourse is only few miles away. How do you spell relief?

For years people have been telling us that we needed to check out the Shady Maple Smorgasbord near Blue Ball, and I’m glad we did!

Can you believe that this is the lobby of a buffet restaurant, and not a fancy hotel lobby?

And what a buffet it was! The selection was huge, including both New York Strip and Delmonico steaks, smoked pork chops, fried chicken, shrimp, and at least a half dozen other entrees, and more sides than I could count. Everything was fresh and hot, and the dessert bar was unbelievable.

But if that wasn’t enough, they also had a chocolate fountain where we could dip fresh strawberries, bananas, pretzels, and other goodies. Can you say decadent?

We arrived back at the Thousand Trails campground tired, with our tummies full, and with memories we’ll have for a lifetime of our day of exploring.

Thought For The Day – The silence is part of the music.

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As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, Wednesday was a long, hard day on the road. We covered over 440 miles, and some of those roads were narrow, rough, and uncomfortable.

Then we had a hard day’s night at the city owned Leach Park Campground in Spencer, Iowa. It was humid and sticky hot, and the electric power was terrible, cutting out every few minutes. We finally decided to heck with it, turned off just about everything electrical in the motorhome, opened up our windows, and put our three roof vent fans on high sped, just to move some air.

About midnight it began to rain, and a few minutes later a strong thunderstorm hit us. We have been in some really nasty storms in our lives, and I even survived a tornado once, but this one was probably the worst storm either of us could remember. All night long the thunder boomed, lighting was hitting close all around us, and the rain just poured down. We had to close all of the windows and the roof vents, because rain was blowing in from every direction, which turned the motorhome into a sauna.

We also discovered that the leak around our living room slide, which Duncan RV in Elkhart had said was fixed, is still leaking, along with several new leaks that came from the driving rain. To be honest, it was coming down so hard, I think it would have even gotten wet inside a bank vault. We brought in the living room slide, both to try to minimize the leaking, and to present a smoother profile to the wind.

We were up most of the night, because it was impossible to sleep. Since we were parked on grass, near a river, we debated whether we should just unhook and drive to the nearby WalMart, where we’d at least be parked on pavement. But with so much lighting all around us, we were worried about going out to unhook the water and electrical connections.

We debated firing up the generator so we’d at least be able to run our air conditioner, but since we were plugged into shore power, I wasn’t sure if the automatic transfer switch would allow us to get power from the generator. At one point, I told Miss Terry that I had had worse nights in my life, but back then people were shooting at me!

Finally, dawn broke, and the rain stopped for a few minutes. I looked outside and we were surrounded by pools of water. I knew that every minute we stayed on the grass brought us closer to sinking, as more rain was on the way.

I started the Winnebago to let it air up, then went outside to unhook the water and electric connections, slogging through water over the tops of my shoes. While I was waiting for the leveling jacks to come up, I tried to move the van out of the way, and the rear wheels promptly sunk. Hmm… that’s not a good sign. If the van got stuck, I knew that there was no way our heavy diesel coach was going to get through the soft ground in front of us, to make it to the road.

The ground seemed a bit firmer behind the rig, so I had  Terry guide me as I very carefully backed across the grass to a gravel roadway. Once I got the RV moving, there was no way I was going to stop until I was on something solid. I left some deep ruts in the grass, but I made it, and I sure felt better once I had that hard packed road under me!

Then it was time to get the van free. With me pushing, and Terry gingerly using the throttle and transmission to rock it, we managed to get it moving and back onto firm ground.

We were lucky. These folks were parked in an RV site right in front of us, and this huge tree limb came down, narrowly missing their trailer, but taking the side view mirror off their truck! I guess they were lucky too, it could have been much worse!

We hooked the van up to our Blue Ox tow bar as it started to rain again, and set out eastward on U.S. Highway 18. We ran in scattered rain showers all the way to Forest City, 91 miles away, but at least the wind had died down.

We arrived at the Winnebago Visitors Center and were assigned a back-in site with good, reliable 30 amp electric, and then walked down the hill to the Customer Service building to put our name on the list for a time slot. It looks like our fast trip across the country will pay off, because we were given an 11:30 a.m. standby time for today. That means that as soon as another job gets finished, we’ll get called in. If we don’t get in today, I’m sure we will on Monday. Since we were originally told it might be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week before we got on the list, we’re glad we rushed to get here.

Once we were we parked and hooked up, our pals Ron and Brenda Speidel came by to give us much needed hugs, and to show us around the grounds. The annual Winnebago-Itasca Grand National Rally ends today, and they have 1,750 Winnebagos and Itascas of every model here for all of the fun. We have never seen so many Winnies, all in one place!

We even saw a rare vintage Winnebago fifth wheel!

Mike and Elaine Loscher, wonderful friends who have helped us so much with our Gypsy Gathering rallies over the years, are also here, and later in the afternoon we went to dinner with them. It was a treat to have some quiet time with this sweet couple, away from all the hustle and bustle of a rally.

Terry and I were worn out from the fast trip across the country, 950 miles in 2 1/2 days, combined with our long, scary night. Back at the motorhome, we felt like zombies. I wrote my blog post, downloaded some photos from our digital cameras, and Terry caught up on e-mail. We sure were looking forward to getting into that bed and getting some sleep!

Thought For The Day – Daughters hold your hand for a little while, but they hold your heart for a lifetime.

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We arrived at the  Morgan Hill Thousand Trails preserve on Monday, with a fourteen day reservation. We expected it to be busy with the holiday weekend and all, but we had no problem finding a nice, level site with a good shot at the sky for our TV dish. I wasn’t impressed that the air conditioning in the Adult Lounge wasn’t working, making it too hot to be in there, but that wasn’t a deal breaker.

As expected, the campground filled up over the next few days, and by Friday morning it was packed. A large crowd of young people were parked on both sides of us, in front, and behind us. They were having a good time, and we had no problem with that, except that they kept walking through our campsite.

But then they brought out a boom box that was so loud that, sitting inside our RV with the windows closed, air conditioner on, and TV on, we had to turn the TV almost all the way up to hear it. Somebody must have complained, because a ranger came by and talked to them, and they turned it down for about 20 minutes, and then had it at full blast again. Finally, late in the evening I walked over and told them to turn it down or off, and they did.

About mid-day yesterday the power went off, and since it was in the high 80s, we opened our windows and turned on our exhaust fans, but it still quickly got to 93 degrees in our motorhome, according to our digital thermostat. I called the main office number, and the ranger station, but nobody answered the phone, so after a half hour or so I went looking and found an employee, and told him about the power. He said “If all of you people wouldn’t have your AC on during the heat of the day, that wouldn’t happen.” Huh? When should I run my AC, if not during the hottest part of the day?

Meanwhile, back at our RV, the fellow next to us, part of the party crowd, had fired up a cheap construction type generator, which was very loud, and was right under our open window, so the fumes were coming inside our rig. A few minutes later the worker came by and said he had reset the breaker for our area, but to expect it to go out again pretty soon. Terry complained about the generator, so he went across the street and found the owner, and had him shut it down. As predicted, the power didn’t stay on very long, and we were back to sitting in a sauna.

Apparently these were local people, because several cars came in on day passes to party with them, and it kept getting louder. No power, a loud noisy crowd with no regard for other people and no respect for their space, and a campground staff that didn’t care. That was enough for us.  Our bullshit tolerance level had been exceeded.

One of the great things about the RV lifestyle is that, if you don’t like the neighbors, you can move. And that’s just what we did! We left Thousand Trails and went to the Elks lodge in Gilroy, about twelve miles away. They have eight back-in sites with 50 amp electric and water, on a hill with a great view.

The place is almost full, and though the RVs are parked pretty close together, we still have as much or more room than we did at the Thousand Trails, and it is nice and quiet. We’re much more comfortable here, and glad we moved.

When we left the Thousand Trails, Terry stopped at the guard shack to tell them why we were leaving early, and that we were unhappy, but the ranger just said “Okay, have a nice day.” As we were leaving, a sheriff’s car was pulling in with lights flashing. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t care. We won’t be back again.

Bad Nick doesn’t let trivial things like obnoxious neighbors and power outages get in his way. He posted a brand new Bad Nick Blog titled Happy Birthday To Us. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. – Theodore Roosevelt

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!