We’ve stayed at a lot of campgrounds in our eleven years of fulltime RV travel, some really nice places, and some not so nice. There are campgrounds that we return to on a regular basis, and others where one stop was more than enough.

RVers often ask us what our personal favorite campgrounds are. Sometimes I feel like that would be akin to telling you where my favorite fishing hole is. What if the word gets out and pretty soon the place is so full that they don’t have room for me?

But what the heck, there’s always Wal-Mart if my favorite campsite is not available, so here are my Top Ten favorites, and why. Please be aware that the reasons I like a campground may not be important to you, just as the things you look for may not meet my needs.

Elkhart Campground, Elkhart, Indiana – No question about it, this is our favorite campground in the entire country. It is centrally located to a lot of places we regularly frequent, Elkhart is the capital of the RV industry, the campground is clean and well maintained, the RV sites are wide, the interior roads are all good, and owners Bob and Gita Patel treat us like family. 

Escapees Rainbow Plantation, Summerdale, Alabama – I don’t think we’ve ever been to an RV park with roomier sites than this Escapees Club RV park. We like the Alabama Gulf Coast area, the small towns in the area are all friendly and clean, and the park itself has a lot of great amenities and activities.

Tra-Tel RV Park, Tucson, Arizona – There is nothing fancy about this small RV park, the spaces are tight, and you get noise from nearby Interstate 10 and the railroad tracks on the other side of the highway. However, it’s clean, the staff is very friendly, they have a nice pool, and for us, location is everything. Tra-Tel is a comfortable, convenient place to stay when we visit our family in Tucson.

Escapees Sumter Oaks RV Park, Bushnell, Florida -  I would say that this is our favorite campground in the state of Florida. We love the giant live oak trees that shade the park, they have a great indoor pool, a fine rec room, and because it’s an Escapees park, it’s always friendly. Miss Terry loves wandering through the nearby huge Webster Flea Market looking for bargains.

Escapees Raccoon Valley, Heiskell, Tennessee -  This is a regular stop for us, and another favorite Escapees Club RV park, because we love the area. The campground is just a mile or so from Interstate 75, and close to Knoxville, but has a rural feel to it. Twice a week local bluegrass musicians come to the park and hold free jam sessions. We haven’t been to Raccoon Valley since the recent remodel, and we’re looking forward to seeing the improvements.

Thousand Trails Verde Valley Preserve, Camp Verde, Arizona – Again, location means a lot. We stay at this large Thousand Trails campground often when it’s too hot to be in Phoenix or Tucson, but still too cold to go to our old hometown in Arizona’s White Mountains. There is a lot to see and do in the Verde Valley, from exploring historic ghost towns and ancient Indian ruins, to riding a vintage steam train.

Country Roads RV Park, Lake Delton, Wisconsin – Our friends Terry and Terri Michael, owners of Country Roads, bill this campground as a place for adults, and if you want a super clean, quiet location that is just minutes from all of the hustle and bustle in Wisconsin Dells, you’ll like it too. Amenities include a pool, very nice RV sites, and a welcome that will make you feel like you just came back home after a long absence.

Escapees Turkey Creek Village, Hollister, Missouri – Located on the shore of Lake Taneycomo, just minutes from all of the shows and attractions in Branson, we have stopped at Turkey Creek many times, and look forward to getting back again. The RV sites are nice, the area has more to see and do than you could get done in an entire season, and the local folks are all very friendly.

Hershey Thousand Trails, Lebanon, Pennsylvania – We’ve only stayed here once, and we’re looking forward to going back for two weeks in September after our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. The campground is a short drive from Hershey if you need a chocolate fix, it has a lot of great amenities, and this is another part of the county that we really enjoy spending time in. The love the green, rolling countryside around the campground.

 Fisherman’s Landing, Muskegon, Michigan – I have to admit that I have a love/hate relationship with this city owned campground. The sites are fine, and it is a great place to stay when we visit my cousin Berni and her husband Rocky, not to mention that there is a lot to see and do in the area, and we can launch our kayaks right from the campground. However, the downside is that on summer weekends there always seems to be at least one large group of rowdy campers who disturb everybody else, and management never seems to be aware of it.  Still, we go back every year, so I guess the good outweighs the bad.

Okay, now I’ve told you mine, so don’t hold back on the rest of us. What are some of your favorite campgrounds, and why?

Thought For The Day – One man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh.

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I got an e-mail the other day from a person who markets a well known product to the RV industry. He was unhappy with the comments I wrote about one of his products that he sent me to evaluate. He called what I had to say a “hatchet job.” While I wouldn’t go that far, I did say that I didn’t feel that his latest offering measured up. I’m sorry, but I don’t write puff pieces. I tell it like I see it, good, bad, or indifferent.

Of course, we also have the people who don’t even send a product to evaluate, they just send us a glowing pre-written review, and then expect us to publish it. I always tell these people that if they have enough confidence in their product to send a sample, I’ll try it, but that only gets them my honest opinion about it. If they just send a press release, I just send them back an advertising rate card.

I also upset an RV dealer who wanted to bring some rigs to the fairgrounds in Yuma to display at our rally. He insisted that these display RVs would be parked where we intend to put our outdoor vendors, so that everybody would have to walk past them, and his salesmen, to go from the indoor to the outdoor vendor area. I told him that wouldn’t work, and that I was not going to do that to our outdoor vendors (or our attendees), but I would let him park the RVs in a convenient and visible area.

The fairgrounds charges us for every RV on the grounds during the rally, in addition to the rental of the facility itself, and I gave him a price per rig that would cover our cost. He was amazed that I would consider asking him to pay. In fact, he expected us to pay him, because he felt that just having his units there would be a feather in our cap. 

A couple of years ago, we had a dealer who wanted to display RVs at our rally in Casa Grande, but he demanded that we supply him with the snail mail addresses, e-mail, and telephone numbers of all rally attendees for his marketing purposes.

Over the years, we have been approached many times by companies wanting to buy our mailing list, and we always tell them no. We never give out our subscribers’ or rally attendees’ personal information. We’re fulltime RVers too, and we don’t like junk mail, spam, or unsolicited telephone calls.

No, I can’t please everybody, but at least I can look at myself in the mirror when I brush my teeth every morning.

It’s time for us to order rally T-shirts, and we’re trying to get an idea of how many we’re going to need. Regular sizes are $15 per shirt, and 2X and larger sizes are $2 more per shirt. We don’t need payment at this time, but if you want a shirt, please e-mail me at editor@gypsyjournal.net and tell me the sizes, and how many you want.

We’ll send the new issue of the paper off to our printer tomorrow, and then we’ll turn our attention to Terry’s dad’s 80^th birthday party until Monday, when we’ll start stuffing envelopes to get them all in the mail. 

Thought For The Day – The engineer knows the glass isn’t half full or half empty: it’s twice as large as it should be for optimum utilization of resources! 

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Can you believe Christmas is coming up in just over a month? Where does the time go? One minute you’re toasting the New Year and singing Auld Lang Syne, a week or two later you’re watching fireworks on Independence Day, and the next thing you know, they’re ringing bells in front of WalMart and you’re listening to Christmas carols on the radio.

I want time to slow down! I’m getting older and starting to realize that someday I’ll probably have to grow up too, but I’m in no hurry to get there!

Even the individual days seem to fly by. Yesterday we met Walter Cannon, executive director of the Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF), and his lovely wife Amy for lunch at a nice little restaurant called Caffe Chocolat in Titusville. We had a nice lunch and chatted for a while, and before I knew it, three hours had passed!

We have known Walter for a long time, but it was nice to have the opportunity to just sit and visit away from all of the activity of an RV rally or show. We had never met Amy before, and she is a delightful woman whom Miss Terry really hit it off with.

Last year RVSEF tried to hold an RV education conference similar to the old Life on Wheels program, but downturns in the RV industry kept it from happening. I was sorry it was cancelled, because it is something that the RV world really needs. Long before we became instructors for Life on Wheels, Terry and I went there as students in our first year on the road, and it really helped us transition to the RV lifestyle.

Walter is a persistent guy, and he truly believes in the need for an educational program for RVers, so he regrouped and now plans to hold an RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky June 3-6, 2010. If you are a new or wannabe RVer, or even a seasoned road warrior, I really urge you to attend. It is a great investment in your RVing lifestyle.

When we left the restaurant, we drove a few miles west of town on State Route 50 to Christmas, Florida to check out Fort Christmas Historical Park, which includes a replica of a Seminole War fort and several old Cracker style houses.

Unfortunately, time had gotten away from us (do you see a common thread here?) and the buildings were already closed for the day. But we strolled around under the live oak trees, with their cloaks of Spanish moss draping their leaves, and just enjoyed the solitude. We hope to get back for a better look at the place while we’re in this area.

Among the things left to do on my bucket list is to see an alligator in the wild, and there are a lot of the critters here in Florida, so that shouldn’t be all that hard to accomplish. But in several trips through the Sunshine state, I have yet to see one.

A park ranger at Fort Christmas suggested we stop at a boat launch about halfway between the park and The Great Outdoors, where we are staying. He said it was not uncommon to see ’gators in the water or sunning on the banks there. We stopped to check it out, but there was an airboat firing up, and several trailers for other boats, and not an alligator to be seen. Terry said with all the noise and activity there, any alligator who might have been around had moved to quieter territory. Hopefully I’ll get to see one before we leave the South this year.

Thought For The Day – There will never be a time when life is simple.

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When I checked my e-mail yesterday morning, I had a message from Verizon Wireless that an update for my Blackberry Storm was available, which was supposed to be the latest and greatest thing since sliced bread.

So, being the trusting soul I am, I plugged my phone into my computer, logged onto the Verizon website, and clicked the update button. The process took a few minutes, and then I got a message telling me the download was complete. Quick and easy, right?

Well, yes, except for the fact that the upload wiped out my entire contacts list. The photos I had stored on the phone are still there, even a couple of songs I transferred over from my computer a while back. But every telephone number I had is gone.

Yeah, I know, I could have backed up my information to my computer, but I never thought of it. So I’ll be spending some time digging out business cards and entering all of those numbers all over again. What fun.

There are many features I like about the Blackberry, but after using it for the last few months I have come to realize that my smart phone is smarter than I am by a long shot! I’m sure my seven year old granddaughter Hailey could probably make it do wonderful things, but I get a headache trying to figure what all the buttons are for.

It has been interesting to read all of the e-mails and comments from readers of yesterday’s blog Considering Our Options, about RV extended warranties. Some people feel that an extended warranty is a good investment, and just as many, if not more, seem to think they are not worth the money. I also heard from some folks who did buy extended warranties on their RVs, only to find that the companies issuing the warranties either did not honor needed repairs, or were very slow in paying. Like so much in the RV industry, there seem to be so many snakes selling extended warranties that you have to be very, very careful who you do business with.

I have had some comments from longtime readers who took me to task for buying a factory built motorhome because I have always said that “all RVs are junk and I’d never own anything but a bus conversion.” I don’t know when I supposedly said that, and in looking back over several years of past blogs and issues of the Gypsy Journal, I don’t find any such comment.

Yes, I have said many times that the quality of most factory built RVs is pretty sad, and I have said that a lot of junk has been foisted off on RV buyers by a lot of companies. However I have also said many times, in print and in the seminars I present at RV rallies, that there were four companies whose rigs I would be comfortable owning. Those companies are Heartland, Tiffin, Newmar, and Winnebago. When we started looking for a rig to replace our MCI bus conversion, they were on our very short list.

I love our old bus, and I will always be a fan of bus conversions. For cargo carrying capacity, safety in the event of a crash, longevity, and overall ruggedness, there has never been a stick and staple motorhome built that can compare. When we moved from the bus to our Winnebago, we traded down in those respects. No question about it.

However, our needs have changed. As our granddaughters have gotten older, the bus has become very crowded when they came to visit. We really wanted a coach with a slide. We also do not see ourselves doing nearly as much dry camping as we have in the past, so the huge holding tanks, battery bank, and solar panels on the bus are no longer a necessity.   

Yes, we had many wonderful years in our bus, and it carried us many miles in comfort and safety. Just as it will whomever owns it next. And though we have moved on, we’ll always look when we hear an old Detroit diesel roar to life. Once a bus nut, always a bus nut.

Thought For The Day – It’s frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.

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I stole the title of today’s blog from our dear friends Ron and Brenda Speidel, who presented an excellent seminar by the same name at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rallies this year and last. One of the most popular seminars at our rallies, the Speidels show RVers how they can save tens of thousands of dollars by upgrading and refurbishing their current motorhome or fifth wheel trailer instead of buying a new one.

Ron and Brenda know what they are talking about; they have turned their stock 2002 Winnebago Journey DL motorhome into a palace on wheels with the addition of a new custom full body paint job, custom built computer work station/dining table, replacing the original kitchen sink with a larger style, and several other projects. Most people who see their coach cannot believe that it is almost eight years old! It looks like a much newer, much more expensive motorhome.

Yesterday we visited their rig to admire their latest addition, a beautiful wood floor installed by Brad and Hall, an RV furniture dealer here in Elkhart, Indiana. Monday they will take the Winnebago to another local shop, Duncan RV Repair, where a new shower unit will be installed.

While they have invested some money in upgrading their RV, Ron says it has been a fraction of what it would have cost them to buy a different motorhome.

There is probably no better place in the country than the Elkhart area to refurbish an RV. Long known as the RV Capital of the World, you can find shops offering every service needed to complete any RV upgrade project here, as well as RV supply and surplus parts stores that have anything you might need. Some of the best known companies that we have dealt with ourselves, or whose work we have seen are listed below:

Phoenix Commercial Paint, (574) 238-5668 – Michele Henry does first class custom RV full body paint jobs for much less than anybody else in the RV industry. Most folks who have shopped the competition can’t believe the prices she quotes, and when they see the end result, they are always delighted.

Focal Wood Products (574) 773-4268 – We are just two of Amish craftsman Carlyle Lehman’s many satisfied customers. He’s the man to see for custom RV furniture.

Brad and Hall (574) 522-7435 – For RV furniture and flooring, the crew at Brad and Hall have seen many RVers driving out with a smile.

Duncan RV Repair (888) 738-6226 – For everything from general RV repairs to custom installations, these folks can do the job right the first time. 

RV Surplus (574) 264-5575 – When we built our bus conversion, we saved a fortune by shopping at RV Surplus, where they have anything and everything that goes in, on, and under an RV.

Sierra Custom Interiors (574) 848-1300 – Michael Greene builds custom interiors for horse and cargo trailers, and has a lot of creative ideas you might be able to tap into.

Master Tech RV Services (574) 522-6224 Master Tech offers a full line of services, from repairs and upgrades, to paint and graphics.

These are just a few of the companies here that can help you transform that plain vanilla RV into a custom home on wheels that will serve you well for years to come, for much less than the cost of purchasing a new RV. So if you’ve been thinking about buying a new RV, think again. You may be able to get what you want for a lot less than you would expect to have to pay!

Thought For The Day – Growing old beats the alternative of dying young.