Proving just how hard it is to break a bad habit once it gets established, I was awake by 7 a.m. yesterday morning. That’s about four hours after the time I normally get to bed. This really has to stop!

The weather report had called for scattered thunderstorms in western Michigan, and soon after I woke up, strong winds began to rock the motorhome, followed by rain.

Now we had a decision to make. Do we go ahead with our plan to drive to Elkhart, Indiana, hoping we can find a window of good weather to travel in, or do we sit tight at Fisherman’s Landing Campground in Muskegon?

Normally, we would stay put and avoid traveling in bad weather. But the storm passed by in a few minutes, and the weather report called for more of the same for all of this week. Add to that the fact that our power had been kicking off every few minutes at the campground since the night before, even though we had turned off the TV and Dish network receiver, switched our water heater and refrigerator to propane, turned off our air conditioning, shut down our computers and wireless router, and set the battery charge rate on our inverter to just 5 amps. It doesn’t do you any good to have a 30 amp RV site if the campground is crowded, their power is crappy, and everybody else is running everything they have.

We didn’t feel like paying another $25 to dry camp, and with temperatures in the mid-80s, it wouldn’t have been very comfortable anyway. So a little after 9 a.m. we pulled out, stopped at a Bob Evans Restaurant to meet Berni and Rocky for breakfast and a last goodbye, and then headed south on U.S. Highway 31.

Fortunately, we got a break in the weather, and except for a few sprinkles, we had a nice trip. Well, except for the road construction.

Michigan has two seasons; winter and road construction, and we’re smack dab in the middle of the latter. We hit a couple of construction zones on our trip south. I’ve never understood drivers who come into a construction zone and ignore signs telling them to merge right or left, instead speeding forward until the every last minute, then trying to muscle their way in. All they do is create a bottleneck and make things harder for everybody, themselves included. Just get over as soon as you see the signs and keep on rolling. At least until you have to slam on the brakes to keep from running over the idiot trying to wedge in ahead ahead of you, who didn’t.

We pulled into Elkhart Campground a few minutes before 2 p.m., and the place is packed! A lot of folks are here early, just hanging out before our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally.

By the time we got unhooked, Greg and Jan White had come out to greet us, Jan with a batch of freshly baked cookies in her hand. What a beautiful sight! A pretty lady with a handful of goodies beats the heck out of an angry woman with a revolver, a rolling pin, or a restraining order. Trust me on this!  Several other folks came by to say hello as we were getting set up, but I was busy and didn’t get everybody’s name.

Bob and Gita Patel, owners of Elkhart Campground, have really been busy this summer, adding a lot of new 50 amp full hookup sites, and upgrading older sites. If you’re a regular here and haven’t seen all of the improvements yet, I know you’ll be impressed.

Here is our Winnebago on the right, and Greg and Jan’s American Eagle on the left. Don’t you just love a spacious RV site?

Once we were all settled in, and had time to check our e-mails and rest up a while, we went to dinner at Famous Dave’s BBQ in Mishawaka with Greg and Jan. We like Famous Dave’s because they serve huge portions, and everything on the menu is delicious. We always have fun with Greg and Jan, and the time went by fast as we talked about the upcoming birth of their second grandchild, about our mutual RV travels, and anything else that came to mind.

Back at the RV park, we visited for a while more, and then Greg and Jan called it a night. Soon after they left, Frank and Marlene Hinman stopped in to say hello and welcome us to Elkhart. We love visiting with our friends wherever we may be!

Another couple of wonderful friends of ours, Jerry and Suzy LeRoy, just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, and are spending the summer on their lot at the Escapees co-op in Benson, Arizona. This is monsoon season in Arizona, which was always my favorite time of year when I lived there.  Jerry has some awesome photos of the dramatic cloud formations that fill the sky during monsoon season in their blog. Check them out, I think you’ll be impressed.

Thought For The Day – I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

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.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

For the last couple of weeks, the television mounted above the dashboard in our Winnebago motorhome had been warning us that it was on its last legs. The picture would go black for a few minutes, and then return, and the duration of the video outages was growing longer and longer.

Since this was the original TV that came with the motorhome when it was built in 2002, we knew it would not last much longer. We decided that we’d just wait until it gave up the ghost, and then replace it with a modern LCD television. Well, I guess that time has come.

Friday, we were watching a movie when the screen blacked out, as it had been doing. But instead of coming back on, as it had been doing, I started hearing a popping noise, and then smelled smoke.

One of the first lessons I learned in Mac McCoy’s fire safety classes was to shut off the source of a fire’s fuel, in this case electricity. I quickly ran outside and unplugged our cord, and back inside, made sure that the inverter was turned off. We determined that there was no actual fire, just components inside the TV getting hot. But I’m sure glad we had not gone away and left the TV on. That could have been very bad.

We took the face plate off the TV cabinet, and then unbolted the mounting bracket that held the old TV in place. After we unhooked the electric and video cables, I carried the old TV outside. Man, that thing sure was heavy! We’ll definitely lighten our load having it gone!

As a temporary measure, we sat a 19 inch Vizio LCD TV that we had inside the cabinet, and it sure looked tiny in there, compared to the huge old original equipment TV that was there! I wish the darned TV would have died while we were in Las Vegas, where we had a zillion places to shop for a new one, and I had Greg White there to help us install it. Hey Greg, want to come see me in Arizona?

When we in Williams, Arizona over the weekend, we made a quick trip to Flagstaff and did some shopping at Sam’s Club and Best Buy. After looking at a lot of different models of TVs, and discovering just how little I know about so much of the new technology, I learned about neat things like HDMI cables, screen refreshment, and pixels. Well, I didn’t really learn. The techno-geeks talked and I just stood there blinking, and occasionally nodded my head like I understood what they were saying.

We eventually bought a 26 inch Samsung LED model. Apparently the LED technology is newer, and supposedly better, then LCD. But what do I know?

Now we have to figure out how to hook it up and mount it, in place of the old TV.

Bad Nick doesn’t even try to get involved in all of that technical stuff, so he just stayed out of the way and wrote a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Dumb A$$ Report #3. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – I walk as much as I can, because you need nothing to walk, you spend nothing, you consume nothing, you emit nothing.

Readers have been asking me for an update on how we like our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, now that we have lived and traveled in it for almost six months, as compared to the MCI bus conversion we built and lived in for over eight years.

Overall, we are both very happy with the Winnebago, though we have had to make a few adjustments. We love having the extra room the bedroom and living room slides give us. However, we actually had more inside storage room in the bus, due to the extensive cabinetry that Miss Terry designed and built for it.

But, even though we had three huge bays underneath the bus, we still have more basement storage in the Winnebago than we did with the bus. The reason for that is that one entire bay of the bus was used for our holding tanks, which do not take up bay space in the Winnebago, and also because half of one bay in the bus held our house battery bank and inverter, and half of the third bay held our twin propane tanks, plus the fuel tank for our Onan gas generator.

We had a huge gray/black waste tank in the rear bay, and when we were parked in a campground with full hookups, we could turn a diverter valve and let the gray water run directly into the sewer, which meant we could go a long time without dumping the waste tank. In the Winnebago we have to dump the black tank about every seven days. We could probably stretch that if we were boondocking and being very careful, but the difference in tank capacity is really noticeable.

After our first night in the Winnebago, we could really tell the difference in insulation between the two rigs. We built a lot of insulation into the bus, and it was both quieter inside, and much warmer (or cooler, depending on the season), than the motorhome. But, the bus had a single rooftop air conditioner that was vented directly inside, which was much nosier when running than the ducted basement air conditioner in the Winnebago.

After driving across the country in the Winnebago, I don’t know how I lived with the tired old Detroit diesel in the bus for so long. These days I think nothing of cruising up long grades at 60 miles per hour, passing eighteen wheelers, instead of crawling along in the right lane with the radiator misters on at fifteen miles per hour, hoping some eighteen wheeler didn’t run over us. The Winnebago definitely has more power and gets better fuel mileage than the bus did, but I find that I don’t have as much confidence in the Winnebago’s exhaust brake as I did the Jake brake in the bus when going down steep grades.

Everything in life is a tradeoff. Terry misses the household style refrigerator, gas range with oven, and separate washer and dryer that we had in the bus. But, the larger kitchen area and the spacious bedroom/bathroom layout of the Winnebago is much more comfortable. She’s learning to live with the Winnebago’s microwave/convection oven, and the Splendide RV washer/dryer combo.

When you add in a lot of creature comforts and handy accessories, such as cruise control, automatic HWH leveling jacks, automatic Winegard rooftop TV dish, two gas furnaces, and a heat pump, for us the Winnebago comes out the winner.

Several readers have asked us if we will be at the Winnebago Grand National Rally in Forest City, Iowa in July, if we’ll be vendors, and if I’ll be presenting any of my seminars at the rally. The answers are yes, probably, and I don’t know. Yes, we plan to attend the rally, we’ll probably be vending (I haven’t registered yet), and I don’t know if I’ll be presenting any seminars. I haven’t been invited to do any, and the inquiry I sent was never answered. But if you are a Winnebago owner and will be at the rally, and would like me to do a seminar or two, why not give the folks in Forest City a shout or an e-mail? They have no idea who I am, since we have not had our coach that long, but if they see there is an interest, they might invite me to do a couple of seminars.

Speaking of RV seminars, while our schedule won’t allow us to be at the RVSEF RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky, June 3-6, Walter Cannon has come up with an excellent RV education program filled with great seminars. There is a 10% discount for anybody registering for the conference before March 1^st, so if you plan to attend, register now and save yourself some money on this excellent program. 

Thought For The Day – Virtue is the only true nobility.

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The strong winds that had been hammering northern Indiana Friday continued all night long, and continued through much of yesterday. There was no question about it; we were not getting out on the highway. We really, really wanted to be on the go, but we really, really didn’t want to be blown all over the road and waste a bunch of fuel fighting the wind.

So we spent the day listening to music, cruising the internet and hoping that today would bring us better weather. About noon, our friend Michele Henry from Phoenix Commercial Paint stopped by to visit, and later on we went to dinner with Greg and Jan White. We all got a laugh about the fact that this was our third “farewell dinner” in as many days.

Back at Elkhart Campground, I spent some time studying our planned route, while Miss Terry decided to try making a batch of pumpkin cheese bread in her convection oven. This would only be her second attempt at baking in the oven, as she transitions from the gas oven we had in our bus conversion.

While Terry was using her electric mixer to blend the ingredients, we suddenly lost all electrical power in the motorhome. The Progressive Industries Electrical Management System (EMS) unit I got from Lawrence RV Accessories was showing 125 volts of power coming in. I pushed the button to turn our inverter on so we had power again from the inverter and battery bank, but the battery charger was not working.

I flipped all of the breakers on and off, went out to the campground’s electrical pedestal and flipped the breaker there off and on, but we still were not getting any shore power, just the inverter feed. If I turned off the inverter, we went dead again, though the EMS still showed incoming AC power.

Having exhausted my small store of knowledge, I called Greg and he came over. We ran through all of the things I had done already, and then Greg had me turn on our Onan generator. Still no power to the inverter, except what it was drawing from the battery bank. We both agreed that the problem might well be a blown transfer switch, which automatically switched between shore power and generator power.

After studying the books that came with our motorhome, I logged onto Winnebago’s website, where owners can download electrical and plumbing schematic drawings, along with paint codes and a ton of other valuable resource information for anything Winnebago has ever built.

With still no luck solving the problem at that point, Greg checked our inverter and pressed the reset button for the incoming breaker on it, and suddenly we had AC power again!      

Apparently all incoming shore power is routed through the inverter, which really doesn’t make any sense to me, because if the inverter goes bad, we’d be stuck with no power to the motorhome at all. The way I wired our bus, the inverter was a supplementary power source, and taking it out of the line would not disrupt power to the coach. But we have to learn all about living in a factory made unit again, including engineering designs that boggle the mind.

With power restored, Miss Terry finished making her pumpkin bread, and it came out looking great. She is her own worst critic, but even she said it was pretty darned good! I thought it was delicious!  

While I was enjoying a slice of yummy hot pumpkin bread, Bad Nick was busy with a new Bad Nick Blog post titled A Campaign Ad I’d Like To See. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to God. 

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally