We had a surprisingly quiet night at the Georgia State Welcome Center, and were on the road by 8:30 a.m., which is probably a new record for us, but we had a lot of miles to cover.

We had a little technical issue I wanted to have looked at, so I called the Camping World in Pooler, near Savannah, and the service manager said to come right in and they’d see what they could do. It was only nine miles to Camping World, so we were there in just a few minutes. I checked in and was told there was one rig ahead of us, and it would probably be about an hour before they could get us into the shop.

Since we didn’t have an appointment, I figured that was pretty good. But an hour later, they still had not pulled that motorhome into the service bay, so I asked again about the time frame. Then I was told it would be about 1 p.m. before they could get to us. We decided that we’d deal with it when we got to Florida.

We got back on the highway and had a quick trip south to the Florida state line, even though we drove through a 20 mile long construction zone north of Brunswick. Regular readers Lucille and Larry Tillotson had e-mailed to advise us to take the I-295 bypass around Jacksonville rather than stay on the more challenging I-95 through town, and we found it to be an excellent road.

We knew that the space shuttle Atlantis was supposed to be launched at 2:28 p.m., and I told Terry we might get lucky and see it. She got her Olympus digital camera out, just in case, and sure enough, right on schedule, we saw it streaking toward outer space.

We were going down the highway at 60 miles per hour, but Terry managed to get a couple of photos through the side window of our Winnebago before it sped out of sight, leaving a thick contrail in the blue sky.

Earlier Terry and I had been talking about the space program, and I questioned whether it was worth all the money we had poured into it. She pointed out that it has brought us all kinds of things we take for granted today, such as satellite TV programming and GPS systems. Okay, that’s a good deal I guess. We spend billions of dollars, and in return we get perpetual reruns of Roseanne and The Beverly Hillbillies, more home shopping channels than I will ever have time to skip with my remote control, and an electronic backseat driver nagging me to turn left.

We left the highway in Titusville and pulled into The Great Outdoors, one of the premier RV resorts in the country. When we said we were headed to Florida, our longtime friends Pete and Connie Bradish had generously invited us to be their guests for a few days, which we very much appreciate.

This place is really impressive. They have two swimming pools, hot tubs, an eighteen hole championship golf course, fitness center, stocked fishing lake, recreation hall, as well as an on-site post office, bank, hair salon, bank, and RV service facility.

There are hundreds of full hookup 50 amp RV sites, as well as RV ports, chalets, and upscale homes, some of which sell for over $600,000. Lots here rent for over $1,100 a month during peak season, and the resort’s newsletter listed RV lots for sale by private owners for as much as $115,000. That’s a bit out of our price range, but we sure are going to enjoy experiencing the lifestyle of the rich and famous for a while! I think I just heard Robin Leach talking about champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Thought For The Day – The heart that loves is always young.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I met a man at Elkhart Campground a few years ago who told me he was unhappy in the RV lifestyle because he was bored. I suggested several things he might do to keep himself busy, and he pooh poohed every one of them; visit the RV Museum? No thanks, he wasn’t interested in looking at a bunch of old junk. Play golf? Nope, that was a rich man’s sport, not for him. Go fishing? Why go to all that trouble when you can buy a nice fish dinner in a restaurant? Build houses for Habitat for Humanity? Nobody ever built him a house, so why should he build someone else one?

It didn’t take long before a light bulb went off in my head and I asked him if he had been bored before he became an RVer. He told me yes, that was why he bought the motorhome in the first place.

In talking to him, I learned that he spent part of the summer and early fall parked at his brother’s farm in Pennsylvania; then he went to the same site, which he had reserved, at the same RV park in Florida for the winter. Then in the spring he drove to Elkhart for a few days before continuing on to his niece’s home in Wisconsin, where he stayed until it was time to go to Pennsylvania again. “I tell you, I know every inch of Interstate 95 between Pennsylvania and Florida, and Interstate 65 back up to Indiana,” he told me.  

“How about just for the hell of it, you take I-75 north or south this year,” I suggested. “You could stop in Clinton, Tennessee and check out the Museum of Appalachia. It’s really cool.”

He was shaking his head before I was halfway through my sentence. “Nope, that’s not on my route,” he said stubbornly. If I go off on a different route then what I’m used to, who knows what could happen?”

I wanted to tell him that one thing that might happen was he’d see some new country. Heck, he might even make a new memory or two! But I knew I was defeated, so I just gave up, told him to have a good life, and went on about my business, leaving him to his misery.

I’ve met a lot of RVers who, while they may not be as extreme as this fellow, are still stuck in a rut. They spend their summers in the same place and their winters at the same RV park in Florida, Texas, or Arizona. They tell me they have friends in their favorite campground in the Rio Grande Valley, or wherever they hang out, and they want to get back and spend time with them. I guess that’s okay if it works for them, but that’s just too much of the same old thing for me!

It’s an easy rut to fall into. We have our favorite places we enjoy returning to again and again, but we also go out of our way to visit new places too. Or at least to take a different route to wherever we’re going. And when a place gets too comfortable, we start asking ourselves if we need to look elsewhere.

We absolutely love the area around Aransas Pass and Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast, and last year we came across a good deal on a couple of RV lots down there that we seriously considered. But then we realized that buying them would be the first string that would tie us down. Why have the lots if we were not going to go there? But if we went there, what were we missing someplace else?

We didn’t get into the fulltime RV lifestyle to remain static. We wanted to see and do different things, new things. The familiar is comfortable, but it can also become suffocating if you allow it to be. We’re always looking for that new route we haven’t traveled yet, that new place we haven’t seen yet, and that new adventure we haven’t experienced yet.

Remember that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the length and depth.

Thought For The Day – Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

My dad never read the newspaper’s obituary column. “I’d rather think that my friends don’t like me anymore and just stopped coming around than to find out that they’re dead,” he’d say.

Sometimes I feel that way when I hear about another fulltime RVer who has come off the road and hung up the keys.

Not that there isn’t life after fulltiming. We’ll all have to hang up the keys someday. But Terry and I just hope that for us, it’s a long, long way down the road. We have too much left that we want to see and do.

The fulltime RV lifestyle isn’t for everyone. We’ve seen a lot of new fulltimers come and go in our many years of traveling. Some tried it for a while, then found some place they fell in love with and settled down there. Others were forced off the road by death or illness. Finances made some RVers come off the road. We’ve known people who have tried fulltiming and discovered that it’s just not for them, and took another direction in life. There’s nothing wrong with that, everybody has to do what’s right for themselves. But I sure miss pulling into a campsite next to them someplace, or sharing a campfire with them.

We’ve also met fulltimers who still live the RV lifestyle, but who have purchased a lot someplace and use it for a base from which they do their traveling, and then return to.

A couple of months ago, Terry and I were very tempted by a lot we found for sale close to the water in Aransas Pass, Texas, a friendly small town we dearly love. But we realized (or feared) that if we had a lot, we’d feel obligated to return to it on a regular basis, if for no other reason than to justify the small expense of the annual property taxes. Would it become the first strand of strings that would eventually tie us down? We mentioned the property to friends, who may purchase it for their own use. Again, to each their own. It’s all about the choices we each make for our own lives. There is no right or wrong answer, no one way of doing it.

We’ve enjoyed the RVing friends we’ve made, those who have settled down someplace, and those who are still out here making the wheels turn. They have become a part of our extended family.

Yesterday two of those friends left us to continue on down the road. Orv and Nancy Hazelton had been parked next to us here at Tra-Tel RV Park for a couple of days, and they left in search of new adventures.

After we saw Orv and Nancy off, Terry and I drove down to Benson and dropped off sample bundles of papers at the local RV parks in that area. As we were leaving the Escapees park, we spotted Rick and Terry Traver pulling in, so we made a U-turn and followed them back to their fifth wheel on a rented lot in the park. Rick and Terry are a neat couple, and it was fun to have some time to visit with them before we made the drive back to Tucson.

That’s one of the great things about this lifestyle, we never know what old (or new) friends await us around the next corner.

Thought For The Day - The most precious thing we have is life, yet it has absolutely no trade-in value.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally