When we started fulltiming, a veteran road warrior told me that you’re not a real RVer until you have accomplished most, if not all, of what he called RVing’s Top 10 experiences. We must be slow learners, because after eleven years on the road, we still have a couple to go. So are we real RVers yet?

1 – Boondocking: To truly experience the freedom that the RV lifestyle has to offer, at least once you should spend a few days or even a week or two boondocking, also called dry camping. I define boondocking as living without being hooked up to a water source or electrical outlet, living off my RV’s systems. The feeling of independence you get when you sever the campground umbilical cord is something you must experience to understand. Whether you prefer to camp for weeks on end on BLM land in the desert or just cross the country spending the night in the parking lots of RV friendly businesses like WalMart, boondocking can save you a lot of money, and once you get used to it, it is lots of fun!

2 - Quartzsite: If you spend any time at all around fulltime or snowbird RVers, before too long someone will ask you if you have been to Quartzsite yet. Located on Interstate 10 about 125 miles west of Phoenix, Quartzsite is a sleepy little Arizona desert town of a couple hundred people most of the year. But every January, thousands and thousands of RVers descend on Quartzsite to boondock on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in the surrounding desert, and to attend the big Quartzsite RV Show and the numerous flea markets, rock and gem shows, and other events held every winter. It’s big, it’s crowded, it’s dusty, and it’s fun! Some people love it and some attend once and seek quieter activities for future outings. If you have not been to Quartzsite yet, you owe it to yourself to experience it at least once.

3 – Rainbows End in Livingston, Texas: Rainbows End is the Mecca for serious RVers. National Headquarters of the Escapees RV Club, literally thousands of RVers “live” on Rainbow Drive in Livingston, the address of the Escapees Mail Service. Rainbows End includes a very nice RV park, the club’s National Headquarters, and CARE, the adult care center the Escapees created to provide assistance to retired RVers and those recuperating from illness or surgery. RVers come to Rainbows End to license their vehicles and become “legal” Texans, to tour the club’s mail forwarding service, to meet friends, and just hang out with like-minded folks.

4 – The Rally: RV rallies offer the opportunity for fun, fellowship, and education, and the biggest RV rally is the Affinity Group’s annual mega-event, known simply as The Rally. Thousands of people come to camp, shop the vendors, attend seminars, enjoy entertainment from top named performers, visit with old friends and make new ones. This year’s event will be in Louisville, Kentucky July 22 – 25.

5 – Escapade: Though not on the huge scale of The Rally, the annual Escapees Club Escapades are events no RVer should miss. You will meet lots of nice people, attend some excellent seminars, and enjoy the entertainment every evening. This year’s Escapade will be in Goshen, Indiana September 12- 17.

6 – Slab City: Located on an abandoned military base in Niland, California, Slab City is a popular gathering place every winter for RVers who come to boondock and enjoy what many call the last great bastion of freedom in America. Populated by serious RVers, snowbirds, eccentrics who live there year round, and an assortment of colorful characters, Slab City is another one of those places you either love or hate. Check it out once, and draw your own conclusions.

7 – Elkhart Indiana: Home to at least half of the RV manufacturers in the country, Elkhart, Indiana has a lot to offer RVers, from factory tours to RV surplus stores, displays of some of the earliest RVs at the RV Hall of Fame Museum, RV rallies, and lots of fun exploring the Amish countryside just east of town.

8 – Highway 101, Oregon Coast: This is surely one of the most spectacular drives in the United States, offering beautiful ocean vistas, charming fishing villages, beach combing, whale watching, lighthouses, and memories around every bend in the road.

9 – Padre Island: Every winter RVers come to Padre Island National Seashore, near Corpus Christie, Texas to dry camp at Padre Island National Seashore. A $10 annual permit is required, and water and a dump station are free. There is no time limit, and many RVers stay the entire season.

10 – The Alaska Highway: This is the ultimate RV destination for many. A trip up the Alaska Highway includes adventure, wonderful scenery, wildlife, history, and memories to last a lifetime. The road is not nearly as bad as some people would want you to believe, but the experiences you will have are more than anyone could ever describe.

Well, are you a real RVer? How many of these Top 10 can you lay claim to?

Thought For The Day – If God is willing to forgive us, why do we sometimes find it so hard to forgive ourselves?

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

As most of my regular blog readers know, we have been looking for an RV to replace our faithful old MCI bus conversion. We have lived in the bus for 8 years and loved it, but our needs have changed and we needed something different.

Our criteria was a 38 to 40 foot diesel pusher, with at least a 330 horsepower engine, and a living room slide. As many of you know, I have long been a critic of many production RVs, but I have always said that there are a handful of manufacturers whose RVs we would be comfortable owning. If we had been shopping for a fifth wheel, our search would have begun and ended with Heartland. Unfortunately, they don’t make motorized RVs, only towables.

Of the production model diesel pushers, our top three manufacturers of choice were (in no particular order) Allegro, Winnebago, and Newmar. 

We did a lot of internet research, and looked at a lot of used RVs over the past six months, and almost bought a couple, but either we couldn’t quite get together on the price, or we couldn’t arrange the financing in time and someone snatched them out from under us.

Of all the rigs we looked at, the ones that really stuck out in our minds were the Winnebago Ultimate series, which was the top of the Winnebago line from 1998 to 2004, but every one we saw was out of our price range.

In early June we drove past a car dealer’s lot in Goshen, Indiana, and at the last minute out of the corner of my eye, I  spotted a beautiful 2002 Winnebago Ultimate Advantage. We made a quick U-turn and checked it out, and though it was everything we wanted in a new home on wheels, we knew it was out of our price range. We looked at a couple of other RVs since then, but our minds kept going back to the Winnebago, and after a couple of visits and calls to the dealership, we were finally able to get them to negotiate a price we could live with.

Our goods friends Ron and Brenda Speidel are longtime Winnebago owners, and they are even on the company’s Consumer Research Panel, so they know their Winnebago’s. Added to that, Ron is one of the most technical guys I know, and he has always wanted an Ultimate Advantage, so we asked them to go with us to check the rig out.

I told Ron I wanted him to go over it with a fine tooth comb, with the mindset that Brenda wanted to buy it, and his job was to talk her out of it. After crawling over, under, around, and through every square inch of the rig, Ron had just one thing to say – “If you don’t buy it, I will.”

So yesterday we took delivery of our new home on wheels, and we are ecstatic! It has two slides, a 350 horsepower Cummins turbo diesel engine, six speed Allison automatic transmission, 7500 watt Onan Quiet Diesel generator, and every option we could ever want or need. Things like an automatic satellite TV dish on the roof, four door Norcold refrigerator, central vacuum system, and more. The rig has been babied, only 33,000 miles on it, all service done at the Cummins/Onan dealer here in Elkhart, and it lived inside a heated garage all its life.

It drives like a dream, and has more power than I know what to do with. In fact, when we were driving back to Elkhart Campground from the dealership, Ron and Brenda were following us, and had to call Terry on the cell phone to tell her to tell me to slow down. I thought I was doing about 35 and it was closer to 55!

We have the new motorhome parked next to the bus, and can’t wait to start moving in. Unfortunately, today we have to drive to Michigan to pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal from our printer, and then it will take several days to get it stuffed into envelopes and mailed out. And next week, we are supposed to be vending at the Carriage rally in Goshen, Indiana. But maybe we’ll at least sneak next door and just go sit in our new motorhome and grin at each other for a while.  

Thought For The Day – When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

More than once someone has asked me how they can get a press pass that will gain them free admittance to attractions, concerts, or whatever else they want to see. In the last month alone I have had three different people who have RV blogs ask me how they can get a press pass.

One lady who wrote recently said she just started fulltiming and launched her RV blog last week. She said she wanted a press pass so she could “Stay free at campgrounds, get free meals at restaurants, and have RV manufacturers give her rigs to try out, because she’ll be writing about them.” I replied and told her that I had no idea how to get such a golden pass, but I wanted one!

This lady needs a reality check. In truth, there is no one universal “press pass” that will gain you free passage to wherever you want to go. Many publications, television, and radio stations issue press passes to their reporters as a means of identification. All this does is tell the world that yes, you do work for such and such magazine or whatever. But nobody is required to honor the pass.

When I was in the community newspaper business, some police departments issued myself and my reporters press passes that allowed us access to crime and accident scenes to cover a story, but that was only at the discretion of the senior officer at the scene. If he (or she) felt that our presence was unsafe, or would hinder their investigation or jeopardize a criminal case, they could (and sometimes did) tell us we had to step back. I always respected this and had a very good working relationship with the authorities because of that.

As far as a press pass for an RV blog, forget it. These days everybody and his grandmother has a blog about something, and unless you can show that you have many thousands of daily readers, and can convince them that exposure in your blog will benefit an attraction or a company, they aren’t going to give you a thing. Otherwise, they would be overwhelmed with requests for freebies.

We do get free admission to most of the places we write about, and we don’t even have a press pass. What we do have is a very long track record, lists of references from other places we have written about, a website and blog, and sample copies of the Gypsy Journal to demonstrate that we are indeed members of the working press, and that we can tell thousands of readers about their company or organization. Even then, we sometimes have to jump through some hoops before we can arrange admission to some places, and we get told no sometimes.

When it comes to free camping, free meals, and RVs to test drive, in our experience that seldom happens. I think over the years, two or three RV park owners who have read the Gypsy Journal and liked it have invited us to stop by for a night or two as their guests, and a couple of equipment manufacturers have given us things to test and write about. Part of that may be because when they have contacted us, I always tell them right up front that if their product is good, I’ll tell the world. However, if I feel it is crap, I’ll tell our readers that too. You’d be surprised by how fast many conversations end after that!

As for those RVs to test out, I’m still waiting to hear from any company who wants us to hit the road in one of their units, but the phone hasn’t rung yet.    

Thought For The Day – Life isn’t supposed to be fair. It’s just supposed to be life.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

Thanks to everyone who posted comments to the blog or sent e-mails with suggestions of replacement laptop computers for Terry. And thanks especially to our pal Jim Guld from Geeks on Tour. I was on the phone several times with Jim yesterday trying to resolve the issues with Terry’s Compaq, and then again as we shopped for a replacement.

Following Jim’s directions, we actually got the Compaq running for a short time. He told us to remove the battery and unplug the AC power, and then to hold the power button down for about 10 seconds, and then plug the computer back in. I did all of that, and the darned thing booted right up! I thought our problems were over. A message popped up on the screen saying the NVIDIA software had been updated and the computer was going to reboot automatically. It shut itself down and no matter what we did after that, it just would not work. It was dead.

I had decided we should buy Terry a Dell laptop to replace her Compaq, but several readers wrote to suggest a Toshiba instead. We drove over to Best Buy in Mishawaka, a few miles west of Elkhart, and looked at the Dells, and also the comparable Toshiba. Terry liked the Toshiba much better, so I was back on the phone again with Jim Guld, asking his opinion. After I read him the specs on both units, Jim gave his blessing on the Toshiba, and that’s what we bought.

These days computers are a very important part of many RVers’ lives, ours included. Not only do we keep in touch with our friends and family by e-mail, as well as cruising the internet, we also use them daily in our business. Just as a good mechanic needs quality tools, we need computers we can rely on.

Yesterday, new friends Dan and Martha Widmeyer, from Short Hills, New Jersey stopped by to say hello. I met them Friday when I stopped into the office here at Elkhart Campground to pick up our mail, and they were there checking in. They had a couple of questions about local RV factory tours, and I suggested they check out the Heartland factory, since they are one of our favorite RV manufacturers.

We had a nice conversation, I gave them a sample copy of the Gypsy Journal, and they said they were looking forward to reading it. Once they did, they said they knew they had to subscribe, and to meet Miss Terry as well. What a nice couple! We look forward to crossing their path again in our travels. You meet the nicest people in an RV!

If you are traveling in eastern Ohio or Western Pennsylvania, I want to give you a lead on a neat place to visit that reader Levi Patton suggested. Noah’s Lost Ark in Berlin Center is a non-profit rescue sanctuary for abused and neglected exotic animals. After I spent some time exploring their website, it’s very high on our travel plans. Check it out, I think you’ll be impressed. We were!

Thought For The Day – Never be afraid to say what you feel. You can only die once.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

Being sick last week put me behind schedule getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal out, so now I’m pushing the clock to get finished.

I know I should have been working on it last week, but my brain was just too darned foggy to concentrate. I’d start to write something and halfway through a paragraph, I’d totally lose my train of thought. I managed to get the blog out and to edit the Todays Hero Blog postings, but that was about as productive as I was.

Fortunately, we are both feeling a lot better now. Terry still has some problems with her ears, and I still have a nasty cough, but compared to a week ago, we feel great. We appreciate everybody’s get well e-mails.

I worked on the paper most of yesterday, except for a quick trip to the post office to mail off some new orders. Meanwhile, Terry waded through a backlog of paperwork recording sales receipts. How can taking a few days off get us so far behind? The weather forecast calls for rain for the next five days, so I guess it will be a good time to be holed up inside working.

Never underestimate the power of the World Wide Web. After I wrote about our new friend Michele Henry and her company, Phoenix Commercial Paint, in yesterday’s blog, Michele said her website recorded 321 new visitors, most from my blog post. I hope it gets her some new customers, because she really does great work at an unbelievable price.

Someone wrote to ask me how any company can turn out a quality full body paint job for so much less than anyone else in the business, and said it seems impossible.

Michele can do what she does at that price for the same reason we have been able to publish a successful RV newspaper for ten years without any staff and without filling it up with ads from the big RV manufacturers. We love what we’re doing and we do almost everything ourselves to keep our overhead low. If it takes working 18 hours a day when we’re against a deadline, we do it. The same with Michele; she loves transforming dated looking coaches with beautiful paint jobs, and she isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty to get the job done. If you love what you’re doing, it’s not really work.

I am going to take some time off this evening, though. The Verizon store is having a free class on how to get the most out of smart phones, and I want to go see if they can give me some pointers on my new Blackberry Storm.

I am really impressed with this new phone, and it has so many features that I’ll never discover how to use them all myself. Can you believe that I was even able to download a free level? It looks and works exactly like a bubble level that you would use to check your RV’s level, or a tripod TV dish, but it’s right there on the phone. I tested it against two levels we have, and it is just as accurate.

What do I need a telephone with a level for? I have absolutely no idea, but that’s why my pal Brenda Speidel calls me Gadget Boy! 

Thought For The Day – Be glad God doesn’t give us everything we ask for.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally