After reading yesterday’s Bad Nick Blog, titled Armed Citizens Fight Back, several readers e-mailed me to ask if I have a concealed weapon carry (CCW) permit, and how fulltime RVers can get a permit to carry a handgun.

I actually have two CCW permits, a non-resident from Arizona, and a permit from South Dakota, our state of domicile. Between the two of them, those permits are honored in a total of 36 states that have reciprocity agreements with the states that issued my permits. On the map below, the states in blue all honor one or both of my permits.

Getting a concealed carry permit depends on your home state. Some states require you to pass a concealed carry course and demonstrate proficiency with your weapon before you can qualify for a permit. Others simply issue a permit to people who meet the necessary requirements.

In South Dakota, it’s as simple as filling out a form and submitting it to the Sheriff in your home county. After a background check, you go to the Sheriff’s office, pay a small fee (under $20 as I recall), and your permit is issued. Check with the Sheriff in your county for specific information.

The other two states most popular with fulltime RVers also issue concealed weapons permits to their residents. For Florida residents, this link to the Florida concealed carry permit requirements will help you determine what is required. Texas residents can click this link to Texas CCW information.

Arizona, Texas, and Utah all issue concealed carry permits to non-residents who meet their requirements to obtain such a permit. Check each individual state’s website for information on non-resident permits.

At our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma, Byron Hibshman will be giving a seminar on Transporting Firearms In Your RV. Byron will also be doing an evening class to qualify for a Utah non-resident CCW permit. You can contact Byron at his Traveling CCW website for class information and fees.

A good guide to traveling with firearms is the book The Traveler’s Guide to the Gun Laws of the 50 States, which has detailed info on every state, and what is legal and not legal in that state. Another good reference is the website Handgunlaw.us. But please be aware that things can change on a daily basis, so if you have a question or concern, check with local authorities before you go.

Making the decision to own and carry a firearm is not one to be made lightly. It brings with it a very heavy responsibility to yourself, to your family, and to society. I always tell people that if they are going to have a gun, please, please, please take a firearms safety course, as well as a course on firearms use in a tactical situation. You must not only know how to shoot, you need to know when to shoot, and when not to.

And then practice regularly with your firearm. It’s one thing to punch holes in paper at a range, but in a real life situation, when the adrenalin is pumping and you’re scared to death, even trained police officers and combat veterans miss a lot more than they ever hit their targets.

Face it, most of us will never need a weapon to defend ourselves, especially in the RV lifestyle. However, the flip side of that coin is that any of us can find ourselves in a desperate situation at any minute. After all, we don’t spend all of our lives in safe, secure RV parks. We all drive down the road, eat in restaurants, and shop in stores. And we never know what the guy behind us in traffic or in the checkout line, or at the next table, will do. Having faced off with armed opponents both with and without a gun in my hand in the past, trust me, it’s much better with the gun!

Thought For The Day – Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is thick hair and a thin body. Please don’t mix them up like you did last year.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I’ve been working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, which I will be sending off to the printer early next week, and we still had a few bundles of the November-December issue left. We needed to get them distributed so we’d have room for the new issue after it’s printed.

So yesterday, we spent the day dropping off sample bundles at RV parks along Interstate 4 between the Kissimmee area and Interstate 75, on the west side of the state.

It was interesting see how folks were bundled up, due to the cold snap that has hit the South. Everywhere we went, we saw people in jackets, scarves, hats, and even gloves! And they thought they were coming to Florida to spend the winter basking in the sunshine!

I was surprised by how many Carefree RV resorts we stopped at! They have a lot of RV parks in Florida! All of them were very nice, and I really appreciate the fact that Carefree Resorts also gives veterans a 50% discount on RV sites. That’s very nice, and I made it a point of telling their managers that, at the resorts where we stopped.

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One of the campgrounds where we stopped, Tampa East RV Resort in Dover, has a special weekly rate that is good until the end of December, so we may pop in there for a week between Christmas and New Years. It’s about a half hour away from my nephew Steve’s place in Pinellas Park, and might make a good place to stay while we visit Steve and the rest of the family in that area.

One place where we won’t be staying, or doing any business at all, is at Lazy Days, the mega-dealer just off Interstate 4 that has an RV dealership, campground, Camping World, and Cracker Barrel on the premises.

We stopped there to drop off a bundle of papers, and the manager on duty said no, because we had two ads for RVs for sale in the paper. One is a tiny little 1984 Mirage camper with an asking price of $4,000 up in northern Indiana, and the other is an eight year old Class A gas rig a couple have for sale in Texas.

The manager never actually gave me the courtesy of talking to me, the message relayed by the young lady at the counter was that since Lazy Days is a dealership, they don’t want to “encourage the competition.” Yeah, that sixteen year old $4,000 Mirage is sure some competition for the land yachts that Lazy Days sells!

I find it interesting that Lazy Days has contacted us in the past suggesting that we consider holding one of our Gypsy Gathering rallies there, and they have sent me press releases in the past when they want free publicity for something. But I guess that’s a one way street.

But that’s okay, we found another campground just down the road that was happy to get the papers, and whenever anybody is RV shopping and asks me my opinion of Lazy Days (and I get a lot of people asking for advice), I’ll be happy to share it. Did you ever notice that the little mom and pop places are so much nicer to deal with, and that the biggest outfits are the most chickensh..?

By the time we were done, we only had two or three bundles left, and I’ll get rid of them at a couple of places we’ll be stopping in the next few days. It was twilight by the time we were headed home, and I don’t see well after dark, so Miss Terry took the wheel. We stopped for dinner at the Sonny’s Barbecue in Clermont, and by the time we got back to the Thousand Trails, it was downright cold again! It sure felt good to get inside, turn up the thermostat, put on our Teepee Creepers slippers, and warm back up!

Bad Nick is no fool. He stayed inside where it was warm all day, pounding out another Bad Nick Blog titled I’m Sorry, I Just Don’t Get It. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Can you believe  that three months from today, our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally will begin? That may seem like a long time to you, but believe me, from our perspective, it’s coming up fast!

There is a tremendous amount of work involved in planning and pulling one of these events off. With over 225 RVs attending, and a ton of walk-in visitors who are staying at local RV parks, it’s a real juggling act to have enough different seminars to meet everybody’s needs. Not to mention the logistics of providing morning coffee and donuts for everybody, making sure the different seminar rooms have the equipment each speaker needs, and that we don’t have two seminars in the same time slot that compete too heavily with each other. And did I mention the evening entertainment, or feeding several hundred hungry people pizza in a matter of minutes at our pizza party? All of of that is after we get all of those RVs in and parked!

I’ve been giving our seminar lineup a lot of thought. One part of me says that there are already a lot of events with seminars on the basic RV stuff like how to hook up campground utilities, basic RV systems, RV tires, etc. So maybe we should concentrate more on seminar topics that folks can’t get everywhere else, like the seminars we had on Kayaking For Beginners and Bicycling For RVers at our Eastern Rally in Elkhart this summer. But then again, if you’re a brand new RVer coming to your first rally, you need those basic seminars.

I’d like to see more seminars on RV destinations, places to go, and things to do when you get there. If anybody who is going to be at the rally has an idea for a seminar that they’d like to put together along those lines, or on any topic, for that matter, or maybe a craft class, send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and tell me about it.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do about T-shirts for the Arizona rally. Everybody says that they want rally shirts, but we have to order at least 100 to get the pricing that we can afford. Then, we usually end up with 40 or more shirts left over, which means we lose money anyway. Somebody suggested that we only take pre-orders that are paid in advance, but then people at the rally say “I wanted one too!” So I’m just not sure if we’ll have shirts in Yuma or not. 

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Several people said that we could just donate the leftover shirts to charity, and that sounds good, but it’s still money that we spent and received no return on, and as a business, the idea is to make a profit. 

Miss Terry found a use for some of the T-shirts that we had left over from the rallies. The other day she made a rug from several leftover shirts. Looks cool, doesn’t it? The bits of yellow, black, and white you see in the rug are the printed logos from the T-shirts.

Speaking of my beautiful bride, two people have expressed condolences to us in the last few days over the loss of Terry’s mom. I don’t know where that rumor got started, and while we appreciate your concern, Terry’s mom, Bess Weber, is alive and well, and just as feisty as ever. My parents have been gone for many, many years, but Terry’s parents, Pete and Bess are still healthy, active, and very involved in life, their church, and their family’s activities. I know a lot of people half their age that are not in as good shape.

We only have a week to go on our Buy One, Get One Free Holiday Special Offer. A lot of folks have taken advantage of the savings, and there’s still time for you to renew or extend your subscription, and get a free subscription for somebody on your Christmas shopping list too! Just click the link below, while there‘s still time

Whatever you’re doing today, I hope you take a moment to remember our fellow countrymen who were lost 69 years ago today during the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. That terrible Sunday morning changed the world forever, just as the terrorists attacks of 9/11 did. The only difference is that back then, our nation had the cajones to kick ass and take names, as we used to say in the military.

Hey, I’m starting to sound like Bad Nick, so I’ll stop for now, but check out his latest Bad Nick Blog, titled Silly Sarah, and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – No matter how bad you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Thank you to everybody who e-mailed get well wishes to us. We’ve come through the worst of it, and I think we’re going to live after all.

Yesterday afternoon we drove into town and dropped off bundles of sample copies of the Gypsy Journal at several RV parks. We stopped at four or five different RV parks, and it didn’t look like any of them were much more than half full. Is it going to be a slow season in Florida, or did everybody wait until after Turkey Day to hit the road?

After we finished with the RV parks, we stopped at WalMart to get some more meds, and a few things Terry needed to restock our larder. I try very hard to avoid going into any store between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but sometimes things get desperate, and a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. I was out of Pop Tarts and Jello pudding cups.

I was surprised that the store was no more crowded than it normally is. I guess all of the Black Friday shoppers were home sleeping off their ordeal of the day before. Or maybe they’re doing more of their shopping online.

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I’m curious. How many of you blog readers shop online for Christmas gifts, or for things you need yourself? We don’t do it a lot, but last night Terry ordered a pair of those comfy Tee Pee Creepers slippers for somebody, and I’m about to order a Kodak Vi8 camcorder from Amazon for a new project I’m working on. I’m also going to contact Tim and Crystal Ryerson from Inflatable Boats 4 Less and have them send me out an electric pump for my Sea Eagle PaddleSki 435 inflatable kayak.

For fulltimers who move around a lot, being in one location long enough to receive packages can be a problem. RV parks differ in their policies about accepting mail and packages. Some will allow you to have anything sent to you, in care of the office address, others will only allow FedEx or UPS packages, and some will not allow anything at all. I much prefer a campground where I can have both packages and my regular mail sent to me, instead of having to trudge down to the post office and stand in a long line to get my mail by General Delivery.  And since the post office won’t accept FedEx or UPS general delivery packages, it can be a hassle when ordering online.

Today we are leaving the Escapees Sumter Oaks campground and are headed back to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve so we’ll be ready to get the base plate installed in our Ford Explorer next week. We’re taking a different route back than the one we came in on a week ago, one that my friend George Sharrer tells me will shave about 15 miles off the trip. Once again, Terry will follow me in the Explorer. I’ll sure be glad when we have it set up for towing, I miss her when we travel this way. I don’t think I could enjoy being a solo RVer.

I booked us into the Thousand Trails for fourteen days, though I’m not sure we’ll actually stay that long. If we get everything wrapped up, I really want to get down to the Keys and play for a while.

Thought For The Day – Those that judge us don’t matter. Those that matter don’t judge us.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We had a lot to get done yesterday, and accomplished very little of it. Some days are just like that, I guess.

We had quite a bit of stuff that we had been carrying around in the van that we decided had to go away, so I loaded it into the Explorer to drop off at a Goodwill or Salvation Army. It’s amazing what you discover that you had forgotten you own!

A little after noon we drove back to the car dealer in Winter Haven, where we bought the Explorer, to pick up the the SMI auxiliary brake that they had agreed to disconnect from the van, and to drop off the van’s title, which we had forgotten the day before. Along the way, we stopped at a Salvation Army store and unloaded the items we had to donate.

We had noticed a squealing noise coming from the Explorer, that I suspected was a fan belt or something like that. It wasn’t a big deal, just irritating. So I asked their service department to take a look, and they decided that a serpentine belt and a pulley were glazed, which was causing the noise.

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They pulled the vehicle into the shop to change them, and said it would take  a couple of hours to get the parts and do the job. Okay, we were there, they were paying for it under warranty, so we’d get it out of the way.

Well, we all know that no job ever gets done in the time allocated, right? The two hours stretched out to almost three before they were done, but they did a good job. This was supposed to be a quick trip, so I had not taken my iPad with me, so I spent the time reading old magazines about topics I had no interest in, while Miss Terry, always better prepared, had a book to read.

We needed to find a Fed Ex drop box to send the loan paperwork back to Alliant Credit Union, and we thought we had seen one in a shopping center we would pass on the way out of town. As it turned out, we were wrong, so we stopped at a hotel to ask if they knew of one nearby. They didn’t.

Again, if I had my iPad, I could have gone online and found one quickly, but we figured we’d pass a Staples or Office Depot, which usually does Fed Ex shipping. No such luck.

Miss Terry was driving, so I got online with my Droid Incredible and looked up Fed Ex, called them, and they gave me the location of the nearest Fed Ex drop box. Isn’t technology a wonderful thing? I entered the address into our Garmin GPS, which directed us a mile north, only to then tell us to make a U-turn and drive two miles back south to the drop box! Isn’t technology a wonderful thing?

Eventually we found the drop box, deposited the envelope, and headed back to the Thousand Trails campground. We stopped along the way for a bite to eat, made a stop at Lowes, and got back to our motorhome just after dark.

We’re due to leave here tomorrow, and we still have to pack the Explorer, get our hard kayaks onto the roof, and get some other chores done. All the stuff we had planned to accomplish yesterday!

Thought For The Day – Friendship isn’t a big thing, it’s a million little things.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally