As I reported in a previous blog entry Caught In A Dust Storm, on Monday of last week we drove from Williams, Arizona to Juniper Ridge RV Resort  in Show Low, Arizona. On Interstate 40, between Meteor Crater and Winslow, we ran into the worst dust storm I had ever been in. Soon after we came through, the Highway Patrol closed the highway for several hours.

Yesterday, one week to the day later, another dust storm closed the same section of highway for several hours. Welcome to spring in northern Arizona. Fortunately for us, this time around we were safely nestled into Tim and Sue Daughtery’s site here at Juniper Ridge. The wind rocked our motorhome all day long, but since we stayed home and waded through a mound of paperwork, we just ignored it.

Driving a high profile vehicle in strong winds is not only nerve wracking, it can be downright dangerous. In my days running small town newspapers in this area, I covered quite a few stories of big motorhomes, and even eighteen wheelers, that were blown off the highway and ended up on their sides or upside down at the bottom of a ravine. 

When I reported in Saturday’s blog that we had opened registration for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally, we had 80 50 amp full hookup RV sites available at Elkhart Campground. As of last night, we have 50 left. We also have received reservations for several of the 30 amp full hookup, and the 30 amp water and electric sites. We now have a total of 45 registrations in.  That’s not bad for three days!

Membership in the Elks and Moose organizations opens up many overnight parking opportunities for RVers. In our travels, we have stayed at Elks and Moose lodges all over the country. Some just have a parking lot where you can dry camp overnight, while others have full hookup RV parks, with very reasonable rates. But membership in both organizations is about much more than just having a place to park overnight. Both do a tremendous amount of good work in their communities and on a national basis, especially for children and veterans.

I belong to the Gila Bend, Arizona Elks Lodge, and the Elkhart, Indiana Moose Lodge. I have sponsored quite a few new members for the Elkhart Moose Lodge,and if you would like to join, I’ll be happy to sponsor you while we’re at the rally. It’s a quick and easy process, and costs less than $100 to join, including your first year’s dues. If you are interested in joining at the rally, send me an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and I’ll be sure to have enrollment forms available for you.

Our RV travels have taken us to a lot of small town festivals all around the country, but one we missed was the Texas Sandfest, which was held in Port Aransas, Texas this past weekend. As longtime readers know, Terry and I love the Texas Gulf Coast, from Rockport to Port Aransas, and we’re sorry we missed this event.

But our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel were there, and they sent us several photos they took of some of the creations. Here are a few of my favorites. Isn’t it amazing what they can do with sand?

Now that I have conquered the paperwork that was covering my desk, it’s time to start putting together the next issue of the Gypsy Journal. Maybe, by the time I get it finished in a few days, the wind will have blown out of the area. But I’m not holding my breath.

Thought For The Day – Quarrels end, but words, once spoken, never die.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

Our old hometown of Show Low, here in Arizona’s White Mountains, was first settled by Mormon pioneers, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) still has a strong influence on the community. However, not everybody here is a member of the church, and I guess the owner of this Jeep wanted to be sure folks knew it.

In our RV travels around the country, we have seen hundreds of funny business signs, and even more bumper stickers, vanity license plates, and signs on vehicles that have had us laughing out loud. If you do much traveling, I’m sure you have too. Here are some we just couldn’t resist taking a picture of, and a few that our readers have sent us from all across the nation.

I think we camped next to these folks at least once.

When we spent a few weeks down on the Texas Gulf Coast a couple of years ago, we spotted this mural on the side of a home built RV.  I wanted to peek!

Some of the funniest vehicle signs we have seen have been on septic tank pumper trucks.  One of our readers sent the top one from California. I’m not sure which administration was in power at the time, but does it really matter?

We took this one in Indiana last summer, while staying at Elkhart Campground.

I think I may have been married to this lady at one time.

And to this one too!

My buddy, Jim Gass, sent me this picture, and when I showed it to Miss Terry, she made me sell my motorcycle.

Now this is a girl with a Bad Nick sense of humor!

We slept in yesterday, and then ran into town to do some banking, drop off some orders at the post office, and then popped in to see my daughter Tiffany for a while. Son-in-law Jim is working two jobs to make ends meet in this troubled economy, and we have not had much time to visit with him since we’ve been in town. We did get to chat for a few minutes when he came home from one job, but it was obvious that he was worn out, and we urged him to get a couple of hours sleep before he headed to his night job.  I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for Jim, and I’m glad my daughter is married to such a hard worker who gives so much of himself for his family, but I worry about the young man.

After we left Tiffany’s place, we stopped for an early dinner, and then came back to Juniper Ridge RV Resort. It was warmer than it has been all week, and the wind wasn’t blowing much, so Miss Terry took the opportunity to cut my hair and trim my beard. I’m glad she did, because I was sure getting shaggy!

Then it was a quiet evening, doing some work on the computer, watching TV, and just relaxing with my best friend. Life is good!

Well, at least I had a quiet evening. Bad Nick was busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled So What Should We Do? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Those who don’t beat their plowshares into swords will be ruled by those who do.

Yesterday we made a day trip of 90 miles to Victoria, Texas to pick up the January-February issue of the Gypsy Journal from our printer. Victoria is a bustling city of 86,000, and is popular with RV snowbirds who don’t want to go as far as the Rio Grande Valley. The city is big enough to have everything you could want, from big box retail stores to excellent medical services, and rates at the RV parks are affordable.

When we left Alabama for Texas, we were not sure where we would be staying, but we knew we’d be in Victoria to pick up the new issue, so I had our mail forwarding service send our mail there, care of General Delivery. But I made a newbie mistake and didn’t check first to see if they had more than one post office location. Sure enough, they have two.

Fortunately, all it took was one phone call to learn that all General Delivery mail in Victoria goes to the downtown post office on Main Street. In large cities with many post office locations, only one location accepts General Delivery, and one can spend a lot of time running back and forth trying to track down their mail.

With that chore out of the way, we picked up the new issue of the paper, and then stopped to do some banking.

Gypsy Journal subscribers Richard and Patsy King live in Victoria, and had invited us to stop by when we were in town. Richard and Patsy have been to our three Arizona Gypsy Gathering rallies, and are a fun couple we have enjoyed getting to know. We had a nice time visiting with them, talking about our respective adventures on the road, and comparing travel tips.

Speaking of RV rallies, at our Ohio rally in September, well known RV authors and speakers Joe and Vicki Kieva honored us by coming and presenting their last seminars before officially retiring from the speaking circuit. After a distinguished career as the premier RV seminar presenters in the nation, Joe and Vicki had decided it was time to really retire and just enjoy their RV travels, without having a speaking schedule to keep. We have known Joe and Vicki ever since we got on the road, and were honored to work with them at Life on Wheels.

Well, to quote those television infomercials, “But wait, there’s more!” Yesterday I got an e-mail from Joe, saying that they wanted to come to our Arizona rally and give a couple of their seminars! How cool is that? They will be presenting their excellent RVing Alaska seminar, as well as their Personal Security Tips For RVers. After our burglary earlier this month, that’s one seminar I don’t want to miss!  

The next couple of days will be a whirlwind of envelope stuffing to get the new issue in the mail. As soon as that’s done, we’ll head for Arizona, maybe stopping to pick up a couple of stories for future issues of the paper along the way.

Thought For The Day – Falling in love is easy, but staying in love is something very special.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We’re getting down to the wire and I’m hoping we can get everything done here in Elkhart that we need to before we leave. I’m wrapping up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal and hopefully will have it done by tonight so we can take it up to our printer in Michigan on Monday.

Then we need to make a quick overnight trip to Muskegon, Michigan to visit Rocky and Bernie Frees one more time before we begin our winter travels. We’ll get the new issue back from the printer Thursday or Friday, and Miss Terry will spend next weekend stuffing envelopes to drop off at the mail service the following Monday morning.

Meanwhile, I have to put some finishing touches on a website I’m building for Carlyle Lehman at Focal Wood Products and visit him in Nappanee to get his final approval before the website goes live.

And somewhere in that time we need to winterize our bus conversion and move it to its winter storage location. We located an inside storage location, but I still want to have the bus winterized, just in case a bad storm knocks out power for a few days.

I also wanted to get the Winnebago in to Cummins for service, and to a local shop to have a couple of small things done. We may have to wait until we get further south to do that. 

But you know what they say about all work and no play. So yesterday I got away from the computer long enough so we could go to dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant with Greg and Jan White. We first met Greg and Jan when they came to Life on Wheels as students, and I remember that during my Reluctant RVer seminar Jan began to cry. She told me later it was because she felt like I was talking directly to her and addressing many of the fears she had about fulltime RVing. The other day Jan credited me with “talking her in off the ledge” when she wasn’t sure if she could go through with the change to the fulltime lifestyle. Whenever somebody tells me something like that, I am very flattered, and I feel good that maybe I could make a positive impact in their life in some small way. 

Speaking of RV seminars, in yesterday’s blog I told you about my pal Charlie Minshall, the Silver Gypsy. Charlie has offered to come to our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma to present an excellent seminar called Moments in Time:  A 20-year full-time North American RV Adventure that will take you along with Charlie as she lives on a Mexican beach, drives the Trans-Labrador Highway, experiences the Blue Ridge Parkway, discourages a bear on the haul road to Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, takes a Yukon River wilderness canoe trip, and mushes dogs on a glacier. You can bet this is going to be a great seminar, and I plan to be sitting right in the front row!

Even as busy as I’ve been, Bad Nick still found time to write a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Will You Stand By Your Principles? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The trouble with life is there’s no background music.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally