The problem with getting up early in the morning is that, like any bad habit, if you do it too often, you find yourself caught up in the action without even realizing it, or giving it a second thought. When that happens, only strong intervention and a lot of willpower can break the vicious cycle.  After our week at the Winnebago service facility in Iowa, I fear I’ve reached that point.

We were out of bed before 7:30 yesterday morning, and within an hour or so we had the RV packed up and ready to roll, the water and electric connections unhooked, window awnings and slides in, and leveling jacks up.

After saying our goodbyes to cousin Terry Cook and his family, we hit the road, headed south on State route 37. We traveled in a heavy overcast past miles of thick forests, broken by occasional small communities, or scattered houses and businesses.

The route was mostly very good two lane highway, with occasional passing lanes. There were a couple of noticeable hills, but we made very good time.

We passed over a couple of rivers that looked inviting, and noted several canoe and kayak rental businesses. We really need to come back here some day and get our boats wet.

There wasn’t much traffic, a few RVs headed north, and the occasional car or truck. 56 miles south, we got onto U.S. Highway 10, and another 25 miles brought us to U.S. Highway 31 southbound, an excellent divided four lane highway.

Less than an hour later, we pulled into the city-owned Fisherman’s Landing Marina and Campground. This is our regular stop when we visit Muskegon. We dumped our holding tanks, got the motorhome parked and hooked up in our site, and by then we were dripping wet from the heat and humidity. It sure was nice to get that basement air conditioner working to cool things down!

Fisherman’s Landing is a Passport America affiliate, and able to accommodate any size RV. The place is only about half full.

Our site is a back in, with 30 amp electric, water, a concrete pad, and a picnic table. Here is our Winnebago, all set up and ready to be home for the time we’re here.

My cousin Berni Frees and her husband Rocky are working folks, and they wouldn’t be home until about 5 p.m., so once we were settled in, I took a nap while Terry checked her e-mail and just enjoyed being inside where it was nice and cool.

Later on, I added the RVSEF weighing forms to our website for those having their rigs weighed at our upcoming rally. Click this link to complete the paperwork for your truck and trailer, or this link for the motorhome worksheet. Print the sheets out, complete them, and bring them to the rally. To schedule your weighing time, or for more information call Rick Lang at (207) 522-3336.

And don’t forget to call Dennis Hill at the RV Driving School at (530) 878-0111 to arrange for your behind the wheel driving lesson at the rally! Separate fees are charged for the weighing and driving lessons, but the costs are small, and they are two of the best investments you can make in your safety.

In addition to the campground, Fisherman’s Landing has a boat launch that always seems to be busy with fishermen and recreational boaters coming and going. When we left to go to Rocky and Berni’s house later in the afternoon, Terry took this picture of a tug boat docked across the inlet from the boat launch. 

It’s always fun when we get together with Rocky and Berni, and though we had not seen them in a year, it was like it was only yesterday. We picked right up with the silly banter we enjoy so much with them. We all piled into their car and went to a great Chinese buffet for dinner, and then back to their place for an evening of Mexican Train and more good times with good friends.

We’ll be here a few days, visiting, and getting some more prep work done for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally.  Then it’s on to Elkhart!

Thought For The Day – I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves – Ronald Reagan

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

After reading yesterday’s blog, RVing’s Top 10, my friend Connie Bradish suggested maybe we needed a Bottom 10 list, and suggested, in no particular order:

1. A major dumping event, like the hose comes off and it’s all over.
2. A tire blowout, especially if it’s the right front tire.
3. Being sunk up to your rear axles in a designated camping spot.
4. Being sunk up to your axles in a non-camping spot.
5. Dragging the tow car behind the RV because it’s still in gear.
6. Driving a back road, and coming up to a bridge with a 10 foot maximum clearance, you need 13 feet and you have to stop, unhitch and turn the coach around, all while blocking traffic.
7. Driving a road you shouldn’t be on, like the southwest road around Lake Tahoe in you big RV and tow car.
8. Having a husband and wife disagreement while backing into a site, accompanied by funny hand signals from one partner to another.
9. Having a pet get out, and you can’t find them.
10. Hitting a low rock, post or cone, or an overhang of a building or a tree, damaging your coach.

Connie admitted that she and her husband Pete have scored 10 out of 10 on this list. I think we’ve missed just one, which is having a pet slip out the door, never to be found. When Miss Terry’s cat, Sasquatch was still with us, he was quite the escape artist, but he never went far.

But 9 out of 10 on the Rock Bottom list isn’t a bad (or in this case, good) record. Less than a week into our fulltming life, we were camped in a fairgrounds in Torrington, Wyoming, on our way to Life on Wheels in Moscow, Idaho. We had the place to ourselves, so I had nobody but myself to blame when I pulled out of our site and turned too soon, swinging the back end of our shiny new Pace Arrow motorhome into the concrete pedestal that held the water and electric hookups.   

I was just sick, and to Miss Terry’s credit, she didn’t shoot me, or even thump me with a rolling pin. Believe me, there was nothing she could have said to me that was worse than I was calling myself. I was still kicking myself three days later when we got to Moscow, where I met Dick Reed, founder of the RV Driving School. When I told him my sad tale of woe, Dick took my by the hand and led me to the back of the row where the instructors’ RVs were parked.

“Do you see the ding in that one,” Dick asked. “That belongs to Bill Farlow. Bill did that on a tree stump last year. This one here is Charlie Minshall’s rig. See that ding? Lord know what Charlie hit. And this one here, with the dented bumper belongs to…” By the time our tour was finished, I felt a lot better about my own mishap, and I had made a friend for life.

We’ve been stuck and we’ve been really stuck, and it’s never fun. This picture was taken at an RV park in Ohio a few years back. It had been raining for days, and we were nervous about pulling onto grass, but when we arrived, the park owner told us another bus had just left the same site. It must have been a Volkswagen bus, because our MCI promptly sunk up to its rear axle!

But anybody can get stuck in soft ground. In Bremerton, Washington, I proved that it is possible to drive a bus up a hill so steep that your front tires are on the pavement, and your rear bumper is digging into the pavement, but your drive tires are three inches in the air!

I also proved that while you can drive into that situation, you cannot drive back out of it! Getting out requires a very large tow truck, the police department to stop traffic, the fire department’s haz-mat crew to clean up the 36 gallons of radiator coolant that spills when the the tow truck cable snags a hose, and the local news crew. Did I mention I was going the wrong way up a one way street at the time?

When all was said and done, I asked the police officer in charge of the scene how big a ticket I was getting, and he replied “What with the tow bill, the radiator coolant you need to buy, the hose you need to replace, and the roses you’ll need to buy your wife to make up for this, I couldn’t in good faith give you a ticket. I’m a married man too!”

I also remember driving out of one of our first RV parks, and how everybody waved at us as we drove past. I commented to Terry about how nice everybody was, and wave right back. It wasn’t until I got to the street and glanced in my rear view mirrors that I noticed that I had left all of our window awnings out. Of course, at that point there was no way I was going to stop and get out, so I just drove away, while poor MIs Terry hung out the windows unhooking the awnings as we went!

So yeah, I could easily do a Rock Bottom 10 – been there, done that, and a few more. How about you? What were some of your worst RVing goofs?

Thought For The Day – Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We have a lot of friends here in Alabama that we wanted to touch base with, and yesterday we got to spend time with several of them, both here at the Escapees Rainbow Plantation and at a couple of other nearby RV parks.

I met Tom Wiegman at an Escapade RV rally in Van Wert, Ohio several years ago, when he and his wife Karen were researching the fulltime RV lifestyle. Tom had some concerns that we talked about, and I assured him that if they really wanted to become fulltimers, they could make it happen. These days they are living their dream, workamping at a neat little RV park called Wales West, in Silverheel, Alabama.

Yesterday we dropped in for a visit, and while we missed Karen, Tom was there helping decorate for Christmas. Here is a picture of the two of us, note Tom’s headgear. Tom gave us a tour of Wales West, which is a neat place. The campground has its own railroad, with over a mile of tracks, and is popular with children from all around the region.

The campground’s owners love railroads and they love the country of Wales. The buildings at the campground are all modeled after buildings in a town they visited in Wales, and railroad enthusiasts love coming here to ride the train. If you’re looking for a quiet, off the beaten track campground with friendly people and great amenities, check out the Wales West website.

Our next stop was at Coastal Haven RV Park in Fairhope, where our friends Paul and Sally Wagner are spending the winter. Paul and Sally are regulars at Elkhart Campground, where we spend a lot of time, and two of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. We timed our visit just right, because another dear friend from Elkhart Campground, Myrl Gautsche, was spending a few days there, so we got to see him too. Here are Sally, Myrl, and Paul enjoying the sunshine.

Back at Rainbow Plantation, Terry happened to look out our window and spotted Di Irrgang walking by. Di and her husband Dutch have been vendors at our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rallies, and we did not realize that they are parked just two spaces down from us!

Norm and Linda Payne have a home here at Rainbow Plantation, and they had invited a few people over for snacks and a visit, so about 4:30 we walked over to their place and had a wonderful evening visiting with Norm and Linda, Darrell and Judy Patterson, and Howard and Linda Payne, from RVDreams.com. In this photo, from left to right, you can see me, Judy Patterson, Linda Payne (of RVDreams.com) Howard Payne, our hosts Linda and Norm Payne, and Darrell Patterson. Miss Terry was behind the camera, so she isn’t included in our party picture.

It was fun to sit around and tell war stories from our lives on the road, compare notes on places we have visited and people we have met, and share some of the goofy mistakes we all make from time to time. Darrell told us about how he did $1,000 worth of damage to his truck and almost as much to his fifth wheel when he tried to use cement blocks to stabilize it.

I admitted that in our first month on the road, as we were leaving a campground I commented to Miss Terry about how friendly everybody was, because they were all pointing and waving their arms at us as we drove by. It wasn’t until I got to the exit and glanced into my side view mirrors did I realize that all of our window awnings were still out. By then there was no way I was going to stop and have all of those people staring at me as I got out and put the awnings up, so I just kept on going, while poor Miss Terry had to open the windows, reach outside and remove the awning catch straps from their hooks, and let the awnings roll up! It took me a long time to live that one down!

Bad Nick isn’t quite the social butterfly that I am, so while I was out visiting folks, he was home writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Media Whores. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize that you’re wrong.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally