We had hoped to get the work done on our coach early enough yesterday to be able to get on the road and put some miles behind us by dark. True to their word, the folks at Camping World in Robertsdale were finished by noon, and true to their record thus far, the folks at National Interstate insurance dropped the ball again.

They had promised to overnight a check to us at Rainbow Plantation RV Park to cover the costs of the repairs, and the staff at the campground told us they would call us as soon as it arrived. So we left early enough to be at Camping World for our 8 a.m. appointment, and they pulled the Winnebago right in. When the work was done, we still had not heard from the campground. I called our contact at National Interstate trying to get a tracking number for FedEx, and got his voice mail.

An hour went by, I called back, and he was out to lunch, so I left another voice mail. And then another. Finally, sometime around 3 p.m., I got a call from FedEx, asking just where the heck we were. It seems that instead of sending the check to us, care of the Escapees campground at 14301 County Road 28, Summerdale, Alabama, as I had instructed, and as the insurance company rep repeated to me twice, instead they addressed it to 14301 County Road 2828, Sommerville, Alabama! Big surprise, right?

So, by the time we got the check, it was too late to hit the road. We switched to Plan B. Camping World has a half dozen or so pull through RV sites with 30 amp electric and water, free for customer use, so we decided to spend the night there and take off today. This isn’t a campground by any means, but it sure beats the heck out of dry camping, or driving ten miles back to Rainbow Plantation, only to retrace the same route today as we leave town.

I’m pleased with the job the RV tech at Camping World did, installing a new Winegard Traveler automatic TV dish to replace the older Winegard unit we had on our roof. During the burglary and vandalism, they trashed our Dish Network receiver and the control box for the Winegard. Since they don’t make that unit any more, it was not possible to just replace the control box, the entire unit needed to be replaced.

Here is a picture of it mounted on our rig. It’s bigger and heavier than the older dish was, and it seems to take about twice as long to lock onto the satellites. But with triple LNBs, it gets all three Dish satellites, 110, 119, and 129, at the same time, without having to reposition itself when we change channels, like our single LNB dish did.

We had visitors while we were at Camping World! Our friends Paul and Sally Wagner, who are our neighbors at Elkhart Campground in the summer, are staying at Coastal Haven RV Park in nearby Fairhope, and when they read in the blog that we were leaving the area, they came over to say goodbye. We always enjoy visiting with Paul and Sally, I just wish we had more time this trip to do so.

Joe and Marcia Jones are good friends who have the Chasing The Seventies RV blog. We have crossed paths with them many times in our travels, and they arrived at Rainbow Plantation yesterday afternoon, hoping to catch up with us. When they realized we had already left, they came up to Camping World to say hello. We always enjoy these two, and though our visit was brief, we appreciated them taking the time to come all the way back up from the campground to see us.

Terry and I love seafood, and since we are going to be leaving the coastal area today, once we had settled our bill with Camping World and our company had left, we went back to Big Daddy’s Grill for our last fresh seafood dinner. It was just as delicious as last time, and this is one restaurant we’ll be coming back to anytime we’re in the area.

From the weather reports, we may run into some stormy weather as we travel toward Texas, but we’ll just head out and see what happens. If it gets ugly we’ll pull off the road and wait it out. Our goal for today is Lake Charles, Louisiana, a distance of 350 miles.

We had planned to spend the night boondocking at the Isle of Capri Casino, where we’ve stayed before, but Gypsy Journal reader Mark Didelot called last night to tell us about a parish park where he and his wife Sue are parked in Lake Charles, which is just a couple of miles off Interstate 10. The cost is just $12 a night for 50 amp electric, water, and a dump station, with parking on concrete pads. If you have a Golden Age or Golden Access pass, which is now called the National Access pass, the cost is only $6/night. So we will shoot for that instead. Here’s hoping for a good travel day!    

Bad Nick wanted you to have something to do while we’re traveling, so he wrote another Bad Nick Blog post titled Cheaper To Keep Her. Check it out and leave a comment. 

Thought For The Day – Drive like your life depends on it, because it does!

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The rain stopped long enough yesterday for us to enjoy mostly blue sky, but the temperature dropped quite a bit, and the next week or so is supposed to be much cooler. I won’t complain about that, it’s still better than we had in Indiana. Now I wish it would just dry out!

I have been furiously pounding away at the keyboard, working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, except for an hour or two we spent yesterday meeting with an insurance adjuster, and then going into town to make more copies of forms for the insurance company, getting them notarized, and mailed off to National Interstate.

I love small town folks. Somebody here at the Escapees campground said that there was a notary public at City Hall in Foley, but when I stopped in she was out of the office, so they sent me next door to the library. The lady who usually does notary work there was also out, so they sent me upstairs to Library Director Steve Horn’s office. Steve is a very nice man, and after he notarized my papers, we must have talked for a half hour or so about small town life, and our fulltime RV lifestyle. Try getting that kind of one-on-one friendliness in the big city!

Back at the campground, I worked some more on the new issue, and then we stopped long enough to go to the 4 p.m. Social Hour, which actually took about 35 minutes. I always like attending Social Hour at Escapees RV parks. It gives us an opportunity to visit with folks, meet the people who recently arrived, and just relax.

Soon after we returned to the motorhome, Greg and Judy Bahnmiller came by to pick up a bundle of Gypsy Journals to pass out at an RV rally they will be attending, and at other RV parks they will be visiting in their travels. Many of our readers help us spread the word about the paper this way, introducing it to people in parts of the country where we don’t have an opportunity to get to, and it really helps us a lot. We always print a couple thousand extra copies of each issue just for this purpose. So if we cross paths and you have room in your rig for a bundle or two of newspapers to distribute wherever you’re headed, we’d be happy and grateful to make you an honorary “paper boy” (or girl).

Longtime subscribers and Gypsy Gathering rally attendees Jim and Mary Gallivan are here at the campground, and they have been inviting us to dinner for years, but we never seemed to have the time when we met up with them. So yesterday evening we all went to an excellent local restaurant called Big Daddy’s Grill.

Tucked away at the end of a small road on the bank of the Fish River, the restaurant may not be fancy by New York City standards, but who wants to go to New York City anyway? But if you want excellent food, especially seafood, it should be on your list of places to go. Jim and Mary introduced Miss Terry to fried pickle slices, which she said were delicious. I was glad they all liked them so much, because it left more of the fried crab claws for me. And those were just the appetizers! I had the shrimp and oyster combo basket, Terry had a shrimp quesadilla, Mary had a grilled shrimp salad, and Jim ordered a huge cheeseburger with sweet potato fries. We all loved our selections, and Big Daddy’s is now on our list of places we can’t wait to get back to.

As good as the food was, having time to sit and visit with Jim and Mary was even better. We share an interest in genealogy, though I have barely gotten my toes wet, while they have been poking the limbs on their respective family trees for decades.

By coincidence, Mary mentioned that she used to write a column for the Lapeer County Press newspaper in Michigan, which has been considered one of the best small town newspapers in the country for as long as I can remember. Back when I was still a wet behind the ears kid starting my own first newspaper, I met the publisher of the Lapeer newspaper at a newspaper convention, and he gave me tons of valuable advice to help me get my publication off the ground. A lot of the things he taught me, I continued to use throughout my newspaper career and it came in far more useful than anything I ever learned in a college journalism classroom.

The weather reports say that yesterday’s break was going to be fleeting, and we have another inch of rain predicted today and tonight. I think my “love handles” are going to turn into giant gills if this keeps up!

Thought For The Day – People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which “overnight success” is achieved.

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It’s okay if you find yourself humming the tune to Maria’s song from The Sound of Music, given today’s blog title. But I thought I’d share some of my favorite things in the RV lifestyle, from my favorite truckstop to my favorite campground, to name just a few, and why they rate so high with me. I’m curious how my list compares with yours.

Favorite Truckstop – I love the Iowa 80 Truckstop in Walcott, Iowa. Billed as the “World’s Largest Truckstop,” this place is so big that they have two or three semi tractors on display inside the showroom! Along with every kind of gadget and goodie a trucker (or an RV driver) could ever want or need. Not to mention a 300 seat restaurant with a 50 foot salad bar, a movie theater, game room, barbershop, dentist office, garage, big rig wash, CAT scales, a Wendy’s and a Dairy Queen! What’s not to love?

Favorite Campground – Hands down, that would be our present location, Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, Indiana. Located in the RV Capital of the World, you can find anything and everything related to RVing in the surrounding area. We have been coming here for so many years that the owners, Bob and Gita Patel, have become part of our extended family.

Favorite Escapees Park – Raccoon Valley in Heiskell, Tennessee. We love the surrounding area, the friendly people, and the twice weekly jam sessions by local bluegrass musicians.

Favorite Corps of Engineers Campground – We have never stayed at a COE campground that we didn’t like, but my very favorite has to be Toad Suck Park, near Conway, Arkansas. The name alone makes it a winner, but our huge RV site with 50 amp electric and water, located right on the bank of the Arkansas River, was wonderful. We loved sitting and watching the riverboats pushing barges through the locks at the dam adjacent to the campground.

Favorite Snowbird Roost – This is another easy choice. We love the area around Rockport and Aransas Pass, Texas, on the Gulf Coast. It’s affordable, slow paced, the people are friendly, the seafood is plentiful and cheap, and if you enjoy fishing and kayaking, you’ll be in heaven.

Favorite Route – There are many that we have loved traveling, from historic Route 66 across the country, to U.S. Highway 2 across Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula, but the very best has been U.S. Highway 101 along the Oregon coast. There are breathtaking vistas around almost every bend in the road.

Favorite Big City – We try to avoid big cities whenever we can, much preferring the slower pace of small town America, but two big cities we have loved have been Boston and Washington, D.C. It’s a hard choice, since both are loaded with the history we love exploring, but since I can only have one favorite, it would be Washington. From museums to monuments to famous buildings, we could spend weeks in D.C. and not see it all.

Favorite Museum – We’ve been to many wonderful museums in our time on the road, but my favorite of them all has been the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where we saw so many of our nation’s historic documents  and artifacts on display.

Favorite Free Overnight Parking Spot – We never miss the chance to stop at the Cabela’s Outfitters store just off Interstate 90 in Mitchell, South Dakota. They have a dedicated parking lot for RVs, complete with a dump station, and it is within walking distance to a restaurant, Super Wal-Mart, and a Menard’s Home Improvement store.

Favorite Fast Food Restaurant – How could I not end this blog with at least one place to eat? We think the Cheddar Butterburger at Culver’s Restaurants can’t be beat. Whenever we have been in an area where there is no Culver’s, we stop at the first one we see when we enter their market area.

Thought For The Day – If it wasn’t for my faults I’d be perfect.

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