The Arizona Good Sam Rally starts today, so yesterday we spent some time checking out how they were getting everybody in off the street and parked. Since this is the first time for both us and Good Sam to have a rally at the Yuma Fairgrounds, there is a learning curve. 

32^nd Street in front of the fairgrounds is a very busy road, and it is important to get everybody into the big parking lot in front of the fairgrounds as quickly as possible so we don’t tie up traffic. We have come up with what we think is a pretty good plan, and it’s basically the same thing the Good Sam group is using. So far, so good.

Several vendors who are here for the Good Sam rally will be staying over for our event, and I chatted with several of them as they were setting up their booths yesterday. They all seemed enthusiastic, since the Good Sam rally has about 170 RVs registered, and we have about 215 registered, and quite a few more who have told us they will be here. Not to mention all of the snowbirds who are wintering locally, and will be coming in on day passes.

We are discovering that while the fairgrounds assured us they could easily provide power for over 200 RVs, that is pretty iffy. We will have limited electric for the majority of RVs, but probably not for everybody. If you have solar panels, they’ll get a good workout during the rally! Of course, rally veterans don’t worry about things like that. They come into a fairgrounds aware that they are not staying at a full service campground. After all, that’s why we have self-contained RVs, right?

Besides getting underfoot with the Good Sam crowd, yesterday I put the finishing touches on a new seminar, called Cemetery Stories, in which I will be sharing some of the interesting tales we have discovered in cemeteries during our travels around the country.

I also worked on a second new seminar, Blogging For RVers. I really wish my pals Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour were going to be on hand, because they have such an excellent presentation on blogging, but they are busy in Florida this winter. So I am cobbling together a seminar to at least give beginning bloggers and those who are just getting interested in blogging, some pointers.

Bill and Mabel Becker stopped by to say hello and visited with us for a while, and they’ll be back today to pick up the rally T-shirts once they get delivered, so they can start folding them and getting them ready to sell.

Once RV tech Phil Botnick arrived and got settled in for the Good Sam rally, he came by and checked out our Atwood water heater to see if he could find anything that may have caused our recent problems. Phil is about the best RV tech you’ll find anywhere, with years of experience, and he has handled many little problems for us over the years, and a couple of big ones too.

Phil cleaned out of some of sand the blown into the compartment by all of the wind here in Yuma, tested the pressure from our LP tank, and then adjusted the water heater’s fuel/oxygen ratio. Phil will be staying over for our rally, handling any emergency repairs necessary to keep folks up and running.

Thought For The Day – I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it.

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How do you travel? Do you make a beeline for your destination by the quickest possible route, or do you casually meander along until you get there? Do you plan your stops ahead of time so you know where you’ll be every night, or do you worry about where you’ll spend the night when you get tired of driving for the day? Do you go from membership park to membership park, getting the most out of your annual dues?

Are you a planner who gets almost as much enjoyment in anticipation of your journeys, or do you like to be surprised by what you find along the way?

It’s only February, but we are already thinking about our summer travels. With a great big old country out there to explore, it’s hard to decide where to go next.

For several years our summer travels were dictated by our teaching schedule with Life on Wheels. We traveled a lot of miles, but it was always to the same places, and usually along the same routes. While I love teaching, the same old routine had stopped being fun. We’re ready to do something different.

Our Winnebago gives us the ability to travel some routes that we were not comfortable tackling in our bus conversion, and there are a lot of places in the Rocky Mountain west that we’d like to explore. So we may spend some time in Colorado and Wyoming. I’ve never been to Yellowstone and some of the other western National Parks.

Or we may go to the Pacific Northwest. We love the Oregon and Washington coast, and we haven’t been there in a long time. Then again, we really want to go to the big Winnebago Grand National Rally in Forest City, Iowa in July, so that would cut short a trip to the Northwest. Hmmm…. Branson? We haven’t been there in a long time. Our options are open, and our schedule is set in Jello. That’s the way we like it.

Our favorite mode of travel is to have some general idea of where we’re going, but no concrete plans on where or when we’ll be at any given time. We seldom make advance reservations, unless we’re going to be in a high traffic area where it might be hard to get a campsite otherwise.

I do a lot of internet research on areas where we’ll be traveling, and put together a list of places we’d like to see. We also get a lot of tips from our readers, and whenever we cross a state line, we try to stop at the State Welcome Center and pick up tourism brochures to give us more ideas.

When we’re going from Point A to Point B, we don’t stop in RV parks every night. I can’t see paying somebody $20 to $30 or more just for a place to park overnight. That’s why we have a self-contained RV. Between WalMarts, truck stops, city parks that allow free camping, casinos, Elks and Moose lodges, and VFW posts, we can always find a place to stop for the night. A few times we have taken readers up on their offer to park in their driveway for a night or two. If we do stop overnight at an RV park, it is usually a Passport America campground.

Once we arrive at a place where we want to spend a few days, we find a comfortable campground to settle into, and make day trips in a 75 to 100 mile radius to explore the region, in our van.

That’s the method that seems to work for us, but there is no one right way to live the RV lifestyle. It’s all abut what works best for you. So, how do you travel?

Thought For The Day – Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

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The weather forecast has been for rain all week, though it seemed to come in spurts, with periods of blue sky in between. But Wednesday night it began to rain in earnest, and it hasn’t stopped yet.

The rain was accompanied with high winds that whipped the palm trees in our park, and about 4:30 p.m., the National Weather Service issued tornado watches for southwest Arizona, including Yuma, Quartzsite, and Phoenix! That almost never happens. Up in the high country, heavy snow was falling, with accumulations measured in feet.

There were flash flood warnings for the entire state, and weather reports said that Oak Creek, near Sedona, could crest at 20 feet above normal. Yuma got its normal entire year’s rain accumulation in just one day! It was not a good time to be traveling, and while I was glad we were safely parked with full hookups, I was worried about the many friends we have who are boondocking in the desert at Quartzsite.

Since we get the east and west coast network feeds out of New York and San Francisco, I cranked up the rooftop Winegard batwing antenna, and was grateful to Mark Didelot for setting up our converter box so we could tune in the local channels and get more direct weather reports.

Unexpected bad weather is why we always keep our fresh water tank at least half full, and have enough fuel on board to run our generator, even when we are going to be parked for an extended period of time with full hookups. In fact, when we are going to be sitting still for a while, I always fill our fuel tank. I’m not sure about more modern rigs like our Winnebago, but in our old MCI bus conversion, condensation could accumulate in our diesel fuel tank if it was low and we were parked for several weeks. Having had to deal with that once, I don’t want it to happen again.

Because we lived in snow country in northern Arizona (yes, it snows in Arizona), Terry and I always kept enough provisions on hand to last us for a few days if we got snowed in. As RVers, we can’t carry a fully stocked pantry, but we always have food and fresh water on hand, just in case. There are times when living in a self-contained RV can be very nice.

Bad weather is not the only reason to be prepared. A few summers ago we were at the Thousand Trails preserve near Hershey, Pennsylvania for two weeks. During that time it was pretty hot, and they were having power problems. A transformer had to be replaced twice, leaving the campground without electricity.

No problem, we just opened our windows and ran our Fantastic roof vents to create an air flow, and if it got too hot, we buttoned the bus up and fired up our generator to run the rooftop air conditioner. Several of our neighbors came in with nearly empty tanks, and ran so low on fuel that their generators would not work. Most RV generators are set up so that they will stop drawing fuel from the RV’s tank when it drops below a certain level, to prevent you from running out and being stuck somewhere.

It’s been a long time since I was a Boy Scout, but that motto “Be prepared” still comes in handy.

Thought For The Day – If you don’t pick up the bat, you’ll never hit the ball.

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It’s that time of year again. Thousands of RVers are headed for the tiny town of Quartzsite, Arizona to take part in the annual gathering that is best described as Woodstock For Grownups. Some people will tell you that you’re not a real RVer until you “Do the Q!”

They come to dry camp in the desert, to shop the small vendors scattered around town, to browse the Big Tent and see even more vendor offerings, to meet up with old friends, and just to hang out and enjoy the desert sunshine.

If you have not been to Quartzsite, it should be on your personal Bucket List. It’s not for everybody, but everybody should experience it at least once. 

We’ve been to Quartzsite several times, and to be honest, it’s gotten worse over the years, and I think it will continue to decline. The town fathers want to turn it into their own version of Palm Springs, and their greed has pushed many of the small vendors out as they are replaced with big RV dealerships paying big taxes.

During the last two weeks of January, traffic is terrible in town, and many find it easier to walk or ride bicycles than to try and negotiate the constant gridlock on the two main streets in town, one north of Interstate 10 and one south.

In case I’m sounding negative, let’s not forget the fact that there are few places to shop locally, so one must bring in everything they need, or be prepared to drive a half hour or more to Parker, Arizona or Blythe, California for much of anything. Except for big crowds of people, you won’t find anything in the Big Tent you can’t find buy from vendors at other RV rallies, and usually for less money. Even out in the middle of nowhere, petty thievery is not uncommon – every year folks lose bicycles and portable generators. And did I mention the dust that permeates every corner of your RV after a few days in the desert?

By now you must be asking yourself “Why the heck would I ever want to go to Quartzsite?” The answer is simple, the pluses far outweigh the negatives for many RVers.

In Quartzsite, you will learn to get the most out of your RV’s self-contained features. Even if you don’t think you will spend much time boondocking, it’s still handy to know how to do so in a pinch. You never know when you’ll be stuck for a few days at an RV repair shop waiting for parts and repairs.

You have never experienced a sunset like you’ll see in the Arizona desert, and that alone makes it worth a trip to Quartzsite. Once the sun goes down, a million stars fill the sky, shining like so many diamonds. At night you will be serenaded by coyotes as you drop off to sleep, and the next morning you are treated to the sound of doves cooing their wake up call. These are memories you’ll never make in a regular RV park

Of course, the people you will meet are the greatest thing about Quartzsite. It attracts everybody from bluegrass pickers to hikers, rock hounds to four wheel drive enthusiasts, born again Christians to pagans. They even have an out of the way corner of the desert reserved for nudists, called the Magic Circle! You’re as likely to have neighbors in half-million dollar Prevost custom coaches as in homebuilt bus conversions, as well as any and every type of new and vintage RV ever conceived. And they’re all there to do the same thing as you are, just to be a part of it all.

You may go once and decide that it’s not for you, or like many of our RVing friends, you may fall in love with the place, and return every winter to “Do the Q.”

Thought For The Day – Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.

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Boy, can I draw a crowd! As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, when we arrived at the Elks campground Wednesday we had it all to ourselves except for a sailboat on a trailer. Then shortly after we got parked a motorhome pulled in. Yesterday morning three big motorhomes came in together. The place is filling up, and with yesterdays temperature in Phoenix topping out at 104 degrees, I’m sure more folks are headed for the high country.

RVers are facing a new challenge from the state of Maine, which has slipped a bill in under the radar that makes it illegal to park overnight in any commercial parking lot anywhere in the state! Not in a WalMart, not even in a truck stop. As the law is written, even if your son owns a business and gives you permission to stay in his parking lot overnight, you are subject to a $100 fine! Here is a link to more information on the Escapee website.

We all need to send e-mails and letters to the state of Maine to let them know that we disagree with this nonsense and will take our tourist dollars elsewhere if they insist on making us feel unwelcome.

We often stay in commercial parking lots overnight and have dinner in a nearby restaurant on our way to a destination, where we then spend our money with a local campground. But I don’t want to pay some campground owner $20 or more a night (usually a lot more in places like Maine) just to sleep in my own self-contained RV.

Folks, I need your help. In the last two weeks I have received e-mails from a number of subscribers who spent the winter traveling away from home, and did not send us their winter address, which resulted in them not getting their Gypsy Journal. We try to accommodate our readers by sending out replacement copies if we still have them available, even though this adds up to quite a bit of additional expense to us over the course of a year.

For example, just this week we have sent out several envelopes with two back issues each in them, at a cost of $2.19 each. When you consider that a subscription is $20 a year, and that this time of year we usually have anywhere from 50 to 100 subscribers who contact us asking for the back issues they missed because they did not send us a change of address, it adds up.

Since we run our business from the road, storage is a problem and many times we just don’t have the missing issues to send them. Then people get mad at us because they didn’t get their paper.

Please, please, please send us the temporary address if you are doing the snowbird routine! The post office will not forward the Gypsy Journal unless you upgrade to First Class, which is an extra $5/year. Just send us a quick note or e-mail when you head for your snowbird destination, or back home in the spring. It will really help us a lot.

Thought For The Day – Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.

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