Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m still doing, just plugging away on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, just like I have been most of the week. I wish I had something new and exciting to tell you about, but you probably wouldn’t find the details of adding paper to my HP laser printer or running spell check on a draft of an article all that thrilling, so I’ll spare you the details.

Yesterday afternoon I got away from my desk long enough to stop in at Heartland Recreational Vehicles for a quick visit with Director of Sales Coley Brady to work out the details of a factory tour for folks attending our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. We have such a busy schedule of seminars during the rally that we couldn’t find the time for the tour until Friday morning, after the rally officially ends.

Anybody who wants to take the tour can meet in the main vendor room at 9:30 a.m., and a representative from the factory will lead a caravan the couple of miles from Elkhart Campground to the factory. Even if you’re not in the market for a new RV, it’s always interesting to see how the different companies build them. We learn something new with every factory tour we take. Elkhart Campground has plenty of room if you want to stay around for the tour, and maybe hang out with all of us who will still be here for the weekend.

Later in the afternoon, we went to Ryan’s Buffet, another favorite restaurant of ours, for dinner with Greg and Jan. The food was good, and the conversation with our friends was fun and interesting, as always.

I am going to take a break for a little while today, to go to the gun show in Shipshewana with Greg, and drool over all of the big boy toys we can’t afford and have no room for anyway.

While we’re doing that, Jan and Miss Terry are going to have some girl time and check out the big American Countryside Market. We were sad to learn that this big indoor bazaar, which features Amish foods and crafts, will be closing its doors in early September, and that its future is unknown. We always enjoyed browsing all of the vendor stalls and admiring everything on sale there.

I think parking everybody who will be coming in for our rally is going to be pretty easy, since a good number of the people who registered for the rally are already here, and more are coming in every day. Several people have stopped by to say hello, and while I haven’t have much time to visit, I’m looking forward to getting the paper done so we can get out and have some fun.

I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel; by last night I had 25 of 36 pages of the new issue finished, and I’ll wrap it up by Monday, giving Miss Terry plenty of time to proof it, and to get it to our printer on Tuesday.

I’m not the only one working hard. Bad Nick posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Good parenting is only gained by experience, and therefore only available to grandchildren.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

A lot of readers have been asking me when I will upload the registration page for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally, which will be held August 30 to September 3, at Elkhart Campground, in Elkhart, Indiana. I got the page uploaded yesterday, and you can access it with this Registration Link.

We are trying something that we have never done before with this rally, in holding it at a regular RV park instead of at a fairgrounds, like we have in the past. This is an experiment to answer the many requests of rally attendees for full hookups, instead of the standard 20 amp electric we usually have at fairgrounds. We are offering both 50 and 30 amp full hookups, as well as 50 and 30 water and electric only. We have a limited number of RV sites, so register soon to reserve your site.

Of course, it costs more to offer these amenities, and the price is reflected in the rally registration costs. Registration costs are on a sliding scale, based upon the type of hookups you choose.

I know we can’t please everybody, and I have already had a few people complain that the cost is higher than at previous rallies. I’m sorry folks, but we can’t have it both ways. If you want fairgrounds prices, you get fairgrounds accommodations. If you want RV park accommodations, you have to pay RV park prices.

However, in looking at the cost for other RV rallies, I think you will find that we are charging less than most other events, and offering a lot more than many of them.

The timing and location for this rally are perfect for anybody who will be going to the Escapees RV Club’s  Fall Escapade, which will be in nearby Goshen, Indiana September 12-17. This will be the Escapees’ 50th Escapade rally, and it’s going to be a great event that you won’t want to miss. Elkhart Campground owners Bob and Gita Patel welcome our Gypsy Gathering attendees to stay over after our rally while they wait to go into Escapade.

Elkhart Campground is our summer base, and we have been going there for so many years that it feels like home to us. We have watched Bob and Gita’s two sons grow up over the years, and they treat us like family. The campground has a swimming pool, WiFi internet access, rec room, and clean showers and restrooms.

Elkhart and the surrounding area have a lot to see and do, including touring such great places as the RV Hall of Fame Museum, the Midwest Museum of American Art, the Ruthmere Museum, the National New York Central Railroad Museum, the Studebaker National Museum, Hostetler’s Hudson Automobile Museum, Amish Acres Historic Farm and Heritage Resort, and the Meono-Hof Amish Mennonite Cultural Center. There are also RV factory tours, exploring Amish country, and the huge Shipshewana Flea Market.    

I am working on the seminar lineup now, and if you have been to any of our past events, you know we’ll have a fine lineup of seminars on many aspects of RVing and the RV lifestyle. It is always a challenge to come up with new and interesting seminars, and we have some old favorites and interesting new ones to offer you at our Eastern Rally. If you would like to present a seminar at the rally, please contact me at editor@gypsyjournal.net with a brief description of what you have in mind. We especially need RV technical and craft seminars.

We look forward to seeing you in Elkhart!

Thought For The Day – Those most willing to consider an offense “water under the bridge” are generally those most responsible.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

We had another busy day yesterday. I had a lot of work to get done, but I decided to cheat and go play for a while first. There was a gun show in Shipshewana, the Amish center 20 miles east of Elkhart, and I have wanted to get out that way and drop some bundles of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal at the campgrounds in that area, so I decided to combine business with pleasure.

Shipshewana, best known for its flea market, is an interesting place. In the past I have called it sort of an Amish theme town, in that you will see lots of Amish people in their horse drawn buggies and plain clothes, but also shops packed with tourists buying everything from overpriced quilts and crafts, to delicious cheeses. You can even (for a fee) take a ride in an authentic Amish buggy!

And Shipshewana is always a busy place! The main street through the business district is only a mile or so long, but it can take you a long time to cover that distance with all of the traffic. Cars, tour buses, RVs, buggies, Amish riding bicycles, and people on foot create an obstacle course that you have to be very careful to maneuver safely through.

After an hour or so of wandering through the gun show, and wishing I had kept all of the shooting irons I have sold over the years, I dropped Miss Terry off at E&S Sales, an Amish bulk food store, and then backtracked to drop off a couple of bundles of newspapers at the Shipshewana South Campground. There is also a Shipshewana North Campground a couple of miles north of town, which we had hit on the way in. The northern campground is never as full as the southern, which is within walking distance to everything in town, and both places are always clean and have friendly people in the office.

E&S was packed with shoppers, and when I caught up with Terry we spent a while browsing everything from a huge assortment of flour and other baking goods, to bulk candy and a dozen or more varieties of cheeses.

We had spent more time in Shipshewana than we had planned to, and when we left we stopped at a roadside produce stand, and when we left there, I told Terry I had to get right to work as soon as we got home. Yeah, right!

Dennis and Carol Hill from the RV Driving School had arrived at Elkhart Campground while we were gone, and as we pulled up we saw them and they came over to say hello and tell us all about their summer adventures RVing in Alaska. We just have to make that trip one of these days! Sometime during their visit, somebody mentioned dinner, and Terry and I realized that it was 5 p.m. and we had not had anything to eat all day long. So we piled into their car and went to Ryan’s Buffet for dinner and more good conversation. 

When we returned to the campground, Ruth Fleck and Linda Jensen were waiting at the bus. We had met them in Albuquerque at the Affinity Rally, and ran into them again at the FMCA rally in Bowling Green, Ohio a couple of weeks ago. We visited with them for a while, and Bill Joyce and Diane Melde wandered over to join in the party.

Finally, about 8 p.m., I excused myself and went inside to get some work done. Sometimes you just have to throw your plans out the window and go with the flow.

Thought For The Day – Dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die tomorrow.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

Even though we really don’t need or want anything, we occasionally enjoy wandering through a flea market, just to see what’s being offered.

We spent some time yesterday afternoon wandering around the Mesa Market Place indoor swap meet, looking at all of the stuff offered for sale. I’m sure glad we live in an RV, because we don’t have room for all of the ceramic trinkets, cookware, cactus shaped water fountains, and other junk you can find in places like that.

Mesa Market Place is not your typical old style flea market, in that about 90% of the vendors are selling new items. You can find cheap tools made in China, foot massagers, incense, T-shirts with funny sayings (my favorite this trip said “Go Ahead And Whine If It Will Make You Feel Any Better), sunglasses, kitchenware, and all kinds of other merchandise. In my opinion, most of it isn’t worth hauling home, no matter how cheap they sell it for.

I did find a wide brimmed hat to keep the sun off my face and ears, and hopefully it will reduce the number of skin cancers I have to have burned off on my next trip to the V.A. hospital. Terry also got a good deal on some ribbon to use in a couple of crochet projects she’s working on.

More and more of the swap meets and flea markets we’ve seen around the country have moved away from the used merchandise and collectibles we enjoy looking at, and to the same cheap imported stuff we saw yesterday.

We were really disappointed on our first trip to the big Shipshewana Flea Market in Indiana several years ago. Since it’s located in the heart of Amish country, we expected handcrafted goodies, but most of what we found was bamboo back scratchers and such.

Back at the bus, I took a short nap, and then we visited with Terry’s parents for a while. Her mom is dealing with a nasty cold, so we didn’t stay long so she didn’t have to feel like she should entertain us.

Today we’re leaving Apache Junction, headed for Kingman, Arizona, where we’ll spend a few days visiting with my old buddy Mike Howard. Mike is a confirmed bachelor, and we try to stop in every year so Miss Terry can spoil him with home cooking and bake him a couple of batches of her delicious chocolate chip/pecan cookies. Of course, I’d hate to see Mike overindulge in sweets, so I’ll be sure to help him work his way through all of those cookies! What are friends for?

From Apache Junction to Kingman is about 225 miles, which makes for a good driving day, and about half of it will be on two lane roads, which are our favorite routes. 

Between our time in Casa Grande, then Tucson, and most recently Apache Junction, we’ve been sitting still too long. We’re eager to do some traveling!

Thought For The Day - Being kind is more important than being right.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally