Yesterday was a much needed lazy day for us, after our week at the RV show. We slept in, then didn’t do much of anything all day long. Terry did a couple of loads of laundry, we checked e-mail, cruised the internet, watched TV, and I napped for a while on the couch. 

We needed to unload our display tables, books and RV guides, and everything else we had used at the RV show from our van and get it all packed back into the bays of our motorhome, but we both seemed to be drained of energy and couldn’t get motivated to get started.

About 5:30 we drove to Hummelstown for dinner with longtime subscribers  Dave and Thelma Middleton, and their friends Gary and Donna Rath, at a place called Hoss’s Steakhouse. The company and conversation were great, but the restaurant seemed to be having an off day. Dave and I ordered our steaks medium rare, and they were very well done, we asked for bread a couple of times and never got it, and when I tried their chocolate pudding for dessert, it tasted sour.

Dave and Thelma felt bad, because they had invited us, but it wasn’t their fault, and they have had good meals there in the past. Maybe the manager was taking a day off or something.

Back at the Thousand Trails campground, I answered a couple of questions from readers who wanted to know about any suggestions I had for an RV park in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and how I felt about using synthetic oil and transmission fluid in a diesel pusher motorhome. I replied to the first one that since we have only visited the Valley once, and were not impressed enough to stay long, I didn’t know enough about it to suggest an RV park for their winter stay; and told the second person that while I don’t have synthetic oil and transmission fluid in our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage yet, I plan to switch to both at our next service. I know many RVers who do use both, and report good success with them.

Then we spent the rest of the evening watching television, including the season premiers of two of our favorite shows, Two And A Half Men, and Pawn Stars. They’ve moved The Big Bang Theory to a new night, so we’ll have to wait until Thursday to see its season premier.

And that was about it for our Monday. Like I said, it was a lazy day, and that’s just what we needed.

Thought For The Day – I don’t mind going nowhere as long as it’s an interesting path.

It’s getting close to that time of year again. The leaves are already beginning to turn in some places up north, and before we know it, the snowbirds will start migrating south for the winter.

If you follow the seasons, and will be away from your summer address for the winter, please don’t forget to send us a note or an e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net giving us your winter address, so your Gypsy Journal subscription will get to you. Unless you pay for the first class postage upgrade to your subscription, the post office will not forward the paper. 

We spent yesterday printing more of our RV guides and making CDs to stock the inventory at our vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show, where we will be working eleven hours a day for the next few days.

We took a break for a while to visit with Russ and Patty Frady, longtime subscribers who stopped in for a quick visit. Russ took a bundle of sample issues of the Gypsy Journal to pass out at campgrounds in their travels. We appreciate them helping to spread the word.

Did I mention that there are a lot of geese here at the Hershey Thousand Trails campground? They’re everywhere, and while they are pretty, they are filthy, obnoxious critters. As I wrote before, this isn’t a place to walk around barefoot!

I didn’t have space in yesterday’s blog to tell you about our stop at Bird In Hand, another Amish town in Lancaster County. The Old Village Store sells an interesting collection of traditional Amish goods, tourist souvenirs, and antiques.

On the store’s crowded shelves, and upstairs in the antiques showroom, you can find flyswatters, Bag Balm, kitchen tools, Amish hats and shawls, recipe books, toys, and furniture that was old when your grandparents were kids.

You can even buy pumpkins and squash!

A couple of blog readers wrote to ask me what a “chocolate fountain” is, which I mentioned when I wrote about our dinner at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord. Well, it’s just what it sounds like, a fountain of warm melted chocolate cascading down from the top. People skewer strawberries, banana chunks and such, and dip them under the flowing chocolate for a delicious treat. Think of it as a vertical chocolate fondue, if you will.

We were originally scheduled to be a part of the Trade Days at the Hershey RV Show, which were Monday and Tuesday, but we skipped them to go sightseeing. I’m glad we did, because Al Hesselbart, from the RV Hall of Fame Museum, has been there, and he said it was dead. Al said that at one point yesterday afternoon, the vendors were playing frisbee football in the show aisles because they were bored and had not had any customers all day long. I like Al, but Miss Terry’s a lot prettier, and  I’d much rather spend time exploring the back roads with her than staring at him all day long!

Today the show opens to the public, and  I guess you could say that we’re cautiously optimistic. We have worked a lot of RV rallies, but this will be our first experience vending at an RV show, and we’re not sure how it will work out. We’re looking forward to seeing a lot of new people and introducing them to the Gypsy Journal, and hopefully some of them will like what they see well enough to subscribe. It’s going to be an interesting week.

When I took a break from the computer yesterday, Bad Nick  grabbed the keyboard and wrote a new Bad Nick Blog titled Let Them Serve! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

Click Here To Register For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Every fulltime RVer gets asked one question from almost everybody they meet – “What’s your favorite place in the country to visit?’ I always tell people that I don’t have just one favorite. That’s like asking me which one of my kids I love the most. It’s impossible to choose just one.

But I always tell folks that I can tell the one place I don’t like the most – the Rio Grande Valley in Texas! We know a lot of snowbirds who just love the place, and that’s fine for them, but one short visit a couple of years ago convinced us that we never need to go back.

Well, guess what? I’ve found a place I don’t like even more than I don’t like the Valley. That would be most of California between San Diego and San Francisco, with the exception of the area around Morro Bay.

Just like the Valley, I know that there are a lot of people who like this place. There must be, because there sure are a lot of them living here! But it’s just not our cup of tea. Prices are high, the stores are always crowded, traffic seems frantic all the time, and too many drivers have a kamikaze attitude.

I don’t mean to offend our friends from California, but I don’t  think we’ll be in any hurry to return. But that’s the beauty of the RV lifestyle. Everybody can find places they want to spend their time, and not go to places they don’t care for. It would get pretty crowded if we all wanted to go to the sames places, wouldn’t it?

We were getting to the point where we either needed to check into a nudist park, or get some washing done. I was all for the skin and sun option, but Miss Terry is more conservative, so yesterday we found an open coin-op and did a couple of weeks’ backlog of laundry. We also had dinner at Applebee’s and stopped at Kohl’s so Terry could buy some shoes for her son’s upcoming wedding.

There are eight RV sites here at the Gilroy Elks lodge, and when we arrived late Saturday afternoon, the place was almost full. By the time we got back from running around Sunday evening, it was almost empty.

We have decided to cut our California visit short, and instead spend a few days in Salt Lake City, Utah so I can do some genealogy research at the LDS Church Family History Center. We are not Mormons, but anybody can use their facilities and resources to trace their family tree. The collection includes over 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed genealogical records; 727,000 microfiche; 356,000 books, serials, and other formats; over 4,500 periodicals; and 3,725 electronic resources. Their database contains more than 36 million names that are linked into families, as well as the names of over 600 million deceased people. There must be somebody I’m related to in all of that! I’m not sure where we’ll stay in Salt Lake City yet, as there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of options when it comes to RV parks.

The roads are sure to be busy today with everybody going back home from their long holiday weekend, so we’ll sit tight until Tuesday and then head out. We’re ready to put California in our rear view mirror.

Thought For The Day – Regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, passion fades, and there had better be a lot of money to take its place.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Note to self – If we ever hold another Gypsy Gathering rally at a commercial campground, we will require attendees to make their own reservations directly with the campground. The original plan was that the campground would have us handle the rally reservations, but it has become a nightmare as some people make reservations with us, some make them directly with Elkhart Campground, and some make reservations for the rally dates with us, but separate reservations for the days before and after our rally directly with the campground. At this point we know we have 30 and 50 amp full hookup sites left, but neither we nor the campground know how many of each.

We don’t mark up the camping fees, but the campground has weekly and monthly rates that may be less than the rally camping rates, which has left us scratching our heads when trying to help attendees who may be arriving early or hanging around after our rally to wait for the Escapees Escapade two weeks later in Goshen. Plus, people don’t understand that if they want extra days, the daily rate does not include the 7% local sales tax.

Note to self – I really like the Koni shocks that Redlands Truck & RV installed on our Winnebago Ultimate Adventure motorhome after our Western Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma back in March. They give us a superb ride, the handling is great, and I would recommend them, and Redlands, to anybody.

Note to self – The Verizon internet service we’re getting from our air card here at Tra-Tel RV Park in Tucson is as slow as what we experienced a few months ago in Apache Junction. At that point, Verizon said it was because so many snowbirds were in Arizona, using up the bandwidth. Okay, that makes sense, but now it’s May, the campground is more than half empty, the snowbirds have packed up their RVs and hit the trail. So what’s their excuse now? We had much faster service in the small town of Show Low than we are experiencing here in the big city.

Note to self – I can’t please everybody, but some people ask so much that it’s not even worth trying, so don’t worry about it. I got an e-mail from a fellow who has been a regular blog reader and for the last couple of years, though we have never met. He is staying in a campground north of Phoenix, and is interested in getting a Silverleaf VMSpc engine monitoring system like I use in our motorhome, and has been asking me a lot of questions about how it performs. The other day he wrote me that he has the same engine/transmission combination that I do in our RV, and was planning to come to our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. He asked if he could borrow my Silverleaf system to use on his trip to Indiana to help him decide if it was worth the investment. My first response was no, followed by NO! I replied that I had never met him, I wasn’t in the habit of loaning expensive equipment to strangers, and that I needed it for our own trip to Indiana. I have pasted, in part, his response: “I bet you never shared your toys with the other kids when you were a kid either did you? I hate selfish people!!!! You wont see me at your rally or reading your stupid blog ever again!!!” Uh, okay, I’ll miss you (I guess). Where do these people come from, and how do they get my name?

Note to self – Whatever kind of onions I got into Friday were really, really nasty, because all day yesterday I still felt terrible and couldn’t keep anything down. There has to be an easier way to lose weight.

Note to Mom – It’s been a long time since you left us, but it was much too soon. I love you and I miss you every day. I wish you could have been here to know Miss Terry, you would have loved her, and I know she would have loved you too. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Thought For The Day – Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there. If your mom is still alive, be sure to tell her today how much you love her, because someday you will wish you could.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

We had 221 RVs at the rally, and nearly 300 people who are staying in local RV parks here in Yuma came in on day passes. That’s a pretty good turnout, and we were very pleased with the numbers.

In looking over the feedback forms and the e-mails we have received about the rally, we see a common theme in them. The biggest complaints we had were about a lack of power. A lot of people said that they expected 30 amp hookups, but we seldom find that at fairgrounds or RV rallies. The 20 amp power more commonly available is enough to keep your batteries charged, but as soon as people start using coffee pots, microwave ovens, and curling irons, circuit breakers start tripping.

The noise caused by aircraft from the Marine Air Station was also a problem for some people, but there really isn’t anything we can do about that. But, a lot of people said that while the noise was somewhat bothersome, it was no big deal, and that they would rather put up with that than wading through the mud at the Pinal County Fairgrounds in Casa Grande, or the noxious smell from the nearby dairy there.

There were some other issues raised and suggestions made for future rallies at this venue, and in a meeting yesterday with the fairgrounds management, I think we resolved most of them. Unlike the people running the fairgrounds in Casa Grande, the management here in Yuma is eager to earn our continued business, they listen to our needs, and they try to address them.

The fairgrounds is going to increase the electrical power available for RV hookups, as well as the number of “spider boxes” used to supply temporary hookups during rallies. They hope to increase the amount of electric available in the north parking area (Lot B), as well as bringing power to a new area where we should be able to park 30 or more RVs. 

Next year the rally will be March 7-11, right here at the Yuma Fairgrounds. We plan to have a food vendor on site, we will rent a couple of six passenger golf carts to shuttle people around, and we have arranged for the use of an extra building for vendor seminars, which will solve the problem of noise in the large vendor building interfering with seminars. Another complaint was low water pressure in the north lot, which has been resolved already. Apparently there was an underground leak, which they fixed Monday.

This rally was a learning experience, and we are putting those lessons to use.  I also obtained permission for our parking crew to come in a day early and dry camp next year, which will speed things up on Early Bird parking day.

This year’s rally was a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun. We’re already looking forward to next year!

Our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage really needed a bath, and Greg and Jan White’s American Eagle was just about as bad. So yesterday we had a mobile crew come in from Road Runner RV Wash, and they washed and hand waxed both rigs from the roof down. There are several companies that provide this service to the snowbirds here in Yuma, and they keep pretty busy. The cost for our 40 foot motorhome, including hand waxing, was $100.

Our van was coated in mud from parking RVs in the rain last week, and when I asked how much it would be to do it too, I was told $10. It costs me more than that  do the job at a car wash myself!

Today we are going to leave Yuma and caravan north with Greg and Jan. They have never been to Lake Havasu City or seen the London Bridge, so we’ll make a stop there to play tourist, and then we’ll go on to Laughlin, Nevada for a night.

We have reservations at the Thousand Trails in Las Vegas on Wednesday, where we plan to just relax and unwind for a week or two, while we wait for the weather to warm up in our old hometown of Show Low, in northern Arizona. Once we’re sure winter really is over in the high country,. we’re headed there for a much needed grandkid fix.

Thought For The Day – ‘Normal’ is just a setting on the dryer.