No matter what you have ever heard, there is absolutely no energy crisis, there never has been an energy crisis, and there never will be an energy crisis. All we have ever had is a technology crisis, and misdirected focus!

If you doubt me, spend an afternoon with two little granddaughters, ages seven and three. I guarantee that the only energy crisis there will be is you trying to keep up with them!

If we could get the scientists to stop wasting their time on silly things like fossil fuels, wind, solar, and nuclear power, and just convince them to concentrate on harnessing the energy in any child’s body under say, age ten, I think we could change the world. I haven’t done any official studies on it, but I’d say that each of my granddaughters has the equivalent of a dozen nuclear power plants inside of them, just bursting at the seams trying to get out.

We spent yesterday afternoon at my daughter Tiffany’s house, and her two girls wore me out so badly that it was all I could do to drag myself to the keyboard to write this blog when we got back home. I’m an old man! I need a vacation from my permanent vacation!

We had a wonderful time with Jim, Tiffany, and the girls, and Miss Terry knew that with all that commotion happening, I needed red meat to keep myself going. So she grilled up some beautiful rib eye steaks and some roasted red potatoes, which, combined with fresh corn on the cob, really hit the spot!

Back at the motorhome, I spent some time staring at the schedule for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, trying to figure out how to fit all of the seminars the vendors want into the time allotted, and still have a good selection of non-commercial seminars for rally attendees to choose from.

A few people have said we concentrate too hard on making our rallies an educational experience, but the overwhelming majority of the folks who come to the rallies say they are delighted with the opportunities they have to learn about everything from RV safety to technical issues, and the RV lifestyle in general. It’s a juggling act to have something for everyone, to find enough new seminars to keep returnees interested, and to fit in the favorites that people have given rave reviews in the past.

My pal Michele Henry from Phoenix Commercial Paint in Elkhart called the other day to tell me that she has booked several RVs for her beautiful custom paint jobs this summer, but that she still has some time open around our rally dates, in case any of you are thinking about getting your RV a facelift. But I wouldn’t wait too long, because true craftsmanship takes time, and Michelle doesn’t rush through her work. Instead, she takes the time to do it right, at at a price so low that you’ll think she hit the wrong buttons on her calculator.

Here is a Travel Supreme fifth wheel before Michele worked her magic on it.

And here is the finished job. Beautiful, isn’t it? And a lot less money than buying a new RV!

Michele also told me that Bob Patel, owner of Elkhart Campground is working like a madman adding new full hookup RV sites at the campground to accommodate our rally crowd. Bob and his wife Gita are wonderful folks, and we think of them as family. I’m looking forward to introducing a bunch of new people to them, and to Elkhart Campground during the rally.

Thought For The Day – Cherish your dreams, for they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

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Terry and I have been dry camping at Mike and Pam Steffen’s place in Salt Flat, Texas for a couple of days, swapping lies, playing with their herd of dogs, target shooting, and admiring the star filled sky above us at night. In another life, that would be called goofing off, but in the laid back RV lifestyle, it’s called….. okay, I guess it’s still goofing off. But what’s wrong with that?

Mike is a well known and respected RV columnist for Trailblazer magazine, and his work is also familiar to readers of MotorHome magazine, Trailer Life, Woodall’s, and most other RV publications. Mike has been presenting seminars at RV rallies for longer than Terry and I have even been RVers, and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years.

Salt Flat is located on U.S. Highway 180, about 60 miles east of El Paso, and seventeen miles from nowhere. To get to Mike and Pam’s place, you turn north at the cattle guard, drive eleventeen miles down a dirt road, cross a couple of dry washes, take a right at the scorpion crossing, bear left at the pile of cow flop, and then drive for six days and nights. Eventually a wild menagerie of friendly dogs will run out to greet you, and you’re there. Do you get the picture?

This is rustic dry camping. Our Verizon cell phones and air card don’t work way out here, but we arrived with a full tank of fresh water, a full propane tank, empty waste tanks, and our Onan QuietDiesel generator gives us all the power we need. Mike and Pam are so far off the grid that they’re not even in the same galaxy. But, that doesn’t mean that they’re roughing it. When the sun hides behind the clouds and his large array of solar panels doesn’t work, Mike ties a key onto a kite string and pulls power right out of the sky, and if that doesn’t work, all he has to do is harness a couple dozen of his dogs and put them on a treadmill and they’ll crank out some power!

Okay, so it’s not a four star RV resort, but how many of them have a private shooting range where I can play with my toys? Not many! Yesterday I hauled a couple that I had not tried out yet across the yard to Mike’s range and put them through their paces, and after I got a bit familiar with them, I even managed to impress myself.

I love dogs, and this is a great place to get a puppy fix. Mike and Pam have a bunch of lovable mutts, and not a poodle in the lot! I have been licked, nuzzled, and snuggled enough to hold me over for a couple of months, and I’ve scratched behind enough canine ears to send a battalion of fleas across the border into Mexico.

As you can see, we’ve had a great time here, but today we’ll get back on the road and head for the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico. Coming across west Texas on Interstate 10, I fell in love with the big 350 Cummins engine in our Winnebago all over again. It just eats up hills and doesn’t even seem to notice. Today will be its first real test. We’ll avoid all of the traffic in El Paso by taking the 375 Loop through Fort Bliss and over the Franklin Mountains to Interstate 10, just south of the New Mexico state line. Called Transmountain Drive as it crosses through Franklin Mountains State Park, the road has some pretty steep climbs and descents. We came over it in a gas powered motorhome years ago, but we never attempted it in our old bus conversion. I don’t think it’ll be a problem with this rig.

On another note, we have received e-mails from several Gypsy Journal subscribers complaining that pages 7 and 30 of the new issue are unreadable due to a problem with the printing process. If you get a bad paper, please e-mail me, and we’ll send you a replacement.

Thought For The Day – Each of us has our own individual Heaven and Hell.

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It seems like we had more rain and cold weather this past summer than we did sunshine. October hasn’t changed that. While we were in Celina we had several rainy days, and though we got a break while we drove back to Elkhart Thursday, it started raining just about the time we finished getting set up in our site at Elkhart Campground. It poured all night long, and most of yesterday it continued to rain.

Somebody posted a thread on the Escapees forum yesterday saying it was raining where he was, and asking what fulltimers do with their time on days like that. I replied that we sleep in, make love, have a leisurely breakfast, sip hot chocolate, watch TV, surf the internet, read books, talk, take naps, and call friends and family. Then I added that I hope it rained again today!

Maybe it’s because of all those years I spent living on the Washington coast, where we averaged well over 120 inches of rain a year, but I like rainy days, as long as we don’t have to travel on them. Eventually I do get cabin fever, but a drizzly day now and then is very relaxing. 

I told Miss Terry once that I’d like to spend an entire winter on the Northwest coast sometime, when the pace is slower, and we could enjoy watching the storms rolling in over the Pacific Ocean. I wonder if we can put a fireplace in our motorhome?

Yesterday we did venture out in the afternoon to drop off some orders at the post office, then we met Bill Joyce and Diane Melde for dinner at Mancino’s, our favorite pizza place here in Elkhart. By the time we got back to the campground it had finally stopped raining, and the weatherman says we can expect clear skies for most of the next week, though it’s going to be chilly, with daytime temperatures in the 50s and nights in the mid-30s.

Once things dry out around here a little bit, we want to spend some time getting the bays in our Winnebago better organized. My buddy Ron Speidel taught a seminar at our Gypsy Gathering rally about how to organize your storage bays, and though I didn’t have time to sit in, I’ve taken a few tips from observing how Ron has things in his Winnebago Journey.

We were pretty ruthless in purging things as we moved from our bus conversion into the motorhome, and got rid of a lot of stuff. So our bays are not crammed full, but we still have a few things to discard, and then we want to rearrange things to make accessing them easier.

Yesterday we also stopped to check out our bus conversion. Now, I know it’s an inanimate object and incapable of emotions, but I swear, it looked real sad sitting there, when it was made to be out rolling down the highway. We are very pleased with our new RV, but we love that old girl. We put in every screw and strung every inch of wiring, and she carried us a lot of miles over the years.

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about solar power, and that we had decided not to transfer our solar panels from the bus to the Winnebago. But the solar setup we installed on the bus sure does a great job. The bus has been sitting for about three weeks and is not plugged in, but with just the solar panels supplying power, our house battery bank was fully charged. Someone asked if we ever had problems running our house style refrigerator off the inverter and battery bank when dry camping, but with this solar array, we never had to worry. It does the job.

Thought For The Day – They say wine improves with age. As I enter my golden years, I say age improves with wine!

A lot of people have asked us if we will be transferring our solar panels from our bus conversion to the Winnebago diesel pusher motorhome we just bought. Quite a few have been surprised when we told them we don’t plan on doing so. Terry and I have discussed it at length, and we just don’t see any reason for it.

Our MCI bus has five solar panels, totaling 540 watts of power, an 2,000 watt Magnum Energy pure sine wave inverter, and a bank of three 8D Lifeline absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries. For the bus, and for our lifestyle while we were building the bus, it was a good setup. But nothing ever stays the same in life, and our needs have changed.

We used to do a lot of boondocking, and I am an admitted power pig. The bus has a residential refrigerator, and we use a lot of power running our computers, internet connection, watching television and such. We never turned our inverter off. Because the bus onboard electrical system was 24 volt, and our house system was 12 volt, we could not easily charge our batteries while driving down the highway, like most RVs can do. The solar system did just fine, and on a good day we could easily put over 30 amps an hour into our battery bank from our solar panels. If we had cloudy days, we could always fire up our Onan 5500 watt generator and top off the batteries.

But with the Winnebago, we have an RV refrigerator, so we don’t need to have an inverter on while traveling. And with the 7500 watt Onan Quiet Diesel generator and our inverter, we have plenty of power when we pull into a place without hookups for the night.

I have always said that solar is a good supplement to an RV generator, but it is also a very expensive supplement. In my opinion, AM Solar is the best company in the country for RV solar needs, and owner Greg Holder is the acknowledged solar expert in our industry. Even Greg would agree with me that solar is an expensive addition.

So is it worth it? Let’s do the math – according to the AM Solar website, a 100 watt panel with the mounting kit, which usually retails for $795, is currently on sale for $499 per panel. Four panels (which I would consider the minimum for serious dry camping), come to $1996 under the sale price. A Heliotrope HPV-22B charge controller, which usually retails for $325, is currently on sale for $275. Size 27T AGM 12 volt batteries are $245 each, and if you step up to the 8D size we have in our bus, they sell for $540 each. Just for the sake of this example, let’s assume you use three of the size 27T batteries, which will set you back $735.

Then you will need an inverter. A Magnum Energy 2,000 watt modified sine wave inverter will cost $1519, and the ME-RC50 remote control from Magnum is $183. If you step up to Magnum’s pure sine wave inverter, add a couple hundred dollars more. And then you need to factor in the cost of installing all of these goodies, unless you’re handy enough to do the job yourself, or have a friend who is!

So you’re looking at a minimum investment of $4,758 if you do your own installation, based upon AM Solar’s current pricing in this example. And remember, solar is a supplement to a generator, at best! While there are a few die hard boondockers who get by just on solar, they usually go to bed with the chickens and spend a lot of their time monitoring their power usage and solar input.

By comparison, our 7,500 watt Onan diesel generator uses less than a gallon of diesel per hour. Let’s assume I run the genset three hours a day, and that diesel fuel is currently selling for $2.75 a gallon (a high figure in most parts of the country right now). That is $8.25 a day.

Based upon these figures, I would have to run my generator 576 days to break even on the cost of the solar setup. If I had a fifth wheel or travel trailer and used a Honda portable generator, it would cost even less! Let’s assume you spend 45 days a year dry camping, which is much more than most RVers I know ever do. It would take you over 12 years to recoup the cost of your solar system!

Of course, if you have a trailer and have to purchase a generator, you have to factor that cost in. Most RVs have a generator onboard as standard equipment.

So, while we have enjoyed making our own electricity from the sun, is solar a good investment? Obviously not, just in terms of dollars and cents.

Even already having the panels and other equipment in the bus, which we could transfer to the Winnebago, we have decided that we probably won’t do enough long term boondocking in the future to make it worth the time and expense of having the solar system removed from the bus and installed on the Winnebago. We’ll be able to get by a few days just fine on our generator.  

Thought For The Day – Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

I spent some time recently talking with a fellow who is retiring soon and was interested in buying our bus conversion and hitting the road as a fulltime RVer, something he has dreamed of for years.

He liked the bus, and really appreciated all of the upgrades we had added, such as solar panels, inverter, and large holding tanks for dry camping. He said he had read lots of RV blogs and articles on boondocking, and couldn’t wait to get out to the desert to camp under the stars and listen to the coyotes sing him to sleep every night.

I thought we might have a deal, until his wife put the kibosh on his plans. It seems that all the while he has been dreaming of roaming the country, footloose and fancy free, her dream has been to finally buy that farmhouse she has always wanted to find and restore, and spend her golden years refinishing woodwork, hanging wallpaper, and puttering in the garden. Not only is she not interested in fulltime RVing, she was adamant that she does not plan to spend one night in any RV, anywhere!

I suggested that they try renting an RV for a trip or two, to see if the wife might come around, but that wasn’t going to happen. She was absolutely inflexible on the subject, not interested, forget it, I want my farmhouse.

Fulltime RVing is not for everybody. But for many of us, it is the very best way to live. I just cannot picture myself ever having to mow grass, put up with the same noisy neighbors, and see the same four walls every day of my life. I am very fortunate in that Miss Terry loves this lifestyle just as much as I do.

But my prospective bus buyer, and a lot of other people, don’t have such luck. We have talked to many couples over the years where one partner wants to fulltime or travel extensively, and the other says “No way!”

So what happens when two people have such different dreams, and it doesn’t look like compromise is an option? Does one finally cave in and give up what they have always wanted, to make the other one happy? In that case, I don’t think the possibility of either of them being happy is very good. Do they hit the road and argue their way across the country, or stay put and resent every day they spend shackled to a routine and lifestyle they do not want?

We have met a few married RVers over the years, both men and women, who leave their spouse behind and travel extensively. They return home from time to time, but they seem to live pretty much separate lives much of the year.

That just wouldn’t work for me. I love being married and I love being with my wife. But I would hate to have to settle down anyplace.

So who gets to live their dream? What would you do in such a situation?

Thought For The Day – Within each of us is a diamond covered with fear and other issues; uncover and polish your diamond so others can see you shine.

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