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.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I spent most of yesterday setting up my new computer, loading all of the programs I use into it, and transferring projects I had been working on from my laptop to the new desktop unit.

Even though the laptop and the desktop are both Dell computers using Windows XP, there were still enough things that were different that it took me a while to get things set up optimally for my use. It’s nice to have a full size computer to work on again.

While I was doing all of that, Miss Terry was sorting through cabinets and cubbyholes, doing some Spring cleaning and deciding what to keep and what to pitch. Even after ten years on the road fulltime, we still find things we’ve been carrying for years and have not used.

Sometime in the evening I started sniveling about being famished (and trust me, when it comes to food, I can out-snivel the best of them!). So Terry made a delicious dinner of fried chicken with a crispy coating that just melted my the mouth. It was so good that I ate until it hurt, and I still wanted more.

A couple of days ago I wrote in a blog post that Terry and I were recognized with the honor of bringing in more new members to the Escapees RV Club than anyone else. In our mail this week, we had a note from Escapees Executive Director Angie Carr telling us that two more members have joined on our referral. We’re pretty proud of that.

As I’ve written before, our travel plans are always set in jello. This summer we had planned to explore the Pacific Northwest, but now we’re looking at another plan. We want to try to put some money away to either upgrade our bus or buy a newer rig, and by aggressively working some rallies, hopefully we can do that.

We think we’ll go to Escapade in Sedalia, Missouri in May instead, and then work several RV rallies in the Midwest and East this summer.

Of course, as you well know, anything can change at a moment’s notice. But right now we’re looking at the FMCA Midwest Area Rally in Albert Lea, Minnesota in June, the FMCA International Convention in Bowling Green, Ohio in July, and the FMCA Northeast Area Rally in Essex Junction, Vermont in August. I’m also scheduled to teach at the new RVSEF RV Lifestyle, Education, & Safety Clinic in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in mid-September. Then we’ll be in Celina, Ohio for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally September 28 to October 2. And who knows, we may find a rally or two along the way to pop into.

What was that I said about slowing down? I think that was just a campaign promise.

We have been talking about getting a vendor spot at The Rally, Affinity’s big event, which will be in Albuquerque in April. But between the cost of the booth and the fee for RV parking, we’re looking at an investment of over $1,000 for the rally. We’d have to sell an awful lot of subscriptions and books to make any money at that rate.

Thought For The Day - The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is to decide what you want.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally