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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I’m always amazed when I hear somebody say that they are bored. How can that be? I just don’t understand it. There is always something to do and something to learn. I never seem to have enough hours in a day to do all of the things I want to get done.

In addition to my regular writing and blogging duties, and researching things to write and blog about, I have a half dozen or more books in the writing process that I try to spend some time on every week.

Then there are the many hobbies and special interests that I try to find time for, from geocaching and kayaking, to reading, target shooting, genealogy, and surfing the internet.

While I have a Facebook account and try to post something on there fairly regularly, I have purposely avoided even looking at the many games and other fun stuff there, such as Farmtown. I just don’t have the time to even allow myself to get interested. At one time I got hooked on the computer simulation game Sim City, and had to give it up when I found myself spending way too many hours building my own little virtual worlds.    

Sometimes I find myself wasting time just watching something that catches my eye. I once sat on a beach in Washington State for over three hours just watching as some freak occurrence drove thousands of small fish into the surf line, where the birds swarmed in and dove down again and again, grabbing an easy dinner.

When I lived on the Northwest coast, I loved watching the storms roll in off the ocean, sending huge waves crashing onto the beach and jetty. After the storm would clear, I’d go for long walks, picking up odd pieces of driftwood and flotsam, and once even a round glass ball used as a fishing float.

Yesterday was a good example of just stumbling upon something interesting and finding a way to pass the time.

There are quite a few huge old oak trees here at the Mercer County Fairgrounds in Celina, Ohio, and yesterday afternoon a large limb on one of the trees cracked with a loud noise and sagged down onto an electric line, pulling a nearby power pole off center at an angle.

The County Public Works garage is here at the fairgrounds, and a crew of men and a boom truck quickly arrived to cut down the limb before it came down on some unsuspecting passerby or vehicle.

A project like this is pretty far removed from my usual day, so I sat down at a picnic table and watched as a worker climbed into the boom bucket, raised himself into the tree, and used a chain saw to cut away branches and smaller limbs until he could get to the broken limb.

As the close up photo shows, the offending limb was probably eighteen inches in diameter, and certainly weighed several hundred pounds, so the trimming job required a lot of caution. I sure was glad our motorhome wasn’t under it when that thing let go!

Thought For The Day – It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

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In a conversation with a new fulltimer the other day, he mentioned that the one thing he knows he’ll miss is his gardening hobby. Apparently he had a greenhouse at his former home and is well known for his roses, which have won ribbons in the county fair for years. He asked me what hobbies best fit into the RV lifestyle.

I guess growing prize winning roses might be difficult in an RV, but there are many hobbies that fit perfectly with the RV lifestyle. We have known many fulltime RVers with interesting hobbies, and many have customized their RVs to accommodate their hobbies and special interests.

Some of our personal hobbies include geocaching, reading, kayaking, crocheting and cooking (Terry), and target shooting. We know other fulltime RVers who are into woodcarving, bird watching, fishing, playing music, bicycling, volkswalking, photography, making stained glass, and quilting, to name just a few.

The RV lifestyle makes it easy to enjoy your hobbies and special interests. If you enjoy bird watching, you can travel to some of the best birding spots in the nation. RVing geocachers can hunt for caches at highway rest areas, as well as any place they visit, since caches can be found in every corner of America.

Musicians can take part in jam sessions at RV parks, and follow the blue grass festival circuit as they travel. There are woodcarving events all over the country that can be participated in, including an annual gathering at the Escapees North Ranch RV park in Congress, Arizona.

If golf is your thing, the RV lifestyle is perfect for you. Unlike golfers in northern climates, RVers can play any time of year, because they are (hopefully) not stuck someplace where it snows.

Genealogy is another hobby that is perfect for RVers. It is one thing to know that your great great uncle Angus is buried in a family plot on land he farmed in Missouri, and quite another to be able to travel to the old family farm and actually walk the land your ancestors tilled, and pay your respects in person at their gravesites.

Even though we cannot actively participate in some of the hobbies we enjoyed in our former lives, that doesn’t mean we can’t still have some involvement. I was into classic cars before we hit the road, and sold my four old cars when we became fulltimers. But every once in a while, we’ll see a car show and I can relive memories of my days behind the wheel of my old Corvette or one of my Mustangs.

So what are some of the hobbies and activities that you enjoy as you travel around this great land of ours, and how do they fit into the RV lifestyle?

Thought For The Day – Middle age is having a choice of two temptations and choosing the one that will get you home earlier.

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