Terry said we surprised the folks at Tra-Tel RV Park when we pulled out yesterday. Our site was pretty tight, and we had to back out and swing around to get out, and then swing back around a large rock to get out. Apparently most people need to jockey their RVs around a bit to get out of the park, but with Miss Terry’s expert guidance, we were out quickly and smoothly.

Once we left the park, we pulled off the side of the road to hook up the van. I have to tell you, after hassling with our old Brake Buddy auxiliary brake, I sure love the SMI Stay-In-Play unit we replaced it with. No more lugging the heavy brake in and out of the cab of the van, no more fiddling around with fitting an arm over our brake pedal and adjusting it to work. We just turn on the SMI, do a quick brake light check, and off we go.

Well, we do when the brake lights work. This time around, we had turn signals on the van, but no brake lights. I discovered that one of the brake lights on the bus was out also. So I removed the lens cover and jiggled the light bulb, and it was just a loose connection. I put everything back together, and voila, it all worked!

Then I scanned through our tire pressures on our PressurePro tire monitoring system, thanking our pals Mike and Pat McFall once again for convincing me how handy it is, and off we went.

We had a quick and easy 90 mile run on Interstate 10, got onto the 202 Loop just outside of the Phoenix metropolitan area, and scooted around the south side of town, arriving at Pacific Manor on Apache Trail just over two hours after we hit the road. Traffic was light, the bus ran fine, and it was a good day for traveling, even if it was a relatively short distance.

We had one little mishap just after we got on the surface streets, when I turned a corner and one of our cabinet doors sprang open and dumped a pile of canned goods and other food items onto the floor. Fortunately nothing broke open or spilled, so clean up wasn’t much of a problem. It’s just one of those irritating little things that happen sometimes when you live and travel in an RV.

Compared to the time I pulled out of an RV site in Wyoming and swung too early, banging the back end of our first motorhome against the concrete utility pedestal; or the incident early in our fulltiming days, when I pulled out of an RV park with all of our window awnings still out, this was no big deal.

As Miss Terry says when I pull dumb stunts like that, “Nick happens.”

Thought For The Day - Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

My dad never read the newspaper’s obituary column. “I’d rather think that my friends don’t like me anymore and just stopped coming around than to find out that they’re dead,” he’d say.

Sometimes I feel that way when I hear about another fulltime RVer who has come off the road and hung up the keys.

Not that there isn’t life after fulltiming. We’ll all have to hang up the keys someday. But Terry and I just hope that for us, it’s a long, long way down the road. We have too much left that we want to see and do.

The fulltime RV lifestyle isn’t for everyone. We’ve seen a lot of new fulltimers come and go in our many years of traveling. Some tried it for a while, then found some place they fell in love with and settled down there. Others were forced off the road by death or illness. Finances made some RVers come off the road. We’ve known people who have tried fulltiming and discovered that it’s just not for them, and took another direction in life. There’s nothing wrong with that, everybody has to do what’s right for themselves. But I sure miss pulling into a campsite next to them someplace, or sharing a campfire with them.

We’ve also met fulltimers who still live the RV lifestyle, but who have purchased a lot someplace and use it for a base from which they do their traveling, and then return to.

A couple of months ago, Terry and I were very tempted by a lot we found for sale close to the water in Aransas Pass, Texas, a friendly small town we dearly love. But we realized (or feared) that if we had a lot, we’d feel obligated to return to it on a regular basis, if for no other reason than to justify the small expense of the annual property taxes. Would it become the first strand of strings that would eventually tie us down? We mentioned the property to friends, who may purchase it for their own use. Again, to each their own. It’s all about the choices we each make for our own lives. There is no right or wrong answer, no one way of doing it.

We’ve enjoyed the RVing friends we’ve made, those who have settled down someplace, and those who are still out here making the wheels turn. They have become a part of our extended family.

Yesterday two of those friends left us to continue on down the road. Orv and Nancy Hazelton had been parked next to us here at Tra-Tel RV Park for a couple of days, and they left in search of new adventures.

After we saw Orv and Nancy off, Terry and I drove down to Benson and dropped off sample bundles of papers at the local RV parks in that area. As we were leaving the Escapees park, we spotted Rick and Terry Traver pulling in, so we made a U-turn and followed them back to their fifth wheel on a rented lot in the park. Rick and Terry are a neat couple, and it was fun to have some time to visit with them before we made the drive back to Tucson.

That’s one of the great things about this lifestyle, we never know what old (or new) friends await us around the next corner.

Thought For The Day - The most precious thing we have is life, yet it has absolutely no trade-in value.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

Well, it just wasn’t our time to buy a new motorhome. The diesel pusher we have been looking at has sold, and someone is going down the road in an excellent coach. We’re disappointed, but we know that when the time is right, we’ll find the right deal that will work for us.

Meanwhile, life goes on, and we’ve been very busy. We have been here in Tucson almost a month, and we haven’t had the time to do half of what we had hoped to get done. Where does the time go?

A nice couple named Ted and Donna Wallin had volunteered at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally last year, and a while back they dropped by while we were gone and left their business card. As it turns out, they are staying at Prince of Tucson, the RV park right next door to us here at Tra-Tel.

Yesterday, Terry and I stopped by Prince of Tucson to drop off a sample bundle of the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, and I asked the two women working in the office what site our friends were in.

It took me a while to ask my question, because they were involved in a lengthy conversation based upon “You think your surgery was terrible? Wait until I tell you about mine!” Somewhere between an inflamed gall bladder and a complicated hysterectomy, I interrupted, only to be told that Ted and Donna had already moved on.

Back at the bus, I called the Wallins to tell them I was sorry we had been so busy and did not have the chance to connect. As it turns out, they were still at Prince of Tucson, and they came over for a short visit. I’m sure that the two ladies working at the RV park didn’t mean to give me false information. It’s probably all of those lingering effects from the anesthesia.

Speaking of the Ohio Gypsy Gathering, we have opened registration for this year’s rally, which will be September 28 through October 2 at the Mercer County Fairgrounds in Celina. Click this registration link and reserve your site now!

In mid-afternoon, our dear friends Orv and Nancy Hazelton arrived here at Tra-Tel RV Park, in preparation for an appointment with a nearby RV shop to have a new refrigerator installed today. Once they were parked and hooked up, they came by to visit for a while, and then we all piled into our van and had a nice dinner at Terry’s favorite Mexican restaurant, La Fuente. It’s always fun to have time to spend with Orv and Nancy, and to hear about their RV travels.

Back at the bus, I sorted through submissions to our new Todays Hero Blog and selected one to run for today. I have had several people write to tell me that they have someone they wish to nominate for the honor, but they don’t think they are very good writers. No problem, I will try to work with you to edit and rewrite your submission if necessary. Don’t let the heroes in your life miss out on the recognition they deserve because you don’t think you can write. Between the two of us, we can get the job done.

Thought For The Day - A friend is a person who tells you all the nice things about you that you didn’t even know yourself.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

With our rally over and our trip to San Diego behind us, it’s time to settle down and get some work done.

As I wrote a while back, the standard size of American newspapers is shrinking, and our regular printers here in Arizona have switched to the new smaller page sizes. This has required a complete rebuild of the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, setting us back on our print date. We’ll be sending the new issue out late next week, a little behind schedule, unfortunately.

One of the challenges to publishing America’s only on the road periodical that we are aware of, is that we don’t have just one newspaper we use to print every issue. We farm the actual printing out to different newspapers in different parts of the country, wherever we happen to be traveling. Sometimes they get us in and out fast, and other times we go to the bottom of the pile and wait while they take care of their regular customers. I understand why they do this, and when I was running my own print shop, I did the same thing. But it’s still frustrating to have to cool our heels and wait.

We’ll never be able to retire, but if I ever did, I think I’d still be just as busy. There is so much I want to do, but never seem to find the time for. As I wrote a few days ago, Dan Foshee gave me a book on drawing and some art supplies because I told him at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally how much I have always wanted to be able to draw. That is something that I’d really love to apply myself to, just to see if I could ever create more than lopsided stick people.

Something else I have always thought would be interesting to learn more about is genealogy. One of my cousin’ has done a lot of research on my mother’s side of the family, but I really don’t know a lot about my Dad’s side. My parents, grandparents, and all of my uncles and aunts that I ever knew have long since passed away. I am the youngest of my parents’ eight offspring, and the only one still alive. So except for some remembered family stories from long ago, I really don’t have a starting point. Or at least I didn’t think I did. 

At our recent Gypsy Gathering rally in Casa Grande, Judy Bayless put on an excellent seminar called The RVing Genealogist. I got busy and was not able to sit in on the seminar, but everyone who attended it gave Judy rave reviews.

As it turns out, Judy and her husband Walt are parked right in front of us here at Tra-Tel RV Park in Tucson, and last night they took Terry and I out to a wonderful Mexican dinner. Back at their Holiday Rambler motorhome, Judy fired up her computer, and logged into www.ancestry.com.

With just the sketchy information I could give her, she was able to pull up the 1930 and 1920 U.S. Census and locate information on my parents as young newlyweds living on a farm in Michigan, on my Dad’s parents, his brothers and sisters, and even my great grandmother! How cool is that?

Genealogy and RVing go hand in hand, and we have met many fulltimers who research their family trees as they travel. Judy has promised to come to our rally next year and present her seminar again, and you can bet I’ll be sitting right in the front row!  

Thought For The Day - There is no education like adversity.