As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, when we were in town on Wednesday, we spent some time at the National Museum of American History, which is one of the dozen or so museums that make up the Smithsonian in Washington. This is our favorite of them all.

We saw all kinds of interesting exhibits and famous things, including the original flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the siege of Baltimore in the War of 1812, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the Star-Spangled Banner, which became our country’s national anthem.  No photographs are allowed of the flag to protect it for future generations.

But I did get some pictures of a few other things you will recognize, including Archie and Edith Bunker’s chairs from the sitcom All In The Family.

And here’s some memorabilia from another favorite old television show, the jacket worn by the Fonz in Happy Days. Next to the jacket is country comedienne Minnie Pearl’s famous hat, complete with dangling price tag!

And for the ladies who like cooking shows, such as Miss Terry, they even have Julia Childs’ kitchen on display!

As well as the ruby slippers that Dorothy wore in The Wizard of Oz.

The museum’s collections include everything from musical instruments to coins, dresses worn by America’s First Ladies, weapons, computers, and anything else that tells the story of America and Americans.

We’re supposed to leave here Sunday, and our original plan was to go to the Thousand Trails campground in Gloucester, Virginia for a couple of weeks. But we have a new issue of the Gypsy Journal to get out, and I’m having trouble finding a newspaper printer in the area who uses the same size paper we do, and who can do the job at a price we can afford.

Newspapers don’t get printed at quick print type places, they require a specialized press that is about three times the size of your average motorhome, and cost about 100 times more. We really don’t want to go to the new size of newsprint, which is about two inches narrower and three inches shorter per page than our current format, but sooner or later we may be forced to.

So we’re up in the air right now as to our next move.  I have some feelers out to other newspaper printing plants in the region, because our only other option is to go all the way back to Elkhart to get printed at our regular printer in that area. We really don’t want to backtrack that far if we can help it.

The big storm that has been pounding the east coast certainly pounded us here at Cherry Hill Park in College Park, Maryland. We decided to just stay home yesterday and take a day off from playing tourist, but if the weather gives us a break, we’ll be back at it today. We only have a couple of days left here in the Washington D.C. area, and there is so much to see and do that we could never get to all of it. But, it sure is fun trying!

Bad Nick took advantage of the rainy day yesterday to write a new Bad Nick Blog titled Why Didn’t They Resist? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

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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.

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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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