After our fast trip from Colorado to Iowa, then our busy week in Forest City getting our motorhome worked on, and then our fast trip to northern Michigan, we needed some time to catch up, both on our sleep, and our paperwork. Not to mention our laundry.

So yesterday morning we slept in, and then started whittling down our long “To Do” list. The first order of the day for Miss Terry was to begin reducing the pile of laundry that had accumulated. Since we hadn’t had full hookups since we left Colorado, it was threatening to spill out of the basket and take over the bedroom.

Terry hates laundromats, and is getting used to the washer/dryer combo in our Winnebago. She says it’s not as good as the separate Whirlpool washer and dryer units that we had in our MCI bus conversion, but it’s much better than the old Splendide we had in our first motorhome. An added plus for her while we’re visiting family here in Traverse City is that she doesn’t use our dryer, she hangs things out on the clothesline. Is there anything as crisp as freshly washed sheets that have dried outside in the sun?

I had a mountain of my own to deal with as I worked my way through an accumulation of e-mail. I have to say that I get pretty frustrated when I tell people that I’m in a poor internet service area, and not to send me any forwards or jokes, and they do so anyway. One fellow sent me 19 in one day, and 13 the next! When I wrote and asked him (again) not to do that, he just replied “If you don’t want them, don’t read them.” Here’s a better idea, fellow, I’ll just block all of your e-mail from now on!

Two weeks’ backlog of snail mail had arrived from our mail forwarding service, and we were also busy sorting that and logging in renewals, book orders, and rally registrations.  We also received back an order we sent out to J. Andrews of Mesa, Arizona, with a notation by the post office that it was undeliverable. If you’re reading this, please contact us with a current address, so we can get your items out to you.

One of the reasons we rushed here so fast is that we have a very dear friend who is fighting a tough battle with cancer, and things have been touch and go for a while now. When Miss Terry was going through that ordeal herself, our friend was a constant source of love and support, and we wanted to get here to spend as much time with her as possible and as her stamina allowed. So during the afternoon we paid a visit on her.

I also went to the Northwestern Michigan Fairgrounds to check out their campground and talk to the folks there about the possibility of  holding one of our Gypsy Gathering rallies there in the future.

They have 120 sites with 20/30/50 amp electric power, water bibs, and two dump stations. They told me that they can also put out portable power lines to provide electric to plenty more RVs, as needed. The buildings are a little small for our crowd, but it might be workable.

If you find yourself in Traverse City, this is the best bargain on camping anywhere in the area. Rates are just $20 a night, or $125/week. In this resort area, that’s a heck of a deal.

As these photos show, they can accommodate any size RV, and there is enough to see and do in this area to keep you busy all summer long. Check out their website for more information.  

In another of those small world syndrome things that happen so often, we discovered that the campground hosts, Henry and Kay Hauffe, just had their fifth wheel painted by our pal Michele Henry at Phoenix Commercial Paint in Elkhart, and that they know many of the same people that we do. The community of fulltime RVers may be spread out all across the land, but we are a close knit group.

It was my cousin Terry Cook’s birthday, so in the evening we took him and his wife Peggy out to dinner to celebrate. By the time we got back to the motorhome, we were tired and looking forward to climbing into bed again.

Thought For The Day – Keep your words both soft and tender, because tomorrow you may have to eat them.

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Yesterday we did another one of those long days on the road that I always tell everybody else not to do. I never take my own advice. We were up at 7 a.m. (I really need to break that nasty habit), and on the road by 8. We started our day in northern Wisconsin, and by the time I backed the Winnebago into my cousin Terry Cook’s driveway in Traverse City, Michigan that evening, we had rolled up 480 miles for the day.

We drove north out of Wausau, Wisconsin on U.S. Highway 51, hooked up with U.S. Highway 8, and followed it east across Wisconsin. This is hilly country, and while the road was a nice two lane most of the way, with a few passing zones on the steeper hills, in some places it was like riding a roller coaster.

It is amazing how lush the foliage is in this part of the country. Dense forests and thick underbrush lined both sides of the highway. We passed through a few small settlements, but there isn’t much in the way of city life way up there.

We crossed into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the charming little town of Norway, where we got onto U.S. Highway 2 and followed it to Escanaba, and then along the Lake Michigan shoreline for 145 miles. The water is incredibly blue here, and in some places the roadway is just feet from the shoreline.

There are plenty of marked pullouts where you can stop to admire the water and play in the sand.

In other places, people park on the shoulder of the highway to access the lake shore.

They call the hardy folks who live here Yoopers, for the initials of the Upper Peninsula, UP. It’s a beautiful place in the summertime, but in the winter, I want no part of it.

If you heard a high pitched wailing coming from the Midwest yesterday afternoon, don’t worry, Tiny Tim didn’t break a fingernail. That was me driving across the Mackinac Bridge.

I have a real phobia about driving over bridges, and in the last couple of years, I have been working very hard to conquer it. But as I wrote in yesterday’s blog, the very high, five mile long Mackinac Bridge that connects the Upper Peninsula with the rest of Michigan, scares the hell out of me. I’ve driven it a couple of times in the past, and found it absolutely terrifying. So ever since, when we have come this way, it was just easier to have Miss Terry drive while I sniveled, because I am not very good at multitasking.

But I believe we have to face our fears head on if we ever hope to overcome them. All the way to the bridge, I was debating with myself whether I was going to keep driving, or chicken out again. Terry is very understanding of my many shortcomings, and she let me know that she would be happy to drive if I wanted her to, or to talk me across the bridge if I needed that.

We rolled up to the toll booth, paid our $12.50 for the motorhome and van we tow behind us, and I was committed. Up, up, and away! The bridge is four lanes wide, the two outside lanes being paved, and the center lanes are paved part of the way, and then grated steel on the higher portions of the bridge. Trucks and RVs are supposed to stay in the outside lanes.

Did I mention that it is very high? Giant Great Lakes freighters look like tiny toys from the bridge. Not that I was looking down to see any!

Don’t I look like I’m having fun? If I seem taller in this picture, it is due to a phenomena known as the pucker factor. Cops, pilots and anybody who has ever been in combat are very familiar with the term.

It didn’t help that when we approached the very top of the bridge, we had to change lanes not once, but twice, for construction zones. I was having a hard enough time just following the truck ahead of me in a straight line, let alone changing lanes back and forth!

I’m not too proud to say that I did a lot of whimpering as we crossed the bridge, but Miss Terry kept calmly assuring me that it was okay, that I could do this, and that everything was fine. If it wasn’t for her, I may have just stopped right there in the middle of the roadway and ran back to the bedroom and covered up my head. But, like everything else we do in our life, we got through it together, and I made it to the other side. Thanks, baby, for your strength when I have none of my own.

Some people may think it’s pretty silly to be so afraid of a simple thing like driving over a bridge. But what can I say? I didn’t choose this dumb phobia, it chose me.

So I drove the damned bridge. And I’m in no hurry to go back and do it again. We were halfway to Traverse City before the above mentioned pucker factor eased up and I could sit all the way back down in my seat!

Thought For The Day – I plan on living forever. So far, so good.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Yesterday we drove a few miles to Britt, Iowa to check out the Hobo Museum, and instead found ourselves caught up in a wild crowd of bikers who had taken over this tiny farming community.

But don’t worry, these weren’t outlaw motorcycle gangs on a rampage, but rather bicyclists participating in the Des Moines Register newspaper’s annual bicycling event, the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI, for short.

Each year thousands of bicycle enthusiasts participate in the seven day long event, which takes a different route across the state each time.  This year the ride began in Sioux City and will end in Dubuque. Now in its 38th year, RAGBRAI is the oldest, largest and longest bicycle touring event in the world. The route follows the back roads all of the way, and stops for the night at selected small towns along the way.

RAGBRAI is a bicycle ride, not a race, and the route is laid out with an average of 68 miles per day. RAGBRAI is limited to 8,500 week-long riders and 1,500 day riders, who participate in a lottery to be included. But the ride has few rules, and thousands more unofficial riders, who call themselves “pirates,” also participate. Some ride the entire route, and many more ride just short sections. Riders range in age from 10 years to over 80 years old,

This year, the number of riders we heard about in Britt ranged from 15,000 to 17,000. and that doesn’t include the thousands of support personnel who travel the route in cars, pickups, vans, converted school buses, and RVs, carrying tents, bicycle parts, supplies, clothing, and food.

One might think that Iowa’s small towns would would cringe at the thought of hordes of riders and support teams descending on them, but quite the contrary, towns bid for the opportunity to be included in the route. These riders bring a lot of money to town. In addition to filling local motels and restaurants, every night is  a party. We were told that during their stay in one town this week, they spent over $50,000 for beer alone! In one town! I don’t know how accurate that figure is, but from what we saw, this is definitely a group that rides hard and parties harder, and some folks looked like they were sweating more than water and salt as they passed by us!

In addition to the riders and their support teams, the sidewalks were filled and the streets lined with vendors selling everything from cookies to t-shirts, and people who just came to see all of the activity and watch the parade of riders go by.

One lady even brought her goat to town for all of the festivities. After all, it is Iowa!

We watched the riders for a while, visited the Hobo Museum, where Miss Terry took my picture with a gentleman named Todd “Ad Man” Walters, who was crowned King of the Hoboes at Britt’s annual National Hobo Convention in 2005. I’ll have a feature story on the Hobo Museum in the next issue of he Gypsy Journal.

Back at Forest City, we had hoped that the work on our motorhome would be finished yesterday, but they still have a couple of hours left before everything is done. Hopefully, we’ll be on the road by noon today.

We’re looking forward to getting up to Traverse City and settling in for a few days, while we get Miss Terry’s annual medical checkup out of the way, and visit my cousin Terry Cook and his family, and our friends there.

And after days of getting up so early, I plan to sleep very late, then open my eyes, take a look at the world, and then roll over and go back to sleep again!

Thought For The Day – An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We have had a good week in Salt Lake City, and really enjoyed our time here. We look forward to coming back again.  Pony Express RV Resort is an excellent base for exploring the area, though we actually have not done any “exploring” while we’ve been here. Most of my time has been spent doing genealogy research at the Family History Library, and Terry has been busy finishing up a project for her son’s wedding.

Salt Lake City is an interesting town. Many of the city streets are very wide, 132 feet to be exact, designed by the early settlers, with room enough for a covered wagon pulled by a team of four oxen to turn around.

The Mormon influence is obviously very strong, but one of the first things we saw coming in from the west on Interstate 80 was a billboard advertising a topless “gentlemen’s club.” A local business owner told me that just a block or two away from Temple Square, the centerpiece of the Mormon religion, State Street is known for drugs, prostitution, and gang activity.

We have a long day ahead of us today. We’re headed for Gypsum, Colorado, where we will stay at River Dance RV Resort for a few days while we attend Terry’s son’s wedding in Vail. The route my Microsoft Streets & Trips computer mapping program suggested was U.S. Highway 40 into Colorado, and then state routes southeast to Meeker and on to Rifle, where we would pick up Interstate 70 into Gypsum. That’s about 370 miles from where we are.

But, I have learned that one cannot always trust mapping programs, or GPS units, for that matter. In talking to several people who are familiar with this area, we decided to take a longer route that they tell me is a much easier trip – Interstate 15 south to Spanish Fork, where we’ll pick up U.S. Highway 6 and follow it to Interstate 70, near Green River, Utah, and on to Gypsum. This route is about 25 miles longer, but looks to be an easier trip.

That’s a longer trip than most fulltimers do in one day, and we prefer shorter days on the road ourselves. But we can handle it, and we want to get in and settled so we’ll have a couple of days to relax and enjoy some family time before the wedding.

I’m not sure what kind of Verizon service we’ll have in Gypsum. Their coverage map shows they have high speed EVDO, but I have learned that one cannot always rely on what the maps show. Then again, here in North Salt Lake the service has ranged from super fast to just a little bit slower than sludge. So if you log on tomorrow and there is no blog, be patient and I’ll get it up as soon as possible. Likewise, if you send me an e-mail and don’t get a speedy reply, be patient and I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

After the wedding is over, we have to make a fast trip across the country. We want to stop in Forest city, Iowa to have some work done at the Winnebago factory, and then we have to get to Traverse City, Michigan for Terry’s annual oncologist checkup the first week of August. From there, we have to rush down to Elkhart, Indiana to get all of the last minute details handled before our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally the end of August.

Several blog readers have invited us to stop and visit on our trip east, but I’m afraid there just isn’t time. One of these days, I’m going to stop all this busy-busy nonsense, get myself one of them there recreational vehicle motorhome thingies, and just relax and travel!

Thought For The Day – Yes, I do understand your problem. I just don’t  care.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Like most fulltime RVers, we always say that our plans are written in Jello, because, while we may think we know where and when we’ll be going someplace, we never know when something will come up to change our minds at the last minute.

We had planned to leave Show Low on Tuesday and take a trip up through the northeastern corner of Arizona, including Canyon de Chelly National Monument, the Four Corners Monument, and maybe Monument Valley, since I have never been to any of those places, even though we lived in northeastern Arizona for years before we hit the road. We planned to spend a few days, maybe a week, on the road, and then come back here to get the next issue of the Gypsy Journal ready to print.

But, in researching RV parks along our intended route, we began to have second thoughts. There doesn’t seem to be much to choose from, and what we found had some pretty dismal reviews. I also discovered that Four corners Monument, where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah come together, is currently closed except on weekends. Hmmm…. this wasn’t coming together at all like we had planned!

So we stirred up the Jello and rewrote our plans. I extended our stay here at the Elks campground for two more weeks, and instead of taking the motorhome, we’ll do some day trips up north in the van. We may even make an overnight trip if time runs short.

Sometime about mid-June, once we get the new issue finished, we plan (keeping that old Jello thing in mind) to wander over toward the central California coast. We honeymooned in Morro Bay, and we love that area between Pismo Beach and Cambria. Then we will move a bit further north to the Morgan Hill Thousand Trails preserve, where we will do some exploring and sit out the Fourth of July holiday.

As most fulltimers do, we try to plan ahead to be settled into a campsite well before summer holidays arrive and we stay put until all of the weekend warriors go back home to their schedules and their responsibilities. Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day are the three times we always try to have reservations ahead of time, because we learned in our first summer on the road that if we try to find something at the last minute, it isn’t going to happen.

We also have reservations for mid-July at a campground in Colorado, because Terry’s son Casey is getting married July 18 in Vail. That is one commitment we can’t miss, so that is written in concrete instead of Jello.

Then we have to make a beeline for the Midwest, with a stop in Traverse City, Michigan for Terry’s annual oncologist checkup, and then on to Elkhart Campground in Indiana to get things rolling for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally August 30 to September 3, another commitment written in concrete. After the rally we’ll have just over a week before we have to be in Hershey, Pennsylvania for the big PRVCA RV Show.

As you can see, we have a lot of traveling planned for this summer. But who knows what might happen if we stir the Jello again?

Thought For The Day – It’s lonely at the top, but you eat better.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!