In terms of technology, Kingman, Arizona is stuck in the Stone Age. They should call this place Bedrock and elect Fred Flintstone mayor. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cops here carried big clubs instead of pistols, and answered nuisance calls for dinosaurs running at large.

We have been in truck stops in far west Texas, and boondocking out in the middle of the desert in Quartzsite, and have had better service on our Verizon cell phones and air card than we get here in Kingman. Getting online at all is a challenge, and being able to navigate to any website or open an e-mail is a crapshoot at best. While we are showing five bars of National Access signal strength, any type of data transfer is nearly impossible.

As I understand it from other RVers who have spent any time here, AT&T service is just as slow. I guess the local good old boys have their little monopoly and aren’t letting anybody else get a toehold in.

To load yesterday’s blog posts, at midnight we had to drive a couple of miles to a McDonald’s restaurant to use their free WiFi signal. Even that was pretty slow, in comparison to our normal service! But we’ll just have to do that for the time we’re here.

To repeat what I asked in yesterday’s blog, please folks, don’t send me jokes and forwards for the next week or so. It takes so long to load them, and they just fill up my inbox.

But, it’s worth the inconvenience to be able to spend a few days with my friend Mike Howard. Mike and I go so far back that I almost think Fred Flintstone may have been one of our playmates back in the day. Whenever I go to visit somebody that I have known forever, but don’t see on a daily basis, it always amazes me how old they have gotten. How can that be? I’m still only in my early 20s in my own mind. In fact, who is that old fart that keeps showing up in my mirror every morning when I brush my teeth? What’s that geezer doing there?

I have received a lot of e-mail and comments from folks about yesterday’s blog, in which I wrote about the TA truck stop here in Kingman dinging my debit card for $500 as a “security fee” when we purchased fuel on our way into town. I’ve heard from several other RVers who have experienced similar problems at different truck stops across the country.

Apparently, the folks at TA monitor such things, because I got an e-mail from a lady in their corporate office saying that a gentleman would be calling me to “correct this situation for you.” However, as of right now, that was the last I’ve heard. There was no follow-up phone call, and the money has not been put back into my bank account. The “situation” remains “uncorrected.”

Of course, maybe they’re chipping out a reply to me on a stone tablet, and that’s what is taking so long. Such is life in Bedrock.

Yabba-Dabba-Doo! 

 Thought For The Day – You can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you’re not in a hurry. – Paul Theroux  

We pulled out of the Camping World in Robertsdale just after 9 a.m. yesterday morning, took State Route 59 north through Loxley to Interstate 10, and turned west. A few minutes later we were crossing Mobile Bay on the causeway, past the impressive bulk of the battleship U.S.S. Alabama, her big guns looking mighty intimidating.

On the west side of the bay we entered the George C. Wallace tunnel, and came out the other end, with the downtown area behind us. Every time we drive through here, I think every American city should be laid out the same way. No traffic hassles, just drive under the darn town!

Traffic was light, and we scooted across the lower edge of Alabama and crossed into Mississippi with no delays. We stopped at the Flying J in Gulfport, and I wanted to get propane while we were there, but the way the RV island is laid out, we had to stop just inside the RV entrance to the parking lot at the propane station, and as I was waiting for the attendant to come out and fill our propane tank, a big motorhome towing a car tried to pull in and was left hanging halfway out into the road because we were blocking the way. An eighteen wheeler was right behind them, so I pulled forward to the fuel pumps so we didn’t have a huge traffic jam. We have enough in our tank to last a while, so we’ll wait until we’re somewhere more convenient to get propane.

Back on the highway, we rolled past miles of flooded countryside, with a long line of billboards sticking up out of the water, advertising one headliner after another who will be appearing at the local casinos. We entered Louisiana, and took the Interstate 12 route around the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, avoiding the traffic in the New Orleans area.

We ran into a traffic slowdown in Baton Rouge, and managed to thread our way through to come back out on Interstate 10, where we crossed the Horace Wilkinson cantilever bridge over the Mississippi River. This is the highest bridge on the Mississippi, and Miss Terry commented that I really seem to be handling bridges much better, because I didn’t snivel. I told her I was too busy trying not to run over four wheelers and hoping an eighteen wheeler wouldn’t run over us to have time to snivel!

We made good time all the way across Louisiana, and the promised stormy weather held off, although we did get some stiff wind around Lafayette, and just a sprinkle or two of raindrops. The Atchafalaya Swamp Freeway is an eighteen mile long elevated stretch of Interstate 10 that bridges the Atchafalaya River and its accompanying swamp, where trees stuck out of the water for as far as the eye could see. The roadway is narrow, and about as bumpy a stretch of pavement as you’ll find anywhere in North America. We shook, rattled, and bounced our way along, and I commented to Miss Terry that as nice as our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage is, our old MCI bus conversion handled this rough piece of highway a lot better. Interstate 10 across Louisiana has a reputation as a terrible roadway, and it is much deserved. More than one RVer we know has had things shake off their walls and out of cabinets as they bounced along.

Eventually the road smoothed out, and at Exit 36, on the east side of Lake Charles, we turned north for three miles on Pujol Road, a good two lane that passed a couple of RV parks. The road ends at a T intersection, and we turned right and went another mile to White Oak Park, a nice little Calcasieu Parish park on the bank of the Calcasieu River. The park has eight pull- through concrete RV sites with good 50 amp electric, water, and a dump station. At $12/night, or half price if you have a National Parks senior or handicapped pass, the park is a heck of a deal.

There was one fifth wheel trailer, which is unoccupied, and the beautiful Tiffin Phaeton motorhome of our friends Mark and Sue Didelot. We unhooked the van and pulled into the site next to theirs. Mark greeted us, and a few minutes later Sue returned from town and came over, and then she excused herself to go back to their coach, where she prepared us a wonderful dinner of salmon from their summer trip to Alaska, along with shrimp, and all the trimmings. Yummy! Thanks for the great welcome and the delicious dinner, Mark and Sue!

We had originally planned to push on to the Thousand Trails in Columbus, Texas today, but we can’t pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal until Monday. So we decided to stay here two nights, and drive through Houston on Christmas morning, when hopefully, there won’t be as much traffic.

We have three bars of EVDO on our Verizon cell phones, no problem getting a signal on our TV dish, and it’s not cold. Life is good.

Thought For The Day – A friend is someone you can see through and still enjoy the show.

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It has been raining so hard here at the fairgrounds in Sedalia, Missouri that some RVs are either going to have to be towed out, or else sit in the same spot until it eventually dries out.

We started out vending outside, which is usually our preference, but the rain was making it impossible to do business. Even under our canopy, our books were getting ruined and nobody was going to stop and stand in the rain to visit. To make matters worse, as I was doing my nightly ritual of painting Miss Terry’s toenails as she soaked in a bath of warm milk and eucalyptus oil, I noticed that she was beginning to grow webs between her toes.

Something had to be done, and my good buddies Jack and Doreen Ingle from PoliSeek Insurance (formerly AON) sprang to the rescue. They had reserved two indoor vending spaces, and only needed one, so yesterday morning Jack arranged for us to move inside next to them. Thanks Jack and Doreen, we really appreciate your generosity.

There are a lot of great vendors at Escapade. My friend Orv Hazelton told me that he and Nancy had discovered a crack on the cover to their seven year old Fantastic Vent on the way to the Escapade. Orv mentioned this to Jim Wood, the vendor for Fantastic Fans, here in the Indoor Market, and Jim said that he’d take a look at the unit yesterday. Orv said when he and Nancy got back to their coach after being out wandering around, they discovered that Jim had installed a new vent motor, cover, and fan blade! This clearly wasn’t a warranty issue, just superb customer service from Fantastic Fan and Jim Wood. 

Even though we have four bars of EVDO service on our Verizon cell phones here at the fairgrounds, we are experiencing very slow internet service until late at night. I guess the cell towers are swamped with so many RVers here, until everybody goes to bed.

Speaking of Verizon cell phones, my contract allows me to get a new phone every two years, and I am about due. I really like the looks of the Blackberry Storm, and the idea of getting my e-mail even when I’m away from my computer appeals to me. The other Blackberry models don’t have the touch screen, and my fat little fingers have a problem with the tiny buttons on them. Do any of you readers have a Blackberry Storm? If so, I’d like to hear your feedback on it.

I played with somebody’s iPhone yesterday and really liked it, but they are not available on the Verizon network and won’t be for a year or so, if then.

Okay, I guess the score is Bureaucrats 1, Common Sense 0. A year or so ago I wrote about Ray & Kathleen Robinson, who have built a railroad on their 40 acres in Oregon as a hobby, and how the local bean counters were trying to force them to close it down. According to a blog post titled Last Chance At A Railroad, Dan Chance writes that after a prolonged battle, the Robinson’s have had to concede defeat. Read all about this miscarriage of justice on Dan’s blog. Did I ever mention how much I dislike bureaucrats?

Thought For The Day – You’re getting old when getting lucky means you can find your car in the WalMart parking lot.

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