We arrived at the  Morgan Hill Thousand Trails preserve on Monday, with a fourteen day reservation. We expected it to be busy with the holiday weekend and all, but we had no problem finding a nice, level site with a good shot at the sky for our TV dish. I wasn’t impressed that the air conditioning in the Adult Lounge wasn’t working, making it too hot to be in there, but that wasn’t a deal breaker.

As expected, the campground filled up over the next few days, and by Friday morning it was packed. A large crowd of young people were parked on both sides of us, in front, and behind us. They were having a good time, and we had no problem with that, except that they kept walking through our campsite.

But then they brought out a boom box that was so loud that, sitting inside our RV with the windows closed, air conditioner on, and TV on, we had to turn the TV almost all the way up to hear it. Somebody must have complained, because a ranger came by and talked to them, and they turned it down for about 20 minutes, and then had it at full blast again. Finally, late in the evening I walked over and told them to turn it down or off, and they did.

About mid-day yesterday the power went off, and since it was in the high 80s, we opened our windows and turned on our exhaust fans, but it still quickly got to 93 degrees in our motorhome, according to our digital thermostat. I called the main office number, and the ranger station, but nobody answered the phone, so after a half hour or so I went looking and found an employee, and told him about the power. He said “If all of you people wouldn’t have your AC on during the heat of the day, that wouldn’t happen.” Huh? When should I run my AC, if not during the hottest part of the day?

Meanwhile, back at our RV, the fellow next to us, part of the party crowd, had fired up a cheap construction type generator, which was very loud, and was right under our open window, so the fumes were coming inside our rig. A few minutes later the worker came by and said he had reset the breaker for our area, but to expect it to go out again pretty soon. Terry complained about the generator, so he went across the street and found the owner, and had him shut it down. As predicted, the power didn’t stay on very long, and we were back to sitting in a sauna.

Apparently these were local people, because several cars came in on day passes to party with them, and it kept getting louder. No power, a loud noisy crowd with no regard for other people and no respect for their space, and a campground staff that didn’t care. That was enough for us.  Our bullshit tolerance level had been exceeded.

One of the great things about the RV lifestyle is that, if you don’t like the neighbors, you can move. And that’s just what we did! We left Thousand Trails and went to the Elks lodge in Gilroy, about twelve miles away. They have eight back-in sites with 50 amp electric and water, on a hill with a great view.

The place is almost full, and though the RVs are parked pretty close together, we still have as much or more room than we did at the Thousand Trails, and it is nice and quiet. We’re much more comfortable here, and glad we moved.

When we left the Thousand Trails, Terry stopped at the guard shack to tell them why we were leaving early, and that we were unhappy, but the ranger just said “Okay, have a nice day.” As we were leaving, a sheriff’s car was pulling in with lights flashing. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t care. We won’t be back again.

Bad Nick doesn’t let trivial things like obnoxious neighbors and power outages get in his way. He posted a brand new Bad Nick Blog titled Happy Birthday To Us. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. – Theodore Roosevelt

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We spent yesterday getting to know two of my favorite artists a little better. One is known for the pictures he paints on canvas, and the other is even more famous for the pictures he paints with words.

We started out in Salinas, at the National Steinbeck Center, where native son John Steinbeck is honored for his work and for the recognition he brought to this region of California.

I have been a Steinbeck fan ever since I read The Red Pony as a youngster, and over the years I thought I had been through all of his works. How wrong I was! Besides such well known classics as Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, and The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck wrote a total of 27 books, as well as short stories, a few screen plays, and numerous magazine articles.

Exhibits throughout the Steinbeck Center illustrate many of the author’s best known books, including a red pony that kids can touch, produce crates much like the Dust Bowl Oakies would have filled with crops, and a Chinese grocery store from Cannery Row.

It is interesting to note that while Salinas celebrates John Steinbeck these days, at one time his depiction of the plight of the Dust Bowl refugees in The Grapes of Wrath outraged the movers and shakers in this farming region. The book was banned in libraries throughout California’s agricultural communities, and  twice the book was publicly burned in his old hometown. Steinbeck wasn’t the only author that was once vilified in his own hometown. Sauk Centre, Minnesota once burned Sinclair Lewis’ book Main Street because they felt the author showed the community in a bad light.

I learn something (usually a lot of things) new every day, and at the National Steinbeck Center, I learned that the author served as a war correspondent during World War II, and was known to shed his identifying armband that showed him to be a noncombatant, and pick up a rifle when things got ugly.

My favorite John Steinbeck book is Travels With Charley, his road journey epic, and National Steinbeck Center has the GMC truck and camper that the author and his canine pal made their trip in. And yes, I know, Charley was, dare I say it, a French poodle! But at least he was a standard size poodle, not one of those yappy little mutts that aggravate me so. Since he was such a great and prolific author, I’m willing to give Steinbeck a pass on this one indiscretion. The truck and camper are behind protective shields, but we were able to get a picture of the outside of the truck and the inside of the camper.

John Steinbeck was born just two blocks from the National Steinbeck Center, so once we finished our tour of the museum, we walked down to check out the handsome Victorian style house, which is now a restaurant.

From Salinas, we drive to Monterey, where we had planned to tour the Monterey Bay Aquarium. But somehow, communications broke down, and the person who was supposed to leave our passes and media packet at the front desk was unavailable, and the receptionist I spoke to obviously didn’t care enough to look into it, so we scrapped that idea.

Yeas ago, we spent one night in Monterey while on our honeymoon, and we quickly left to return to the slower pace of Morro Bay.  Yesterday, traffic was so hectic, and everybody seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere else, that we both found ourselves getting uptight. With the aquarium visit canceled, we decided to get out of Dodge. Or at least, out of Monterey.

But then we spotted this sign for the Thomas Kinkade National Archive, and decided to stop and check it out. Just as John Steinbeck is my favorite author, Thomas Kinkade is my favorite artist. Known as the “Painter of Light” for the way he incorporates colors to illustrate natural sunlight on a country lane, or the light of a fireplace glowing in a cottage’s windows, Kinkade speaks to my soul, and I could just stand and admire his works for hours.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have hours, since the gallery, which is housed in this beautiful 1886 mansion, would be closing soon. But the very nice young man on duty allowed us to take as much time as we wanted to, and we enjoyed seeing a nice selection of Kinkade prints, as well as some of his original works. Due to copyright laws, we could not take any photographs of the works on display, but you can get an idea of how beautiful they are at the artist’s online gallery.

By the time we stopped for dinner and got back to the Thousand Trails campground, the place was a zoo, with weekend campers, kids, and dogs everywhere.

Everybody seemed to be having a good time, though I did have to go across the street and speak to a group who are camping together in two RVs. Having fun is one thing, but when we’re in our motorhome, with the windows closed and the air conditioner on, and we cannot hear our television because of a loud boom box, Bad Nick gets aggravated and needs to get off his leash. One person’s rights end where another person’s rights begin.

Thought For The Day – If at first you don’t succeed, try again. But this time, do it the way your wife told you to in the first place.

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For the most part, fulltime RVers are pretty darned patriotic people. But a lot of us still dread the Independence Day holiday every year. Not because we don’t like small town parades and fireworks, but because we know that everybody with a tent, trailer, bus or motorhome will be filling up RV parks from coast to coast.

We learned during our first summer on the road that if we are not comfortably ensconced in an RV park by at least Wednesday of the weeks of the Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day holidays, chances are that we might not find a place to stay, and would be celebrating the holiday at Camp Wal-Mart.

So we’ve been comfortably parked at the Morgan Hill Thousand Trails preserve since Monday, and the place is really starting to fill up with holiday campers. In case you don’t know it yet, there is a difference between campers and RVers.

We spent most of yesterday just watching what I call the Holiday Hula. What? You’ve never heard of the Holiday Hula? That’s the dance weekend campers do as they drive through a campground looking for just the right campsite.

All day long there was an endless parade of RVs, mostly small travel trailers and fifth wheels, cruising up and down the campground’s roads, stopping here and there to scope out an RV site, and then driving on, searching for one just a little bit better.

Of course, here the sites are all basically about the same. You have two choices – in the trees or out in the open. And since it looks like all of the shaded sites have already been taken, that leaves just the sites out in the open, in the area where we are parked.

Still, we see one rig after another stopping while they check out a site, and then driving on. Sometimes they decide that what they have already seen is better than what they found next, for whatever reason, and they come back. If they’re lucky, somebody else hasn’t snatched the site already, and it’s still available.

But the fun isn’t over yet. If I had a camcorder, I could put together an entire segment of America’s Funniest Videos just filming people trying to park and hook up to the campground utilities. Oh, the things we have seen!

One guy took six or seven tries to get his trailer into a pull-through site, another tried to back in, rather than going around to pull through, and ended up almost sideways in the camp site. Where is Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School when we need him?

I walked down to the trash dumpster, and along the way I saw one travel trailer that had a spare tire under the hitch instead of a jack or stabilizer; another fellow was hooking up a green garden hose to the water bib; and another was on his roof,  with a tripod mounted portable TV dish anchored down by bungee cords, trying to find a satellite. I was tempted to ask him why he didn’t just put it on the ground like everybody else, but I was afraid he’d try to explain it to me.

And what’s a holiday at a campground without kids? LOTS of kids! Kids of every size. Small kids, big kids, loud kids, and louder kids. And even some pretty nice kids too. Or a least I thought so when a couple of boys were playing ball and stopped as I walked past, until I heard one tell the other “Hold on so you don’t hit that old guy.” Smart alec kids!

At least we shouldn’t have any smoky campfires to contend with, due the the area’s high fire danger.

But what the heck, it’s a holiday weekend. Campers have to have fun too. And by Monday night most of them will be gone, and life can return to normal.

Bad Nick wants nothing to do with the holiday crowds, so he stayed inside yesterday, writing a new Bad Nick Blog titled Justice Isn’t Just Blind, She’s Stupid Too! Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If we quit voting, will they go away?

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Labor Day weekend. The last big hurrah of the summer traveling and camping season for most people.

It’s going to be a busy weekend here at Elkhart Campground. Already RVs of every size and description are pulling in, and campground owner Bobby Patel tells me they have a lot of camping sites reserved for the entire weekend.

For fulltime RVers like ourselves, most holiday weekends don’t matter much, except for the fact that we have to plan ahead and get a place to park before every campground and RV park fills up with weekend campers. Most fulltimers we know try to get into a park by Wednesday or Thursday before the holiday weekend, and sit tight until about Tuesday of the next week, staying off the highway until things settle down and everybody gets back home.

Besides all of the weekend campers, we have quite a few folks we know here at the campground. Ron and Brenda Speidel have been parked next to us for a couple of weeks now, helping us get moved and settled into our new motorhome. What would we do without these two? Dale and Terry pace have been here for several weeks now, and we have visited with them several times.

Howie and Norah Glover arrived a few days ago, and yesterday Ken and Billie Barker arrived from their home in Missouri, and yesterday Dave and Linda Sand arrived, though we have not had a chance to talk to them yet. Linda is very good about sending me many of the little Thought For The Day sayings I use at the bottom of this blog.

With most of the move completed from the bus, I have turned my attention to creating a website for Carlyle Lehman, the owner of Focal Wood Products in nearby Nappanee, Indiana. Carlyle, an accomplished Amish craftsman, is famous in RV circles for his excellent custom furniture, and he is building a custom desk for me and a desk/workstation for Miss Terry, along with a bookcase, for the Winnebago. If you have had Carlyle build anything for your RV, I would really appreciate any digital photos you might be willing to share for use in Carlyle’s website.

Because I don’t have enough irons in the fire, between publishing the Gypsy Journal, four websites, writing for the RV.Net Blog, and now three blogs of my own, I also get to brag about a new book that I co-authored with Christy Pinheiro titled The Step-By-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit!

The book was published this week and is available on Amazon.com. Here is a link to the book’s website, for anyone interested in checking it out. If there is a book inside of you, get yourself a copy of our new book, and check out my self-publishing website, Publishing4Profit. I’ve supported myself by crunching words for most of my adult life, and it’s a lot more fun than working for a living.

But Bad Nick has been busy too. He just put up a new blog post titled Stick A Label On It. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

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With summer in full swing, and gas prices way down from this time last year, a lot of RVs are on the go. We’re expecting a full house here at Elkhart Campground next weekend for the 4^th of July holiday.

As fulltimers, we learned early on that campgrounds fill up fast on holiday weekends during the summer. So we always try to find a place to settle in during the middle of the week and stay put until the next Tuesday or so, to let all of the weekend warriors do their thing and then get back home.

Every once in a while when I complain about weekend campers, someone thinks I am looking down on people who are still living in sticks and bricks houses and can only do their camping on weekends and vacations.

Not at all! We have met many, many wonderful RVers who are not fulltimers or extended time travelers. They have made fine campground neighbors. My problem is with jerks that make noise after hours, allow their kids and dogs to run wild, don’t know how to build a campfire that is not a smudge pot, and ruin the experience for everybody around them.

There are plenty of clods in the fulltime lifestyle too, unfortunately. I remember a group of Bluebird owners in Quartzsite, Arizona two years ago who felt it necessary to blow their musical horns over and over again, serenading everybody around them, whether we wanted to listen or not. And we have had more than our share of fulltimer neighbors with yappy little mutts they think they are just precious and that everybody wants to hear their never ending barking. Bad manners are bad manners, and jerks are jerks, whether they live in RVs or traditional houses.

With the new issue of the Gypsy Journal in the mail, Terry and I have some slack time, but we always find plenty of ways to keep busy. The heat wave has abated a bit, so we may find some place to put our kayaks in the water and do some paddling.

Speaking of the high temperatures that have baked much of the nation, longtime Gypsy Journal reader Richard Prevallet suggested I mention a laser thermometer as a valuable tool to have in any RV. I’ve used one for years. They come in handy to check RV tires and wheel hubs when traveling to alert you to a possible problem before it gets out of hand.

Now that I have a PressurePro system to monitor my tires, I don’t use the laser thermometer as much for that, but I still shoot my wheel hubs when we pull into a rest stop. I also use it to check the surface temperature on our twin radiators. You can get a good quality laser thermometer for $50 or less at Sears, Harbor Freight and any other tool outlet.

Digital laser thermometers, also called laser guns, are simple to use. All you have to do is point the red laser dot at what you want to measure and push the button, and then read the digital display. It’s so simple even I can do it!

Thought For The Day – I am a nutritional overachiever.

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