Fulltime RVers always say that their plans are written in Jell-O, and that’s a good thing, because it gives us the flexibility to go with the flow. Even when the flow is taking us where we don’t want to go!

I have bad news, and good news, and more bad news to share with you. The first bad news is that we have had a change of plans and had to cut our Florida visit short. The good news is that we have received a deposit on our MCI bus conversion and soon it will have a brand new owner. The second bad news is that we have to meet him December 4^th in Elkhart, Indiana. Yes, Indiana in December! Can you say cold?

So yesterday we were out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:30 a.m. and started preparing to leave The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida. I wanted to be on the road by 9 a.m., but we were low on propane, and nobody was going to be available at the resort’s propane station until 9. Okay, how long can it take to get propane? We’d be on the road by 9:15 at the latest. Yeah, right?

I unhooked our utilities while Miss Terry stowed things away inside the motorhome, plugged in our PressurePro tire monitoring system, and started to scan our tires when an alert started beeping, telling me that our right outside dual was low on air. How low, you ask? It was down to eighteen pounds pressure! That’s not a good thing!

Our Winnebago diesel motorhome has an onboard air compressor, and came with a coiled plastic air hose to fill tires and such. I had never used it, but I drug it out of one of our storage bays, only to discover that it was kinked and cracked in three or four places. Totally useless.

The Great Outdoors has its own RV service facility, Eagles Pride, which is conveniently located next door to the propane station. It was a short drive, and I knew I could get there okay with the second tire on that dual side carrying the weight. After taking on propane, which took longer than expected, I walked over to Eagles Pride and asked if they could air up the tire and take a look at it. They said no problem, pull it up in front of one of their service bays.

That’s when I discovered that I had locked the motorhome door and left the keys inside! This day was rapidly going downhill. Fortunately (for me, at least), I had left the sliding window open next to the driver’s seat. I boosted Miss Terry up, she slid the screen out of the way, and crawled inside to open the door.

Ever the optimist, I was hoping that I had burned up all my bad karma, and maybe the flat tire was because I had not screwed on the PressurePro sensor cap correctly and had accidentally allowed the air to seep  out.

No such luck, the tech at Eagles Pride found a bolt stuck in the tread of the tire. They are not set up to repair tires, so they recommended a shop in Cocoa, about twelve miles away. With the tire aired up, we drove to the shop and it took an hour or so for them to take off the tire, remove the bolt and make the repair.

Finally, we hit the road, and rolled north on Interstate 95. We pulled into the Flying J in Saint Augustine for fuel, and since it was almost 2 p.m., had a late lunch. We were back on the road by 2:30, continued north to Interstate 10, and turned west. We were so far behind schedule that I had given up any hope of putting too many miles behind us this driving day. But traffic was light and we scooted right along, making good time.

We don’t like to drive at night, but we pushed it as far as we could, and just as the last light was fading from the sky we pulled into the Flying J at Midway, Florida, just west of Tallahassee. They have several designated RV parking spaces in their parking lot, and we slid in between two other motorhomes and settled in for the night. Including our detour south to Cocoa to get the tire fixed, we had covered 330 miles, which was a good day of driving after all.

Today we’ll have an easy run of 225 miles to the Escapees Rainbow Plantation RV Park in Summerdale, Alabama. We plan to stay there until after Thanksgiving, and then we’ll have a straight shot north up Interstate 65 all the way to Indiana.

That’s assuming, of course, that there are no other last minute changes of plans or problems to get us sidetracked.

Thought For The Day – Plant yourself in good soil if you want to bloom.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Yesterday afternoon we had a delicious meal, courtesy of Dennis and Carol Hill from the RV Driving School. Dennis and Carol have been here at Elkhart Campground for a couple of days, after a summer RV trip to Alaska, and they invited us over for a cookout. The main course was deep fried halibut cheeks. Did you know that the cheek is the best tasting meat to be found on many fish? I know that now. Yummy!

Bill Joyce and Diane Melde joined us in the feast, and our good friends Ron and Brenda Speidel pulled into the campground about the time Dennis was taking the first round of halibut out of his deep fryer. Dennis told me to invite them to join us too, so as soon as they got their beautiful Winnebago diesel coach parked next to our bus and ran their leveling jacks down and their slides out, they came down.

There was so much food that I think that even though we all stuffed ourselves, there were more leftovers than we actually consumed. Thanks for the delicious meal and for your hospitality, Dennis and Carol!

I have to share this picture with you, which I took in the parking lot of the gun show in Shipshewana. This cool canine was relaxing in the seat of a Stallion, which is a very upscale trike style motorcycle, while his owner was inside shopping for goodies.

The dog seemed friendly as several people stopped to admire him and take his picture, but when one guy decided to check out the bike and got a little too close, the dog let him know that he needed to back off right now! Once he stepped away, it was all doggy smiles again.

I had hoped to get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal finished over the weekend, but between a lot of visitors and a fair amount of goofing off on my part the last few days, I still have a ways to go. But I’ll have it to the printer in time for them to do their thing this week.

The way registrations are coming in, Terry and I think this year’s Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally will be a lot bigger than last year’s event! Every day we get new reservations by mail or coming in online. And we are already starting to see several folks registering for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally next March! We have had some new vendors register for the Ohio rally, as well as several returning who were there last year. Once we get this new issue of the paper out, we’ll be concentrating on all of the final details that have to be handled to have a successful rally. It’s always a lot of work, but it’s always a lot of fun too!

Thought For The Day – Memory is more indelible than ink.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally