We only have a couple of days here in Gettysburg, and we had planned to spend yesterday playing tourist. There is so much to see and do here that we could never cover it all, but we had hoped to at least get to the new National Parks Visitor Center. But things didn’t go exactly as planned.

Miss Terry has not been feeling 100% since we spent 11 hours a day standing on the ice rink at the Hershey RV Show last week, and whatever has been hanging around in the background came to the forefront yesterday.  She woke up feeling pretty puny, with a sore throat, headache, congestion, and generally achy all over. So we decided that a quiet day at home might help her get to feeling better.

Of course, you can’t get Terry to take it easy, so for her a “quiet day at home” involved hours wading through the paperwork from our recent Elkhart rally and the Hershey show, and doing a couple of loads of laundry.  I spent most of the day working online, answering e-mails, and contacting vendors and potential entertainers for our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally, which will be March 7-11, 2011 in Yuma. I’m hoping David Bradley, who was a hit at this year’s rally, will come back and put on another show for us.

Also, due to popular demand, we’re bringing our Cactus Queen Beauty Contest back. We skipped it last year, because we thought that people might be getting tired of it, but a lot of folks let us know that they missed it. Besides, it’s just so darned much fun!

For some reason, the links on the Rally Registration Page were not working, so I fixed that problem, and now you should be able to just click the link and register. A lot of the vendors who were at the rally this year have already told us that they want to come back, because they had such good sales. And we’re looking forward to having them back, with all kinds of bargains for our rally attendees.

By late afternoon, Terry was feeling a bit better, so we drove into town and looked at some of the neat old houses and storefronts. I first visited Gettysburg back when I was in the Army, and fell in love with all of the history and charm of the famous old town and the surrounding area. If I was ever willing to get off the road (which I hope never to do), and if I had to live in a place where it snows (which I definitely hope never to do), I could live here.

Maybe I watched too many old movies growing up, but I love fedora hats, and all of my life, I have always wanted a good one. Wandering around Gettysburg, we found a neat little shop called Wilderness Lodge Leather & Hat Shops, where they had a fantastic selection at excellent prices. Such a good selection at such good prices that by the time we left, I had three new hats, two felt and a nice Panama straw!

What does a guy who lives in a motorhome need with three hats, when he already has an excellent medium brim Stetson? Miss Terry says it’s because I work hard and I don’t drink, smoke, play golf, or blow money in a lot of other ways, and I deserve them. And who am I to disagree with her?

Gayle Underwood, who was on duty behind the counter, is a history nut; a retired history teacher, and a wealth of information about Gettysburg. We spent quite a bit of time talking with her, and she gave us a lot of tips about places to see and things to do.

By then we were both hungry, and Gayle recommended  O’Rorkes Eatery & Spirits, almost across the street. Jerry, one of our regular blog readers, had also recommended O’Rorkes, so we walked across the street and tried it out. They were busy and there was a 20 minute wait for a table inside, but the hostess said we could get an outside table right then. It was a pleasant, warm evening, so we said okay, and enjoyed watching all of the tourists passing by as we had a fabulous meal.

Here is Miss Terry looking over the menu, which ranged from seafood to steaks and prime rib. She chose the salmon, and I had a New York strip, and both were delicious.

Then we drove out through part of the old battlefield, just to see how it felt in the dark, under a full yellow moon. It was a lot more peaceful than it was here in  July of 1863, for sure!

Thought For The Day -  It’s the small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.

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Okay, maybe I didn’t shave my legs, but I was still up before 7 a.m., and I even brushed my teeth! That has to count for something, doesn’t it?

Why was I up at such an ungodly hour, you may ask? Because we’re working a vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show this week – America’s “largest” RV show. I know it’s the largest, because it says so right there on their website. Uh huh, and I stand six feet tall, weigh 100 pounds, and have a full head of hair.  It must be true, because you read it right here on my blog, right?

Here is a picture I took about 10 a.m. yesterday morning of the aisle where our vendor booth is located. Everybody you see in this picture is a vendor, except for the person in the gray sweatshirt in the rear left side of the aisle.

Here’s another picture I took of our vendor aisle, from the opposite direction, just before 11 a.m. Hey, it’s a customer, the guy in the blue jeans in the rear! Everyone else you see is a vendor.

About 2 p.m. it started to rain, driving all of the people who were outside looking at RVs inside the building. We had a rush!

And here’s the vendor aisle just before 7 p.m. The guy on the left with the white hat on is a customer, the guy on the right, fiddling with the bike is a vendor. Do you see a pattern here?  While we did have a few (very few) little busy spurts, most of the day I could have fired a shotgun down the aisle and never hit anybody.

Last year, the Hershey Show claimed to have 37,000 attendees. Unless they all show up in one really big bus today or tomorrow, I don’t think they’ll be breaking any records soon.

Vendor hours are from 9 a.m., to 8 p.m., and if you have never stood on top of an ice rink for eleven hours, trust me, it’s an experience you don’t need to seek out. Just as they did Wednesday evening. a lot of vendors gave up and left a little after 6 p.m., and the place was almost empty. The show directors came on the public address system several times, warning vendors that they were not allowed to leave before 8 p.m. Many ignored them, because they had already left.

Miss Terry wanted to stick it out until closing time, and I grudgingly agreed, until somebody from the show came through the vendor area “taking attendance.” Apparently, if you leave early, they fine you, and if you won’t pay the fine, you can’t come back next year. Now, anybody who knows me well knows that the best way to get the Nixter to do something it to tell me I can’t do it! As soon as Terry told me about the attendance taker, I was packed up and out of there in about five minutes!

It is totally asinine to expect vendors to stand around on a cold ice rink for that many hours a day if they don’t have any customers to sell to! A longtime vendor told me that the number of vendors has dropped dramatically at this show in the last few years. Why do you think that is?

They tell us that today and Saturday will be killer days, with customers pouring in the doors, but it would really have to do a dramatic turnaround before we would ever consider coming back to this show. Lost time is lost time, and you can never get it back, no matter how well you do the next day. Never say never, but I just don’t see it happening for us.

Thought For The Day – The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.

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Yesterday morning Daryl and Judy Patterson stopped over to say hello and goodbye as we were getting ready to leave Elkhart Campground.  We only had a minute to chat before they left so we could get everything unhooked and ready to take off.

Experienced RVers like Daryl and Judy know that if you get preoccupied while doing the hooking up or unhooking chores, mistakes can easily happen. We’ve all had it happen at one time or another… somebody comes by and you get to talking, and the next thing you know, you’re pulling away from the RV site and forgot to unplug your electric power cord, or to put your tow vehicle’s transmission in neutral. Mistakes like that can be not only embarrassing, but expensive too!

After saying goodbye to Bob and Gita Patel, Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour, Greg and Jan White, and everybody else in sight, we pulled out of the campground a couple of minutes after 10 a.m. and headed east on Interstate 80.

Across northern Indiana, Interstates 80 and 90 run together as the Indiana Toll Road, and it’s a route we’ve been over many, many times. A little over an hour later we crossed into Ohio, after paying our $11.10 toll to the good people of Indiana, or at least to the private company that leases the toll road from the good people of Indiana.

We got onto the Ohio Turnpike, and stopped at the Fallen Timbers Service Plaza near Swanton for fuel. The price of diesel was three cents a gallon more than at the trucks stops off the turnpike, but it was easy access to the fuel pump, and I didn’t have to wait for anybody ahead of me. Since I only needed 75 gallons or so, it wasn’t worth the hassle of paying a toll, getting off, fueling up, getting a new toll ticket, and getting back on the turnpike. I like saving a buck or two just as much as the next guy, but there’s something to be said for convenience too.

We made good time crossing Ohio, with a gentle tail wind helping. My Silverleaf VMSpc engine monitor said we got 8.4 miles per gallon between Elkhart and the service plaza where we stopped for lunch, about 30 miles west of Cleveland. That was running at 64 miles per hour with the cruise control on. 63 to 65 seems to be the sweet spot for our Winnebago, where we get the best combination of fuel economy and power.

I like the service plazas on the Ohio Turnpike. They are clean, have lots of room to park a big rig, good restaurants, and some even have back-in RV sites with electric for a few bucks a night!

I wish I could say I liked the turnpike too. Most of it was actually pretty good, but west of Cleveland we ran into a long stretch of very rough road, and I sure appreciated the Koni shocks that Redlands Truck and RV installed on our motorhome last year! The toll all the way across Ohio on Interstate 80 for our two axle motorhome and van was $31.75. Ouch!

We crossed into Pennsylvania, and immediately the road got better, and the terrain more hilly. Pennsylvania is one of my favorite states, in terms of beauty. The interstate in western Pennsylvania is a good road, and trees crowd right down to the edge of the highway, with occasional breaks to see the pretty countryside.

We passed lots of pretty farmland as we drove east.

Before long we were in what folks back east call mountains, though my friends in Arizona might not agree. But the hills did take their toll on our mileage. We dropped down to 6.9 MPG.

Here is a nice shot of the Allegheny River that Miss Terry took as we passed over it. I didn’t even snivel about the bridge because the scenery was so pretty!

We had planned on about a 300 mile day, but that put us right at the state line, and it was still early, so we kept driving. We decided to spend the night at the Flying J in Brookville, and by the time we got there, I was getting tired. But they only have four designated RV parking sites, one of which is marked handicapped. There were big RVs in two of the other sites, with the one between them empty. But the way they were parked, it would have been a very tight squeeze to get in between them, if we could have made it at all. We checked out the truck parking area, which was about half full, but we really don’t like to use them if we can avoid it. They tend to be pretty noisy, and we don’t want to take a space that a trucker might need.

So we decided to push on another 42 miles to the WalMart SuperCenter at Clearfield, where we arrived just as the sun was starting to set. Miss Terry had called ahead to make sure RV parking was permitted, and the nice lady she talked to said no problem, just park on the outer perimeter of the parking lot.

Here is an example of what not to do when you boondock at a commercial parking lot. He had both of his slides out, his TV antenna up, and notice the leveling jacks down! 

This fifth wheel was just as bad – jacks down, slides, out TV antenna up. They look like they’re camping! In both cases, their slide rooms are extended right into the roadway where cars are passing close by.

When we are parked like we are here, with our bedroom slide facing the outer perimeter, I’ll run the slide out at bedtime to make it easier to get in and out of bed. But we wait until bedtime, and we never extend our living room slide or jacks. That’s just poor manners.

We covered 420 miles yesterday, which was quite a bit more than we had originally planned, but the good news is that today we only have about 150 miles to go to get to the Thousand Trails preserve in Hershey, thanks to a a different route that the man on duty at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center recommended. So we should arrive and be settled in fairly early in the day.

Thought For The Day – Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

This part of northern Indiana is a stronghold of the Amish people, and wherever you travel around the communities of Elkhart, Goshen, Nappanee, and the surrounding area, you are likely to see Amish women  in their simple handmade dresses, their heads covered in white kapps, and men wearing black straw hats or stocking caps.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Amish people, including that they will not ride in automobiles, use electricity, or telephones. Drive anywhere around here and you will encounter horse drawn buggies and wagons on the roadways.

But, while they do not drive automobiles, the Amish will ride in them, and they frequently hire a non-Amish driver to take them to restaurants, stores, or other places too far to conveniently reach by buggy.

Drive any Amish back road in this region, and you will see small white structures in some yards that look like an enclosed telephone booth, and that is exactly what they are! Their religion does not permit a telephone in the house, and the “phone haus” is built for function, not comfort. There is no heat or cooling, and usually no chair. This is a place to do business, not sit and gab! If an Amish person advertises something for sale, they will include the telephone number and instructions to “call between 7 and 8 a.m.” or whatever time suits their schedule.

Yesterday, we drove out to Nappanee to visit with our friend Carylye Lehman at Focal Wood Products. Carlyle is a fantastic craftsman who built the desk units in our Winnebago motorhome last year, and he has a fast growing reputation with RVers for top quality custom wood furniture.

The tools in Carlyle’s shop are all powered by electricity, courtesy of a huge 40 KW diesel generator.  So as you can see, while the Amish do avoid many of the “modern” conveniences of our way of life, they have embraced some technology to give them the ability to conduct business.

We have also found it interesting to see Amish buggies lined up at the drive through window at McDonald’s, or to note such goodies as Pepsi and potato chips in their shopping carts at WalMart.

All day yesterday the wind blew hard, with gusts up to 40 miles per hour. If the wind lets up a little bit, we plan to leave Elkhart Campground today and start making our way eastward toward the Hershey (Pennsylvania) Thousand Trails preserve, where we will have a vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show next week.

It’s about 600 miles to our destination, and we’ll do it in two days. I have no idea where we’ll be tonight, but there is always an RV friendly WalMart, a truck stop, or someplace else to get off the road for the night.

Thought For The Day – Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after.

We left the Oceano, Elks campground a little after 9 a.m. and headed north on U.S. Highway 101. Morning fog was lingering over the coast, and according to the dashboard thermometer in my Winnebago motorhome, the outside temperature was 60 degrees.

As we moved further inland, the fog dissipated and the temperature began to climb. 45 miles north, in Paso Robles, it was 75 degrees, and it continued to climb all day long.

Before long we were in the Salinas Valley, known as the Salad Bowl of the World due to the huge amounts of produce grown here. The climate is perfect for growing everything from strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach to broccoli, cauliflower, and celery.

And grapes. Lots and lots of grapes. The entire central coast region of California seems to be one massive grape arbor, and wineries abound.

This is Steinbeck country, made famous by the author of such American classics as Of Mice And Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Cannery Row. I cut my reading teeth on John Steinbeck’s works, and I believe his road odyssey Travels With Charley is responsible for the wanderlust that I have carried all of my life. While we’re in the area we plan to tour the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Near Salinas we saw a heavy curtain of fog and low clouds, the result of rising inland temperatures drawing the marine layer in off Monterey Bay. 

Traffic picked up considerably in Salinas, and continued all the way into Morgan Hill, where we left the highway and drove about five miles on local roads to the Morgan Hill Thousand Trails preserve. When we arrived at the ranger check-in station, it was 97 degrees. We had traveled 180 miles, but it was like we were in a different world altogether. A very hot, different world.

We have never been to this Thousand Trails campground before, but it is typical of most of the Thousand Trails we have been in – gravel roads and RV sites, 30 amp water and electric, a dump station, and quite a few electrical pedestals covered up because they don’t work. At too many of the preserves we have been in, upkeep and maintenance seems to be a low priority.

We noted a sign at the campground’s entrance saying that Thousand Trails is now open to the general public, making me question why we continue to pay our annual dues. And to wonder even more, why do people continue to shell out big bucks for new memberships. We got our used nationwide Thousand Trails/NACO membership for $100, so if we ever decide to walk away from it, we won’t lose anything. It’s a subject we have to do some thinking about in the not too distant future.

This campground has a lot of trees, but a large open area as well, so we had our choice of either a shaded site or one in the open. With the holiday weekend coming, a lot of families with kids will be here, and they tend to gravitate toward the shaded areas. I’ll trade a little bit of shade for a quiet spot and a good view of the sky for TV reception any day. That’s why Winnebago includes awnings and air conditioners with their motorhomes.

The campground was pretty full, but we had no problem finding a level, pull-thru site with a good view of the sky for our roof mounted automatic Winegard TV dish. As soon as we were plugged in, we fired up our basement air conditioner to cool the interior of the motorhome down.

But first, we made a stop at the dump station. You know that old saying “sh!% happens?” Well, It happens to even the most experienced RVers. I don’t know what went wrong, but when I opened the plastic cap on our sewer connection to put the hose on, a big gush of nasty flew out. I jumped back in time to get out of the way, and quickly slapped the cap back on and secured it.

Could I have left the valve open? I doubted it, since I had dumped a week ago when we left Williams, Arizona, and I had seen no indication of a problem since then. A quick check showed the valves to both the black and gray tank were closed securely, so all I can guess is that we may have a seal leaking. I carefully removed the cap again, ready to get the sewer hose in place in a hurry, but whatever was in the short section of pipe had already spilled out. I finished dumping, cleaned up the mess, and made a note to watch the valve and see if this was a one time oddball occurrence, or a problem that must be dealt with soon.

We’ll be here a few days, maybe as much as two weeks. Definitely until after the Independence Day holiday, because we learned early in our fulltiming life that we want to be off the road and in a campsite well before any summer holiday. There are a few things we want to see and do in this area, before we head on down the road to our next adventure.

Thought For The Day – A father is a banker provided by nature.

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