When they stopped working for the day on Tuesday, Chris, the tech assigned to our motorhome, told us that he had a couple of hours left on it, but he hoped to have us out by about 9 a.m. the next morning. So once again we rolled out of bed yesterday morning before the chickens, and at 7 sharp he came knocking on the door to pull the coach inside.

Well, we all know that nothing goes according to plan, and 9 came and went, as did 10. Finally, at 11:30 he came out to tell us that he had the new springs installed for our HWH leveling jacks, but there was still a very tiny leak in one spot in the bedroom slide that he was trying to resolve. No problem, we went into town and dropped off some things at the post office, then grabbed a quick lunch and headed back to the service facility.

More time came and went, and finally, a little before 1 p.m. Chris came out and took us back into the shop to show us where he was at. There is one spot on the bedroom slide that, when run through the high pressure water test bay that Winnebago uses, allows a drop or two of water to get inside. But if he just touched that spot on the gasket with his finger, it stopped. Since the amount of water pressure they use to test with is much more than any kind of a rainstorm outside of a hurricane, and it comes from several directions at once, I really don’t think it will be a problem, and I told Chris that.

He agreed, but Chris and Mike, the service advisor, wanted to be sure, so they called in their supervisor, who thought that as soon as the stiff new rubber gasket relaxes a bit, it will probably seal completely. They also made a notation on our records, so if it does ever becomes a problem, we’re covered under their parts and service warranty.

Terry and I were dreading the bill, because they worked on our rig for two half days, and two full days, at $100 an hour shop rate, plus parts. In all, we had new slide seals installed on both slide-outs, both slide-outs adjusted, the fiberglass roof inspected and resealed, our air compressor manifold adjusted, the small floor slide over the stepwell in front of the passenger seat fixed, the front door adjusted (it’s amazing how much you can mess up a door when you use it to break a burglar’s wrist!), the springs in all four of our jacks replaced, and several other adjustments to different things. They also tried to determine why our big power awning is so slow, and deduced that the motor is weak, but that part is obsolete, and no replacement motor is available.

To be honest, we expected to have to fork out somewhere between $4,000 and $4,500, based upon our experience with other RV repair shops. So we were delighted to be handed a bill for $3340. And that also included six nights of free camping at Camp Winnebago!

We are very pleased with Winnebago’s factory service. When you consider the fact that we showed up at the tail end of Grand National Rally week with no appointment, and had a long list of things that needed done, while they had all of those rigs in for service during and after rally, we felt that they did an excellent job of getting us in and taken care of.

And yes, it sounds like we have been spending a lot of money on the RV, but as I said before, a lot of that is because the original owner neglected maintenance so badly. If he would have been taking care of things as needed, a lot of this wouldn’t have been necessary. Like the old mechanic used to say, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.” Still, we bought the coach for something like $30,000 less than any comparable one on the market that we saw, and we still feel that we got a very good deal.

We pulled out of Forest City about 1:30 and drove north into Minnesota on Interstate 35, then hooked up with Interstate 90 and took it east into Wisconsin. We jumped around on a couple of doglegs and eventually got onto State Route 21 eastbound to Interstate 39. Once on I-39, we took it north to Wausau, where we dry camped for the night at a Gander Mountain store, having covered 320 miles.

Today we’ll head over to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and follow U.S. 2 along the Lake Michigan shoreline to the Mackinac Bridge. That is one structure that has really scared me in the past, so I’m not sure if I’ll be driving across, or hiding in the bedroom sniveling, while Miss Terry does the driving. Time will tell.

Thought For The Day – Blessed are the flexible for they will not be bent out of shape.

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We have been sitting still way too long, and Terry and I are both itching to get back on the road and see some new places and new faces.

Yesterday I finished putting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal together, and once I got the hang of InDesign, our new page layout software, it went pretty well. Today Miss Terry will proof the new issue, and then we’ll send it to our printer in Flagstaff.

We’ll pick the printed papers up on Friday, spend the next few days stuffing envelopes, and as soon as everything hits the post office, we’ll be making tracks!

While we are excited to be getting back on the road, it is always very hard to say goodbye to my daughter Tiffany and her family, and we’re sure going to miss those two granddaughters of ours. But the great thing is that the road goes two ways, and we knew we’ll be back again.

We still have a lot to do before we resume our gypsy lifestyle, and we’ll be busy the next couple of days wrapping up some last minute details, paying a last visit on some friends here, and planning our trip.

We have to be in Vail, Colorado in mid-July for a family wedding, and Vail is almost due north of where we are right now. So naturally, we plan to travel west about 750 miles first. Don’t you travel that way? We once left northern Indiana, headed for Florida, and took the long route through Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to get there!

We want to pop in on my friend Mike Howard in Kingman, Arizona, and then we plan to go to the central California coast, around Pismo Beach and Morro Bay for a while. We haven’t had fresh seafood in months, and since we’ve had our kayaks in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, it only seems right that we dip them into the Pacific too, don’t you think?

Of course, like I always say, our plans are set in Jello, and who knows where we may actually end up, and when? Except for the wedding and our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally in Elkhart, Indiana the end of August, we have no commitments, and we don’t want any.

We’ve been known to spot a interesting historical marker, and go off on a tangent that lasted a day or more, or to hear about some interesting place we never knew about, and take off in the opposite direction of our intended route to check it out. That’s the beauty of the RV lifestyle.

I’ve been so busy producing the new issue of the paper that I have not allowed Bad Nick near the computer in a week or so, and he has been building up steam, so I suspect he’ll have a new blog post anytime now.

Thought For The Day – It only seems kinky the first time.

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I love the fulltime RV lifestyle, but I’m sure glad I don’t own a campground! If I did, I think Bad Nick would be in the morning news for throttling somebody within a week.

In our ten years on the road, we have met a lot of RV park owners, managers, and workampers, and they have shared some real horror stories with us, and we have witnessed more than a few ourselves. Most RVers are nice folks, and seem to know their way around their rig and a campsite. But there are always a few, whether through ignorance or because they are just jerks, who really make me respect the folks running the campgrounds.

Several years ago we were at an RV park in Wisconsin when a couple in a motorhome refused to be guided into their site by the staff, and then cursed and screamed at each other as they tried and failed to get their rig parked several times.

After disrupting the peace and quite of the campground for quite some time, they finally got parked and plugged in. Suddenly the man was yelling again, this time claiming that something was wrong with the campground’s electric pedestal because it had fried everything inside his RV. We had known the folks in the RV that was parked in that site previously had no problems, and they left only an hour or so earlier. But this guy was convinced that the campground owner was responsible for his problems, even though he later said the same thing had happened twice before at other campgrounds.   

Just yesterday, Bob and Gita Patel, owners of Elkhart Campground, told us about somebody who pulled in at midnight Thursday and promptly ran over the water bib on his pull-thru RV site, creating a flood. Bob had to get out of bed and make a late night repair, and the next morning the RVer was amazed that they expected him to pay for the damages!

It was just a year ago that we watched a fellow in a big motorhome, here at the same campground, drive over a large rock, well off the road, and get his rig high centered. He ignored everyone’s attempts to help him, and managed to do a lot of damage to his rig as he gunned it and finally got free. Then he expected the campground owners to pay for repairs to his rig!

Every campground has had RVers who pull in late at night, hook up to electric and water, grab a few hours sleep, and then sneak out without paying. Last year when we spent several weeks at the Casa Grande Fairgrounds in Arizona preparing for our Gypsy Gathering rally, we watched a group of five Canadian RVs come in every Friday night after the office was closed, dump their holding tanks, hook up to water and electric all weekend, and then take off late Sunday night to park at nearby truck stops and empty shopping centers where they could freeload all week. A couple of guys in the group bragged that they never paid for camping or dumping all winter long.

I have also heard workampers complaining about the nasty ways some guests leave the restrooms, showers, and laundry rooms. One exasperated woman said she and her husband had owned a bar in a college town, and the young people who came to their establishment to party never left the restrooms in such poor condition.

Another workamper told me that a guest had threatened to sue the campground under the Americans With Disabilities Act because they told her to get her dog out of the swimming pool. According to the dog’s owner, it was a service animal, but the only service they saw it performing was fetching a ball her kids repeatedly threw into the water for it to retrieve.   

These kinds of people are in the minority, of course. Most RVers are nice folks, but there are always those bad apples that spoil everything. But it would only take one or two to push Bad Nick over the edge.

Thought For The Day – I keep telling myself I’m not fat, I’m just swollen.

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I met a man at Elkhart Campground a few years ago who told me he was unhappy in the RV lifestyle because he was bored. I suggested several things he might do to keep himself busy, and he pooh poohed every one of them; visit the RV Museum? No thanks, he wasn’t interested in looking at a bunch of old junk. Play golf? Nope, that was a rich man’s sport, not for him. Go fishing? Why go to all that trouble when you can buy a nice fish dinner in a restaurant? Build houses for Habitat for Humanity? Nobody ever built him a house, so why should he build someone else one?

It didn’t take long before a light bulb went off in my head and I asked him if he had been bored before he became an RVer. He told me yes, that was why he bought the motorhome in the first place.

In talking to him, I learned that he spent part of the summer and early fall parked at his brother’s farm in Pennsylvania; then he went to the same site, which he had reserved, at the same RV park in Florida for the winter. Then in the spring he drove to Elkhart for a few days before continuing on to his niece’s home in Wisconsin, where he stayed until it was time to go to Pennsylvania again. “I tell you, I know every inch of Interstate 95 between Pennsylvania and Florida, and Interstate 65 back up to Indiana,” he told me.  

“How about just for the hell of it, you take I-75 north or south this year,” I suggested. “You could stop in Clinton, Tennessee and check out the Museum of Appalachia. It’s really cool.”

He was shaking his head before I was halfway through my sentence. “Nope, that’s not on my route,” he said stubbornly. If I go off on a different route then what I’m used to, who knows what could happen?”

I wanted to tell him that one thing that might happen was he’d see some new country. Heck, he might even make a new memory or two! But I knew I was defeated, so I just gave up, told him to have a good life, and went on about my business, leaving him to his misery.

I’ve met a lot of RVers who, while they may not be as extreme as this fellow, are still stuck in a rut. They spend their summers in the same place and their winters at the same RV park in Florida, Texas, or Arizona. They tell me they have friends in their favorite campground in the Rio Grande Valley, or wherever they hang out, and they want to get back and spend time with them. I guess that’s okay if it works for them, but that’s just too much of the same old thing for me!

It’s an easy rut to fall into. We have our favorite places we enjoy returning to again and again, but we also go out of our way to visit new places too. Or at least to take a different route to wherever we’re going. And when a place gets too comfortable, we start asking ourselves if we need to look elsewhere.

We absolutely love the area around Aransas Pass and Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast, and last year we came across a good deal on a couple of RV lots down there that we seriously considered. But then we realized that buying them would be the first string that would tie us down. Why have the lots if we were not going to go there? But if we went there, what were we missing someplace else?

We didn’t get into the fulltime RV lifestyle to remain static. We wanted to see and do different things, new things. The familiar is comfortable, but it can also become suffocating if you allow it to be. We’re always looking for that new route we haven’t traveled yet, that new place we haven’t seen yet, and that new adventure we haven’t experienced yet.

Remember that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the length and depth.

Thought For The Day – Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

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