IF I WANT IT DONE RIGHT........

Many times over the years I've heard lots of men make the statement, "when I want something done right I have to do it myself." For me it is the total opposite, so that's why I usually have to have somebody else do the carpentry, plumbing, car repairs, roofing projects, or whatever things those mighty manly types do. My motto is, "if I want something done right I had better get somebody else to do it." And so it goes with some minor motorhome renovations lately. Decided to add some shelving in the kitchen area & enlisted the help of a good woodworking friend. Bruce is one of those guys that kinda drives guys like me nuts. He simply takes his time & does things right. He has the patience to work away at a piece of wood, sanding & staining forever. Over & over & everytime you think he's done he's back going over it again with an even finer piece of sandpaper or something. In my world, sandpaper is something you read on the beach. Bruce has these tools that puts those fancy swirls & curls in the wood too. Beveling I think he called it. Beveling was something I thought you did with the motorhome to make it level on a rough surface. Oh well:((
But, sometimes ya just gotta do some of the stuff yourself. A couple of weeks ago we decided to haul the big old heavy & soon to be outdated television out of it's cabinet in the center of the windshield at the top. The fact that I even got it out without dropping the whole thing through the windshield is nothing short of amazing. I never did like that television up there anyway. Now we have a big clunky square cabinet with nothing in it & we don't intend on putting another television back up in there either, so, here's Al's plan. Oh no!! I am attempting (and attempting is the key word here) to put some shelves in there for the satellite TV receiver & CD player to sit on because I've never liked those narrow crammed little inaccessible cabinets up along the windshield where that stuff usually goes. We intend to get a 19 or 26" flat screen LCD-HD (whatever all that means) television that will easily sit right on top the dash. It will travel on the bed & when we stop somewhere we'll just bring it up, set it on the dash & plug in the wires. I figure we could even set the television outside if we wanted to simply by adding some extra lengths of cables. Sounds good in theory huh. Well, you know what usually happens to theories so I won't get my hopes up. In the meantime I've got myself quite a mosh of wires, hunks of old wood for shelves, screws, brackets, & whatever else I can find, all jammed up there in that old television space. Cables & wires everywhere & I haven't a clue as to what cable goes to what machine or why. I know the outcome probably isn't going to be nice but afterall, I'm doing it myself, right!!. I stand there & look over to the woodwork Bruce has done & then look back at what I'm about to do & it's almost enough to make a grown man cry. Maybe I could trade Bruce some of my hair for some of his smarts. Hmmmmm, I do not think he would see that as a good trade!!

WAITING QUIETLY IN A THICK FOG OF APPREHENSION

I came across another bloggers website in the RV Net Forum last week which I found interesting because of his take on the gas situation & how to maybe adjust accordingly. It is an encouraging concept in the face of all the gasoline related RV gloom & doom these days.

RV Net Forum......http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm

The second article, also found in the RV Net Forum, is by author Garrison Keillor & I'm afraid his predictions for the future are probably correct. Somewhere between these two viewpoints many of us are standing quietly beside the road, waiting in a thick fog of apprehension, wondering which way to go..............

First, the article by, "See Ya Down The Road"

Their Website is....http://www.seeya-downtheroad.com/

The High Price Of Fuel
Recently I have received many questions about the high price of fuel and the questions fall into two categories. 1) Will the price of fuel curtail your travels? 2) I am thinking about going fulltime and now I'm changing my mind because of the price of fuel - what should I do?
First, fulltiming and even part-timing is a lifestyle and not a vacation. If you think traveling in a RV is cheaper than living in a house you are wrong, but RVers can dictate how their money is spent and still enjoy the RV lifestyle.
The best way to save money is to travel slowly and stay in an area long enough to see everything before moving down the road. Drive the RV 100 miles and stay a week, then drive 100 miles and stay another week. In the winter stay in one place in the sunny south three months and during the summer pick a place in the north and stay two months.
Doing the above you will be moving the RV seven months a year and averaging 400 miles during those month for a total of 2,800 miles a year. If your RV gets 8 miles per gallon and fuel costs $5.00 a gallon you will need 350 gallons of fuel during the year and spend $1,750 or an average of $146 a month. Surely you can afford $146 a month for fuel for your RV.
You say driving 400 miles a month is crazy because you want to see this beautiful country. Lets look at one trip. You have just spent the winter in Orlando, Florida and you want to spend two months in Michigan in the summer. Leaving Florida you travel 100 miles a week and tour the states of Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan. The trip is 1,227 miles and after your stay in Michigan you decide to spent the winter in Corpus Christi, Texas. So on you trip south you tour Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas. The trip south is 1,567 miles so your RV mileage for the year is 2,794 miles - just under the targeted 2,800 miles per year written above and your RV fuel cost is $146 a month.
The same type of annual trip can be taken from southern California to the Canadian border and back to Arizona or most anywhere in the USA going north and south. Of course you will need fuel for driving to the grocery and sightseeing, but those trips should not cost too much.
Another advantage of staying a week or months in one place is many campgrounds offer a discount for longer stays. We have stayed in campgrounds that have a daily rate of $30, a weekly rate of $175 and a monthly rate of $400.
There are many other ways to save money as you enjoy your RV lifestyle and I will name just a few. Drive slower to save fuel, use discount campgrounds such as Passport America, eat in more than eating out, when you eat in restaurants get the daily specials which are usually good until 3:00 or 4:00 p.m., use coupons (often found on the internet), do some of your own maintenance and repairs, go sightseeing with another couple so four people can ride in one car, and if you have a craft make gifts instead of buying them.
So don't get too concerned about the price of fuel because there is nothing you or I can do about it. But there are many ways to control the cost of fulltiming or part-timing so get out on the road and enjoy this beautiful country and the RVing lifestyle.
Their Website is....http://www.seeya-downtheroad.com/

Eulogy for the Winnebago
Garrison Keillor
June 18, 2008

Eighty-six percent of the American people believe the price of gasoline will climb to five bucks a gallon this year, a big shift in public opinion from a year ago when most people felt that oil prices were spiking high and would soon return to normal—which is 35 cents a gallon, same as a pack of smokes—and we'd be able to head west in our Winnebagos for a nice summer vacation.This does not appear to be in the cards and Winnebago stock has fallen about 50 percent in the past year. If you are selling a big box on a truck chassis for as much as a quarter-million dollars when gas is at $4 and rising, you are aiming at a rather select clientele indeed, folks who might rather buy a beach house in Costa Rica than go cruising the Interstate.Nonetheless it's sad to see the motor home fade into the sunset. I used to despise them when I was a canoeist, of course. You paddle up to a campground at the end of a hard day and see a few RVs parked there, the air conditioners rumbling, the flickering blue light of the TVs in the windows, and as you set up your tent as far from them as possible, you feel a moral grandeur purer than you will ever feel again. A holy Christian pilgrim among the piggish heathen.The fantasy of comfortable vagabondage lies deep within each one of us, though, and once, 30 years ago, driving a GMC motor home around western Minnesota, I fell under the spell. To have the freedom of the road and the comforts of home—your own books on the shelf, your clothes in a drawer, your brand of beer in the fridge—is an aristocratic privilege and I was happy to give up moral grandeur for a couple of weeks and enjoy it.
Five-dollar gasoline is pushing that fantasy to the wall, and it's also showing most of us that we live in communities whose design is based on the assumption of cheap gasoline—big lots with backyard privacy make for a long drive to the grocery store. In the big old-fashioned city neighborhood, if you're bored in the evening you just stroll out the door and there, within five or 10 minutes, are a newsstand, a diner, a movie theater, a palm reader, a tavern with a bartender named Joe, whatever you're looking for.But in the sort of neighborhood most Americans prefer, there are only a lot of houses like yours and residents who give evening pedestrians the hairy eyeball. The mall is a long hike away and it's an amalgam of chain outlets, with a vast parking lot around it. To a person approaching on foot, it feels like an enemy fortress.So we will need to amuse ourselves in new ways. I predict that banjo sales will pick up. The screened porch will come back in style. And the art of storytelling will burgeon along with it. Stories are common currency in life but only to people on foot. Nobody ever told a story to a clerk at a drive-up window, but you can walk up to the lady at the check-out counter and make small talk and she might tell you, as a woman told me the other day as she rang up my groceries, that she had gotten a puppy that day to replace the old dog who had to be put down a month ago, and right there was a little exchange of humanity. Her willingness to tell me that made her real to me. People who aren't real to each other are dangerous to each other. Stories give us the simple empathy that is the basis of the Golden Rule, which is the basis of civilized society.So when gas passes $5 and heads for $8 and $10, we will learn to sit in dim light with our loved ones and talk about hunting and fishing adventures, about war and romance and times of consummate foolishness when we threw caution to the wind and flung ourselves over the Cliffs of Desire and did not land on the Sharp Rocks of Regret.I'll tell you about the motor home trip and how lovely it was, cruising the prairie at night and drinking beer, stopping by a little creek and grilling fish on a Coleman stove, listening to coyotes. The vanishing of the RV only makes your story more interesting. One thing lost, something else gained. Life is like that. Garrison Keillor is a radio host and author.

ANESTHETIZED BY THE SODDEN ROUTINES OF A NORMAL LIFESTYLE

I sometimes think that people who have never traveled & have not been bitten by the travel bug are the fortunate ones. Simple lives & routines. Contented to live from day to day with all their interests close by. No urge to look over the fence to see what's on the other side, no desire to climb the nearest hill to see what's over the horizon. Happy with the nightly schedule of television, spending time with nearby grandchildren, the weekly club meetings, church, & card games. Backyard BBQs & just sitting on the front porch watching the world go by. Nothing wrong with all that & I am somewhat envious of those people. But, they don't have the itch!! RV people refer to it as "hitch itch." It's that gnawing urge many of us have that just never leaves us alone. That urge to hitch up the car or trailer & head out onto that open road again in search of new adventures. That compelling urge to look over the fence & climb that next hill. That urge to drive those extra miles, slip around the next bend in the road to see what's around the corner. It is because of those urges that I sometimes envy the stay at home people who have no interest in the traveling lifestyle & it is that conflict within that makes for these anxious days. We have been fortunate enough to have traveled 3 out of the last 4 winters & with each sojourn we have become increasingly enamored with the RV lifestyle. We now have the knowledge of comparisons. Comparisons are a tricky thing & one has to be careful in stacking one lifestyle against another. Seems to me that there are 3 elements at work here. I'll call the first one, Suburban life. It's simply life at home in a stick house forever & it is the norm. Second is a cross between Suburban & what RVers call Fulltiming so I'll call it, Suburban Vacations. Suburban Vacations is living in the stick house for 6 or 7 months of the year & living in the RV for the remainder of the year. We moved into the second category a few years ago after spending the past 60 years or so in the first category. I think many people are happy & content to stay here in number 2 but it is here that many others begin to feel the itch growing, which brings me to number 3.......... Fulltiming!! And it is here where things really begin to take on a whole different meaning & concern because it has to do with some big lifestyle altering decisions. Sort of like having one foot on the dock & the other one in the canoe. Bit of a precarious position. What to do, which way to go. Will it be the security of the dock or the risky adventure of the canoe on open water.

I like the way a fellow blogger puts it below. He has dispensed with the stick house & is on the road full time & I like his attitude as he travels about the country never liking to stay in any one spot too long. My feelings exactly:))

RV Boondocker Explorer http://rv-boondocker-explorer.blogharbor.com/

(Quote) Consider camping in one place all season long, which I've done a couple times, in the winter and summer. It's comfortable, you meet people, and find out where to buy or fix this or that. But one day follows the next. After the season is over you look back and realize that you don't have many lasting memories. It was too uniform and uneventful. It is the misadventures that get remembered. An entire season has dissolved into the anonymity of comfort and routine. In contrast, the fresh sights and experiences of travel are like insoluble fluids that float on the landscape's surface. They retain their identity. They stand out from the surroundings.After watching a whole season disappear you experience a recrudescence of the rage that caused you to become a full time RVer in the first place. You remember that "Life is Short" was more than a platitude to you--it was an action item. Maybe hot-headedness makes some of us become full time RVers. Others might agree that normal life is dreary nonsense, but they are calm and mild about it, and don't want to rock the boat. Off we go to find the next misadventure. At least we travelers will be sensitive and alive to what happens next, instead of being anesthetized by the sodden routines of a normal lifestyle......(unquote)

SOME OF OUR RIGS

I realized after the last post about RVing that I hadn't included any pictures so after digging through some old photo albums the last couple of days I've come up with some memories. These two photos show our 1979 Dodge Centurion which we bought in August of 1998. Pictures were taken in September of 98. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

In October of 2001 we bought a 24' Prowler Travel Trailer & towed it with a 1997 Dodge Ram p/u truck.

October 2003 saw another change when we purchased a 1992 Ford Gulf Stream 22' Conquest Class C. Took this one down to Big Bend National Park in Texas but the Class C turned out to be too small. I've included a few pics from that trip.In September of 2006 we decided on a truck & fifth wheel combo so purchased a 2005 28' Rockwood 5th wheel & a 2000 Chevy Silverado half ton 1500 p/u truck. They came as a combo & were fine to-gether under normal flat driving conditions but after driving it for a bit I just didn't have the confidence in the lighter 5.3 engined truck to do the job in the heavy mountains I knew we would be going through later. It was a really well kept & sharp looking truck, but...........

November of 2006 saw us trade in the Chevy Silverado on a heavier 2004 GMC 2500 Sierra heavy duty truck. Bigger engine & a stronger truck for towing. This p/u was totally loaded & I found it a bit overwhelming with all the gizmos. Traveled around the American Southwest in 06 & 07 but realized that the truck & 5th wheel just were not suited for us. Remember, we have 3 dogs & they had to ride in the small back seat of the truck. Oooooo, about 4,000 miles of continuous dog breath. Not nice!!!! This is the GMC & Rockwood. In April 2007 we traded the truck & trailer in on a 2003 Damon 33' Motorhome & that is what we have at the present time. No plans for any more changes at this point:))