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Nick's Blog Saturday, July 5, 2008
Unfortunately, yesterday we had to forsake the two
lane roads for the interstate because we had a long way to go and a
short time to get there. After spending the night in We stopped in the tiny town of As it turns out, the late rodeo star turned country musician Chris LeDoux married a local girl and lived in Kaycee before his untimely death from cancer in 2005. The folks in Kaycee are raising funds to build a park in town to honor their favorite son.
Our next stop was in We crossed into
I called them on the cell phone, and about 30 miles
west of Late in the evening we pulled into Deer Lodge,
Today we’ll make the final 300 mile run into Missoula
and then down U.S. Highway 12 into Thought For The Day –
One of life's greatest pleasures is accomplishing what others say you
cannot. Friday, July 4, 2008 Happy Independence Day everybody! We may have our problems, but this is still the greatest country the world has ever seen. How many people do you know who try to slip into Greece or Norway illegally to live? And remember, if you love your freedom, thank a vet. A lot of good men and women have died to give us the freedoms we enjoy today. Several blog readers contacted me yesterday when I wrote about my new iPod and took me to task, pointing out that I may have downloaded the music illegally because the CDs belonged to someone else. To be honest, I never even considered that aspect of it, since the iPod’s software shows you how to copy CDs to your music library. I’m embarrassed. But I have a question; if someone bought the CDs and then gave them to me, are they not my property to use as I see fit? Used book and music stores all over the country sell used CDs. I will admit that I’m not up on the legalities of this issue. Thanks everybody for pointing things out to me. Does anyone know how to delete songs off an iPod? I hope so, or next week I’ll be sharing a cell with Sweaty Eddie. We stopped for fuel someplace in Nebraska yesterday, and there was a woman there, about our age, who was having a very bad day. She had gotten married two days before, and she and her new hubby were on their honeymoon when he pulled into the gas station convenience store so she could use the bathroom. When she came out, he had unloaded some (not all) of her luggage, and driven off in her car, with her purse, credit cards, identification, money, cell phone and most of her clothes. She was on the store phone with the police, and was telling them that they had just been married, there was no argument, no problems, he just drove off and left her! I know that was terrible for her, and who knows what the whole story is, but for the rest of the day every time Miss Terry teased me, made some smart remark, or even when she was being a good girl, I’d ask her if she wanted me to stop someplace so she could go potty. I have to keep her in line. Yeah, right! J
We spent quite a bit of time checking out this unique work of folk art, and trying to identify some of the old cars used in its construction. There was everything from a Chevrolet Vega station wagon to an old Pontiac Bonneville, to vintage Cadillacs. I saw several old cars like ones I owned as a kid. Can you imagine what those old 1956 Chevys and early 1950s classics would be worth if we had hung on to them?
I have to give you all a heads up here, just in case. My ancient old laptop computer is rapidly dying, and I’m hoping that it will survive until we get back to the bus and my desktop unit. Terry has a new Compaq that works fine, but it has Windows Vista on it, and FrontPage, the program I use to produce our websites and the blog, will not work on it. I have been shopping for a new laptop, but can’t find one with Windows XP on it anymore. I’d even be happy to find a used laptop, since all I use it for is the blog when we’re on the road. I just learned that I can order one from Dell, but that doesn’t help me now. So if the blog suddenly does not get updated, I didn’t drop dead or flee to Paraguay because of my iPod. The computer just bit the dust. Hopefully that won’t happen because I have a lot more to share with you in the next week or two. Thursday, July 3, 2008 As I’ve said many times
before, the hardest thing about the fulltime RV lifestyle is saying
goodbye. But in order to go to new places, we have to leave the people
where we are. It was especially hard to leave Mel and Carolyn’s place
in Basehor, As it turns out, besides being drop dead gorgeous, and able to whip up a delicious chocolate cake on a moment’s notice, Carolyn also has excellent taste in music. When we arrived she was busy downloading her entire music library to her new iPod, and being both a music lover and a gadget freak, I instantly knew I needed one of these nifty puppies. By the time we left, I was the proud new owner of a new 80 gig iPod, and even with the little ear plugs that come standard with it, the sound quality is amazing. We can even get a wireless adapter to play it through the stereo in our van! I love this new toy. At the touch of a button I can have anyone from Jimmy Buffett to Billy Joel to Dolly Parton singing in my ear. But Miss Terry isn’t quite as enamored with it as me. Not that she isn’t a music lover – her taste in music is very much like mine. But now when she is being “verbally repetitive” (she never nags), I can just turn the volume up, look at her and nod agreeably, and all the while I’m on the beach at Margaritaville.
Like so many small towns in the Midwest, Hebron
welcomes RVers, and From Hebron we battled strong headwinds north 50 miles to Interstate 80, then turned west, and took the wind broadside until we got to Kearney, where we settled in for the night. Today we’ll be headed further west, with a couple of stops along the way to check out some new places I will be sharing with you. Thought For The Day –
Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over
and over again in the quiet chambers of the mind. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Wednesday, July 2, 2008 We took a trip
back to childhood yesterday. Just a few miles from Mel and Carolyn’s
house, the Moon Marble Company in
The process takes about twenty minutes to produce one marble, not counting the cool down period, so hand crafted marbles are not cheap. Moon Marble Company produces only eight to ten handmade marbles a day. Not to worry though, their retail store has over a million inexpensive machine produced marbles on display for sale.
Moon Marble Company is a big hit with kids, but not just for the toys. While we were there, three separate field trips of youngsters sat enthralled as they watched the marble making demonstrations. Check out their website at www.moonmarble.com. Terry and I will
be back on the road today, continuing our trek west to Life on Wheels in
Thought For The Day –
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Tuesday, July 1, 2008 Several of you have written asking how our granddaughter Destiny is doing, and if I am recovering from my recent medical issues. I’m delighted to report very good news on both. Thanks to a good medical team and all of your prayers, Destiny has responded well to her treatment, and yesterday she was released from the hospital and Tiffany took her home. We are all tremendously relieved, and I know that Tiffany is delighted to have her baby home and her family reunited. She asked me to thank all of you for your prayers, and Terry and I echo that sentiment. As for me, I’m doing great. There is almost no tenderness left and things are looking fine. And thanks again for your concern. We took a break
from exploring rural Kansas
and drove across the Missouri River into
Union Station was
always a busy place, but things really got exciting on the morning of
June 17, 1933. A group of FBI agents and state lawmen were escorting a
convicted murderer named Frank Nash to the Federal Penitentiary at Three of Nash’s gangster pals, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Vernon Miller, and Adam Richetti, approached the group of policemen and their prisoner and opened fire with Thompson submachine guns in an attempt to free their friend. When the smoke cleared and the last brass shell case rattled onto the brick roadway, four law enforcement officers and Nash lay dead. The incident became known as the Kansas City Massacre, and underscored the violence of the times.
We enjoyed watching the trains coming and going, including one long coal train that seemed to go on forever. People watching is always fun in places like this, and as we observed passengers loading onto an Amtrak train and then watched it pull out of the station, the wanderer inside of me wished I was going with them. Once a gypsy, always a gypsy. J Thought For The Day –
The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something
right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong. Monday, June 30, 2008 Yesterday I
shared some of our adventures in northeast
As an old time
weekly newspaper publisher, I was in hog heaven. I cut my teeth in a
small town newspaper much like this,
Luke told me that
even in a small town like Horton, he has more business
than he can handle, because shoe repair and leather working are dying
crafts. He said he wishes he had some eager b I had a wonderful conversation with Luke, and eventually Terry, Mel, and Carolyn wandered down the street while Luke and I continued talking. He was such a personable fellow that I could have stood there all day, but I eventually figured he had better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than waste it talking to an old fart like me, so I bid him goodbye and went off in search of the rest of my group.
By the time we got done poking around the shelves on both floors of the store, it was getting late, so we decided we’d better head on down the road. But we left Horton reluctantly, and it is definitely on my list of places to get back to one of these days. Thought For The Day –
Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell is such a way that he
looks forward to the trip. Sunday, June 29, 2008
Our first stop
was Troy, where a replica of the Statue of Liberty stands on the lawn of
the handsome The little village of White Cloud was our next stop. It was here, in 1913, that a ten year old boy named Wilbur Chapman sold his pet pig to raise money to donate to a leper colony. The story hit the newspapers, and soon children around the world were saving their pennies and nickels to give to charity. In memory of Wilbur’s beloved pig, cast iron piggy banks were created to hold these childhood donations, and an icon was born. White Cloud is a
charming little place, and this old building served as the town’s
barbershop A few miles from White Cloud, we stopped to visit the Native American Heritage Museum State Historic Site. The museum is housed in a former Presbyterian mission built in 1845 to indoctrinate Indian children into the white culture in a cruel attempt to “civilize” them. History is written by the victors, but we were not always the good guys. In Hiawatha, we spent some time at the Davis Memorial in the Mount Hope Cemetery. The memorial is either a testament to love at its best, or spite at its worst, depending on how you choose to interpret it. When John and Sarah Davis were married, her family was opposed to the union, and John Davis never felt accepted by his in-laws. The couple were both financially successful and frugal, though they never had any children.
We saw a lot more yesterday, but space does not permit me to include it all here. So tune in again tomorrow for more of our adventures in this interesting corner of Kansas. Thought For The Day – There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Saturday, June 28, 2008 We love traveling the back roads of America. You just never know what you will find in the small towns and along the two lane roads, from interesting historical sites to funny signs that will have you chuckling for the next ten miles.
The buggy lot was funny enough, but what really made the day for us was that the same business that sells used buggies, with a sign about “preserving our Amish heritage,” also sells cards and poker chips! Hey, nothing reflects the simple Amish lifestyle better than a good all night card game, does it?
Today we are going to do some exploring here in northeastern Kansas with our hosts, Mel and Carolyn Henley. There is a lot to see and do here, and we won’t have time to do more than scratch the surface before we have to continue our trip west but that’s okay, it gives us an excuse to come back again. Miss Terry is having a good time visiting with her cousin, and Mel and I spend the time commiserating about how hard life is being married to two beautiful women who are good cooks too! J Of course, even freeloading off of family has it’s drawbacks. Carolyn forgot to add butter to the chocolate cake she baked for us yesterday, and poor Mel and I have been working as fast as we can to eat it all up so she can redeem her reputation and bake another one the right way. Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it! Thought For The Day –
If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise. Friday, June 27, 2008 We’re back! I wasn’t able to post a blog yesterday due to technical difficulties. I have also not been able to access my e-mail for a couple of days now, so if you’ve written or placed an order, please be patient with me. Yahoo says they have managed to forward any new incoming e-mail to another account, but whatever has been sent in the last couple of days is stuck in Never Never Land. They promise that as soon as Achmed in their engineering department slaps a new coat of mud on the hut and gets the goats fed, I’m next up on the list to have my problems addressed. I’m obviously not holding my breath! We have some good news. As I posted the other day, our little granddaughter is in the hospital facing some serious health issues. Terry talked to my daughter last night, and the antibiotics seem to be working and the doctors are confident they have a handle on it. Thank you for all of your prayers. It means a lot to us.
We hooked up with Interstate 72 and took it west across Illinois, crossing the Mississippi River into Hannibal, Missouri. Folks, it is one thing to watch the television news about all of the flooding in the Midwest, but until you drive through and see mile after mile of flooded farm fields, and water reaching up the side of buildings, you really don’t understand what is going on. We pulled into Mark Twain State Park, where our pals Ron and Brenda Speidel were volunteer hosts. We hadn’t seen this fun couple since last fall, and we were more than ready for our buddy fix. We all have family we were born into, and family we create. Ron and Brenda are a very important part of our extended family, and we love them to death. We spent our first night in the van parked next to Ron and Brenda, and let’s just say it was interesting. J Between the fact that I rushed Miss Terry so we could get on the road, so everything was kind of thrown into the back of the van, and the air mattress that lost it’s air, and the really, really nasty rainstorm that hit overnight, we decided that we have some refinement to do with the van conversion idea. But, it was fun, and Terry didn’t make me go sleep on a picnic table in the rain, so we got through it.
We got onto U.S. Highway 36 and continued west through miles of construction zones, and about the time the road smoothed out again, we ran into a roadblock. The highway was under six feet of water, and the emergency workers routed us onto a series of narrow two lane roads through flooded farmlands, and about then another nasty storm hit. I battled wind, rain, and lighting for over 100 miles, real white knuckle driving, and eventually we ended up on Interstate 70. I’d have happily pulled over to wait it out if I had thought it would ever end, and if there had been a safe place to pull over and not sink up to our axles. About the time we got onto the superslab the rain finally stopped and we had an easy run into Kansas City. We crossed into Kansas, and shortly arrived at Terry’s cousin Carolyn’s home in Basehor, a few miles northwest of Kansas City. Carolyn and her husband Mel made us welcome, fed us, and I think we’ll hang around here a few days while we correct some of the shortcomings in our van plan. Mel’s a heck of a nice guy, and as it turns out Carolyn is a pretty good cook! Hey, free food is something I appreciate! Thought For The Day – Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Wow, judging by the response to yesterday’s blog, a lot of readers are interested in mining the wealth of information to be found online. I’ll have to share some of my other favorite websites again one of these days.
We’ll be on the
road today, headed west. We’ll leave the bus at Elkhart Campground and
take the van. We’ll stop in Our final
destination for this trip is Destiny will be
in an isolation ward for ten days while she undergoes a strong course of
intravenous antibiotics, and we are keeping in constant touch with my
daughter Tiffany to monitor the situation. If we are needed there,
we’ll cancel our Life on Wheels commitment and go to Thanks to our Verizon air card, I expect we’ll be able to get online to answer e-mail and so I can post blog updates while we’re gone. I welcome your e-mails and comments, but please don’t send me a lot of forwards and jokes for a while, if you don’t mind. We’ll be pretty busy and I won’t have time to wade through all of them. We plan on stopping to check out some interesting places on our trip, so check back here often, because I’ll have some brand new places and adventures to share with you. Thought For The Day –
A married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people
remembering the same thing! Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Tuesday, June 24, 2008 I wrote a blog a few days ago about the evolution of internet access for RVers, and in response, someone wrote to ask what made getting online so important. She uses her laptop to send and receive e-mail when she has a connection, but sometimes goes weeks before doing so. The internet is a wonderful tool for RVers, and I cannot imagine not being able to get online as we wander around the country. Not only do we transact business online, including taking orders for books and subscriptions, our three websites help promote our rallies and other events, and we earn money from the Google ads on the websites. As a writer, I also do a tremendous amount of research online. But even if we did not run a business from the road, I would still require an internet connection. E-mail is the most obvious benefit, but there is so much more an RVer can do online. Handle banking and other financial chores, book reservations at an RV park, check fuel prices around the country, get up to the minute weather reports, read RV park reviews and RV service reviews, check road conditions, shop online, read and participate in online forums and communities, and research areas where you plan to visit, to name just a few. Here are some good websites that many RVers find interesting and useful. www.gaspricewatch.com – Monitors gasoline prices nationwide www.dieselboss.com – Monitors both gas and diesel fuel prices nationwide www.rvservicereviews.com – Readers contribute reviews of good and bad service facilities www.rvparkreviews.com - Readers contribute reviews of RV parks nationwide www.byways.org – A great guide to exploring America ’s scenic highways and byways. www.festivals.com – If there is a festival going on anywhere in America, you’ll find it listed here www.museumstuff.com – A valuable resource for museum lovers www.nps.gov – The National Park Service main website, with links to National Parks, Historic Sites and Monuments nationwide. www.rvdoctor.com – If your RV is sick, you can learn how to make it well here www.rvia.org – The website of the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association, loaded with info on the RV industry www.roadtripamerica.com – Filled with RV travel tips, destinations, funny signs, and other helpful information www.kbb.com – Before you buy or sell your car or truck, check the Kelly Blue Book www.hmdb.org – The Historical Marker Database lists historical markers nationwide www.infoplease.com – Online dictionary, encyclopedia, almanac, thesaurus, and more www.casinocamper.com – List of casinos where RVers can park, as well as gaming information www.aitaonline.com/Info/Low%20Clearances.html#California%20Low%20Clearances – List of low clearance and bridge heights on major and secondary highways www.roadfood.com – Guide to neat restaurants from burger shacks to rib joints www.tripadvisor.com – Loaded with information on attractions and destinations across the country www.roadsidepeek.com – Guide to interesting road trips, highway curiosities, and attractions. www.legendsofamerica.com – Fun website for nostalgia and history buffs www.weirdus.com – Haunted locations, ghost tales and other oddities www.forttours.com – Guide to historic forts www.worldslargestthings.com – If its big, it’s listed here www.milebymile.com - Road maps, road conditions, and highway RV travel itineraries www.us-highways.com – Guided to US numbered highways www.usacarry.com – Guide to state by state firearms carry laws www.volunteer.gov – Lists thousands of opportunities to volunteer nationwide Thought For The Day –
Worrying works! 90 percent of the things I worry about never happen. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Monday, June 23, 2008 Many thanks to
everybody who sent Miss Terry birthday greetings yesterday. You really
made her day. J
Some guys get
their ladies something sexy to wear from
I have to be
honest with you, I really, really do not want to go all the way to Lewiston, We won’t be
taking a direct route to After we’ve
abused Mel and Carolyn’s hospitality for a while, we’ll make a few
stops in Many of the small
towns in this region offer free or very low cost overnight camping in
their city parks, which is a great way to make up for those high fuel
prices we’re dealing with these days. Here at the Gypsy
Journal we publish a guide to over 1,000 free and low cost overnight
parking places, and it has sure helped us keep some of our hard earned
money in our pocket. You can order the book online at our RV Book Store
or by sending a check for $8.95 to Gypsy Journal, Thought For The Day –
Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies
wake up crying every two hours? Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Sunday, June 22, 2008 One of the best things we did when we built our bus conversion was to insulate it very well. Many times when everyone around us is running their air conditioning, we simply open our windows to catch a cross breeze and are comfortable. As fulltime RVers, we try to avoid extreme cold weather, but a couple of times we have been stuck in places where the temperature was about ten degrees, and with just our Olympian catalytic heater we have been toasty warm. Yesterday we used
the same base insulation in the van as we did the bus. Consisting of a
thin layer of aluminum foil sandwiched between two layers of polyfoam,
the insulation comes in rolls, is very easy to work with, and has
amazing insulating qualities. We cut it into sections to fit the
contours of the van and affixed them to the metal walls and ceiling.
This is great stuff, we get if it from Ben Pearson at Engineered Bonded
Structures (EBS) here in
A thunderstorm came up while we were working, so we made a quick run to WalMart to pick up a Thetford porta potty, a battery powered LED light fixture, and a couple of other items for the van. Today we’ll add another layer of insulation, and then will start attaching wood paneling to the walls and ceiling.
Today won’t be
all about working on the van, though. It’s Miss Terry’s birthday,
and I plan to spoil her by taking her someplace outrageously expensive
that we really can’t afford. I just haven’t decide yet if it will be
the Shell or the Thought For The Day –
Three essentials to happiness in life are something to do, something to
love, and something to hope for.
Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Saturday, June 21, 2008 Usually when we get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal in the mail, we have some time to relax, but not this time around. We’ll be busy the next few days trying to get some things done in the van to make it comfortable for a few nights on the road, and sometime next week we’ll start heading west toward Idaho for Life on Wheels. As I wrote a while back, we want to make it into a basic B van conversion for short trips away from the bus. It won’t be anything fancy, just a few creature comforts to allow us to survive a night or two without having to spend money on a motel room. I don’t know how much we can accomplish in the time available, but I’ll post some photos as the work progresses. We stopped at RV
Surplus www.rvsurplussalvage.com
yesterday to pick up a couple of items for the project. This is our
favorite toy store, and we got many of the components for our bus
conversion there. Anyone converting a bus or refurbishing an RV can find
anything they need at the RV surplus outlets in and around
Speaking of fuel
prices, it is interesting to see which states stick it to us the most
with their taxes on fuel. Compare for yourself at this state fuel taxes
link http://www.massachusettsgasprices.com/tax_info.aspx,
Remind me not to fill my tank in Thought For The Day –
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Friday, June 20, 2008 For the last two
days, poor Miss Terry has been working like a madwoman getting the new
issue stuffed into envelopes and ready to mail out. I’m not allowed to
help with this project, because the post office requires them to be in a
very specific order, and getting just one envelope out of sequence
brings everything to a screeching halt. Yesterday we dropped off boxes
of papers to be sent to the Escapees Mail Service in With the price of fuel and the hassle of standing in line at the post office, I have been looking at some of the online postal options such as www.stamps.com that allow their subscribers to print postage right from their computers. I’m curious if anyone here has used any of these services, and if so, would you share you experience with me by sending an e-mail to editor@gypsyjournal.net. I talked to our
friends Ron and Brenda Speidel, fulltimers who are volunteer camp hosts
at While Terry was busy with the mailing, I spent some time tweaking our websites, in an effort to get our Google ads to start performing again. It’s strange, we’ll have weeks of steady clicks and good commissions, and then suddenly it drops into the sandbox, then after a while it picks back up again. It seems like we have the same ads appearing, and the same volume of traffic to the websites, yet the numbers take a nosedive. I just can’t understand why. One topic I get a lot of e-mail about is working on the road, so I also added a new page on the subject that is a brief overview of the class I do called Work Your Way Across The USA at Life on Wheels www.rvlifeonwheels.com and RV rallies. Check it out at this link: Working On The Road. Thought For The Day –
Life is a journey, not a guided tour. Thursday, June 19, 2008 I get a lot of e-mail, often well over 100 legitimate messages a day, not counting what my spam filter catches, and the jokes and forwards I get from anybody and everybody. One of the big reasons we abandoned our HughesNet tripod internet dish and got a Verizon air card was because when we were traveling and did not have the time to set up the dish, our e-mail would really pile up. Well, even with the air card, it was sure piling up yesterday. We access our e-mail from Yahoo, and for whatever reason, yesterday it just would not allow me to get to my e-mail. Just one more glitch in Yahoo that they can’t seem to get right. I called their help line, only to get a recording saying that they were aware that many business customers could not access their e-mail and their technicians were working on it. Finally, late in the afternoon whatever was wrong got fixed and I could start wading through the pile of waiting messages. Even with frustrations like this, RVers have come a long, long way since Terry and I started fulltiming nine years ago. Back then, you toted your laptop computer down to the campground office, and if they were feeling particularly benevolent, they would (for a fee) let you plug into a phone line long enough to download your e-mail. It wasn’t uncommon for the next guy in line to read over your shoulder in an effort to get you to hurry up so he could get his chance. Eventually we got a cellular phone modem, which was incredibly slow and unreliable. It was not uncommon to get knocked offline three or four times in an hour, but on a good day I could sit in my RV and actually check my e-mail. Talk about luxury!
The advent of
satellite dishes revolutionized internet access for RVers. There was a
time WiFi was another big step forward, and more and more RV parks, truck stops, and even highway rest areas have WiFi hotspots where RVers can access the internet. These systems range from very reliable to worthless, and I’ve heard more complaints about WiFi than just about any other technology. It is not uncommon for even the paid WiFi services to be offline as often as they are on.
Thought For The Day – Did you ever notice that when you put the words "The" and "IRS" together, it spells "Theirs?" Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Our first thought
was that whoever was driving the car must be really, really Was it a guide dog for a really short, blind driver? I was beginning to think I had taken too many pain pills there for a little while! We got into the other lane to pass, and then realized the car was being towed by the truck! They build all kind of specialty vehicles here in the Elkhart area, not just RVs, and apparently someone was delivering the truck and towing their car for the return trip. Mystery solved, and we got a good chuckle out of it. J We love old
architecture, and we always enjoy looking at the neat old houses,
churches, and commercial buildings in the East and
Thought For The Day –
The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of
his tongue. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Tuesday, June 17, 2008 When I woke up Monday morning, my back had gone out again to the point where Terry had to help me get out of bed. I hobbled around a while, popped the last pain pill from my surgery, Terry manipulated and jerked on my leg, and eventually I could move around fairly well. Terry drove us up to our printer in My back had subsided to just a dull ache by the
time we were back in Our friends and fellow Life on Wheels instructors Rick Shafer and Marcia Gantz were in town running some errands and stopped by to visit for a while. We really enjoy Rick and Marcia, and we had a nice chat, but I’m afraid I wasn’t great company because I was too busy being a wimp. Rick will be presenting a seminar on boondocking at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, and Marcia will do a seminar on using the Excel computer program to keep track of your RV expenses. When I checked my e-mail in the evening, I had several from readers sending positive feedback on my Fathers Day blog about my dad. I appreciate it. He was quite a guy, and I wish you all would have had the opportunity to get to meet him. I especially wish Miss Terry would have been able to know my parents, but they were both gone years before we got together. I also had an e-mail from a lady we first met as a
student at Life on Wheels, whom I have been corresponding with for a
while now. She is a brand new solo RVer, and wrote to tell me that she
had just finished her first trip alone in the RV, from the Thought For The Day –
Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Monday, June 16, 2008 Wrapping up a new issue of the Gypsy Journal, “putting it to bed" in newspaper parlance, is
always a satisfying achievement. We put the new issue to bed yesterday
afternoon, and this morning we will drive 70 miles north to This will be our 55th issue of the Gypsy Journal, and based upon our 36 page issues, that is 1,980 pages. Each page holds approximately 1,100 words, depending upon the number of photos and ads appearing on the page. That is 2,178,000 words. Wow, over two million words! And I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of all of the things I want to see and write about. Or maybe, as Miss Terry just told me when I gave her these numbers, I’m just full of it! J I found an interesting story on Yahoo
News over the weekend. Drivers in San Diego, I don’t like Big Brother running things, but
maybe the folks south of the border are on to something. I lived much of
my life along the Mexican border, and my dismal impression of their
government is based upon the corruption and inefficiency that I saw and
dealt with first hand. But if even they
can keep fuel prices in line, you know the dipsticks in For any of you folks out there that have been interested in scrap booking, I have great news. Our friend Cheryl Green has just agreed to come to our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally, where she will be presenting a seminar on Digital Scrap Booking Made Easy. Cheryl is a consultant for Creative Memories, and you can check out her website at http://www.mycmsite.com/sites/cmcherylgreen. We first met Cheryl and her husband Gary when they were students at Life on Wheels, and we immediately hit it off with them. You can get to know this fun couple by visiting their RV travel website at www.bigrigrving.com. Then come to the rally and you can meet them in person. I bet you’ll like them as much as Terry and I do! Thought For The Day –
The glory is not in never falling, but in rising again every time you
fall. Register Now For Our New Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally Sunday, June 15, 2008 Happy Fathers Day to all of you dads out there. If you haven’t called your dad today to tell him that you love him, walk away from the keyboard and do it right now. I’ll wait here for you. Being a father is hard work, and I know I made about every mistake a father can make while my kids were growing up. Nobody gave me a handbook on how to get the job done, so I just muddled along the best I could and tried to learn by trial and error. I was a single father for many years, and raising a kid alone is not easy. I wish I could go back and try to undo a lot of things, but hindsight is always best, isn’t it? My own dad was quite a guy. He was a lawman, a combat veteran, an ordained minister, a gifted musician, and a poet, among his other roles. He had a hard life. He struggled to feed his family through the Great Depression, and saw his friends die around him in the South Pacific. He fathered eight children, and buried five of them. He was 45 when I was born, coming to my parents long after they thought they were out of the baby business. My dad was a part of the generation that didn’t know they were supposed to be their kids’ buddy. He saw his duty as the family provider, guide, and educator. He didn’t give me many rules to obey, he just set a standard I was expected to live up to. I never had a bed time as a kid. I could stay up all night and read if I wanted to, but come morning, I had darned well better be up and ready for school at the appointed time. No excuses were tolerated. Growing up, and as an adult, I can’t think of many things worse I could have done than disappointing him or letting him down.. He wasn’t a disciplinarian. That task was usually left to my mother. I’m sure I got spanked as a kid, but the only time I ever remember my dad hitting me, I was eighteen years old and home on leave from the army. Nothing is more foolish or foolhardy than a young soldier with eight hours of hand to hand combat training and two beers under his belt who is trying to show off for his pals. My dad was sitting on the sofa, and I was being a bit loud and obnoxious when he said, in that quiet voice of his, “Sit down and shut up, you’re making an ass of yourself and embarrassing your mother.” I decided that I wasn’t a kid anymore, and the old guy needed to know right then and there that we were equals. “I’m a man, you can’t tell me what to do any more,” I laughed and playfully slapped at his cheek as I said “come on, old man, show me what you’ve got.” I never saw it coming. Hell, I don’t even remember him getting up from the sofa, but he hit me just once, and I was on the floor gulping air like a beached carp. When I could finally breathe again, Dad casually asked if I had anything else to say. “No sir,” I told him as I limped off to my room, trailing my ego and newfound machismo behind me. My dad was always proud of me, and whatever I did, whether I succeeded or failed, he let me know that as long as I gave it my best, that was what mattered. He always told me that I could be or do anything I wanted to be in life, as long as I worked hard enough to make it happen. He set a great value on education, probably because he dropped out of school at an early age to help feed his family. But he was highly read and knowledgeable on many subjects. I think he was most proud that I was the first in my family to go to college. My dad’s been gone over 20 years now, but I still miss him, and I wish I could call him today and tell him Happy Father’s Day. But maybe he’s somewhere looking down at his youngest son, and will get the message. I hope so. I love you, Dad. Thought For The Day –
The best way to get even is to forget. Saturday, June 14, 2008 Here in After three days of near agony, I finally gave in yesterday morning and let Terry take me to a chiropractor. He bent me around like a pretzel, crunched and twisted, and popped whatever was out back into place. Then he recommended I put an ice pack on my lower back every few hours and sent me on my way. I still have some residual soreness, but nothing like I have been dealing with. Okay, change of plans. I reported in Monday’s blog that the folks from Recreational Vehicle Safety Education Foundation (RVSEF) www.rvsafety.org had contacted us and cancelled their scheduled appearance at our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally in September. Yesterday they e-mailed to say that they were going to able to be there after all. I’m happy, because I believe that having our rigs weighed and being aware of weight safety is critical. If you haven’t had your RV weighed yet, include it in your plans for the rally. The small investment in time and money can save you many times over in terms of prolonging the life of your tires, suspension, and drive train, not to mention that it is an investment in your safety. You can call Rick or Joyce Lang from RVSEF at (207) 522-3336 to reserve a weighing time at the rally. Someone asked me the other day if I am worried that fuel prices will keep the number of attendees at the rally down. I think we’ll be fine. We have three months to go, and already we have well over 60 RVs paid and registered, and another 35 or so that have asked us to save them a place, but have not formally registered yet. We started out hoping for at least 100 RVs, which is our break even point, and I don’t think we’ll have any problem hitting that number. I’ve talked to a lot of people in this part of the country that aren’t going to be able to make it all the way to Gillette, Wyoming for Escapade this year, and I think we’ll be able to attract some of them to Ohio instead. I was hoping to have the new issue of the Gypsy Journal wrapped up by now so I could be lazy this weekend and drop it off at the printer Monday morning, but I lost some time Thursday and Friday, so I’ll use the next two days to finish up. Next week will be a blur of running back and forth
to the printer in Thought For The Day –
He who hesitates is probably right. Friday, June 13, 2008 If you’re the superstitious type, be careful not to break any mirrors today, avoid walking under ladders, and give black cats a wide birth. It’s Friday the thirteenth! I’ve never really been into all of that stuff, but you just never know. J It really warmed up again yesterday, and by mid-afternoon we were feeling the heat. Elkhart Campground has really filled up, with a Holiday Rambler rally bringing in about 60 coaches, and everybody wants 50 amp electric so they can use their air conditioners. We had a lot of company yesterday afternoon. Bob Curry came by and visited for quite a while, and as soon as he left, Ed Boehm, one of the folks here with the Holiday Rambler group, showed up. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to visit with Ed very long, because the folks who had pulled into the site next to us had blocked our TV dish and I had to reposition it. Shortly thereafter, another couple were at the door, and then Al Hesselbart from the RV Museum arrived. By the time everybody had left, it was 9:30 p.m. and I pretty much gave up on getting anything else accomplished for the day. Sometimes a business person has to know when to cut his losses and take a different course of action. We have been faced with that decision in respect to one of our most popular books, the RVers Dashboard Companion. We have encountered one production delay after another in our latest reprint, and by the time we can get them printed and mailed out, they will already be out of date. The main content of the book is a list of all WalMart, Sam’s Club, Camping World, and Flying J truck stop locations nationwide, with address, telephone number, turn by turn driving directions, and GPS coordinates. Our major problem is that WalMart is opening new stores faster than we can update the book. In 2007 they opened 281 new stores, another 180 are scheduled to open in 2008, and 140 more in 2009. So I find myself neglecting other writing projects
and putting other books on the back burner to try to keep up with adding
all of the new store listings. It’s not as simple as just typing up
the new store addresses. I have to verify their address and telephone
numbers, then use two or three different mapping programs to get the
directions and GPS coordinates down. Then I have to reformat the book
pages to include the new listings. This changes the page count for every
page following. So if I add two new stores in So yesterday we pulled the plug on the project, and mailed out refund checks to the customers who had books coming and were waiting for the last batch from our printer. I always hate to admit defeat, but it just doesn’t make good business sense to continue to dedicate so much effort to one project, when we have others we can complete and get into print. Thought For The Day – Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity? Thursday, June 12, 2008 I spent most of the last two days chained to my computer working on the latest edition of the Gypsy Journal to get it ready to take to the printer. The storms that assaulted the area over the weekend have passed and the weather has been beautiful. Miss Terry has taken advantage of the blue sky and moderate temperatures to log some miles on her bike. I’m not allowed on mine until my stitches come out, which will be a few weeks yet, so I’m jealous. In the evening I needed a break, so I sat outside to watch the world go by, and subscriber Bob Plaskon from Salem, Ohio came by to introduce himself, and we chatted for a couple of hours, until the mosquitoes finally drove me inside. Bob is a heck of a nice guy, and it was good to spend some time getting to know him. Today we got some new neighbors, and they are not going to be fun to spend time parked next to. There are two trailers, and I think they may be part of a carnival that came through. The adults are pretty young, they have several unruly little kids, and at least a half dozen barking dogs. I was beginning to fear that I’m just becoming a crotchety old fart grumbling about everything, but then I heard one of the longtime regulars here, about as mellow a guy as there ever could be, tell one of the kids to stop running through his site, so I guess I’m okay for a little while yet. As I write this, it is just after midnight, and they are still outside, adults, kids, and dogs, all raising a ruckus. If you want to learn more about your computer, boy have I got great news for you! Jim and Chris Guld, from Geeks on Tour, will be offering a hands-on computer boot camp just before our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally in September. If you want to get the most out of your computer, if you’re confused by all of the different programs and how they work, this will be the perfect opportunity to learn. The Gulds are current |
You
just never know what you’re going to find along the back roads of 
Not
ten minutes later we spotted a big truck conversion up ahead, and I said
to Terry “It can’t be, can it?” We pulled alongside, and sure
enough, it was them!
We
spent yesterday exploring the back roads of Nebraska, nice two lane
state routes that took us up through the Sand Hills, a mass of rolling
sand dunes covered with prairie grass. It was slow paced travel, just
the kind we love the most.
In
the tiny town of Arthur, we stopped to check out the Pilgrim Holiness
Church, which was built in 1928 of straw bales, and then covered with
stucco. A friend of mine back in our hometown built his home from straw
bales, and it was incredibly energy efficient. We can’t ever imagine
settling down,
I
just love roadside kitsch, and a couple of miles north of Alliance, in
northwest Nebraska, we stopped to see one of the coolest places we’ve
ever come across. Carhenge is a replica of
England’s Stonehenge, but made of old cars instead of massive rocks.
How cool is that?
Eventually
we made our way into Wyoming, where we stopped in Lusk to take a
photograph of this neat redwood water tower that once supplied water to
steam locomotives for the railroad. Once commonplace, the water tower is
now is one of just six still standing nationwide. 
When
we left Basehor, we drove north into Nebraska and spent some time
visiting
the Homestead National Monument outside of the small town of Beatrice.
The Monument honors the hardy pioneer men and women who settled the
prairies and mountains of America, as well as recognizing the native
peoples who were displaced in America’s westward expansion. The
Monument includes a Visitor Center, displays on the homesteading
experience, an early day one room school house, and a tiny
homesteader’s cabin where a family of settlers raised ten children.
And we think our RVs get cramped from time to time!
A
few miles away, in the friendly small town of Hebron, Nebraska, we
stopped to check out the world’s largest porch swing, which occupies a
place of honor in one of the city parks, and can hold about 40 people.
Miss Terry sure looked lonely sitting there all by herself, so as soon
as I took this photo I joined her on the porch for a while. It’s a
great place for smooching with your favorite girl!
Riverside City Park on Holdrege Avenue even has sixteen huge back-in
level grass RV sites with 30 amp electric, water, a dump station, and
restrooms with showers, all for just $5/night. You can learn more about
this low cost campground and over 1,000 other free and low cost camping
options in our Guide to Free Campgrounds and Overnight Parking Places,
which sells for just $8.95 (shipping included) in our 
As
the name implies, the business sells marbles, but that is only part of
its
attraction. Visitors can actually watch skilled artisans demonstrate
their marble making techniques, creating beautifully colored orbs from
colored glass rods. Using propane torches, the glass is heated to nearly
2,000 degrees and twirled by hand to shape it into balls, then smoothed
and finished using special carbon molds to hold it while the craftsman
applies the finishing touches. Once formed, the marble is placed in a
heated kiln and slowly cooled over several hours, because if it were
allowed to cool too fast, it would shatter.
The
store has a lot more than just marbles to ogle over. We saw dozens of
toys and novelty items we remembered from our 
own
childhoods, from box kites to board games, but marbles are king here,
and whether you’re looking for a pearly, a cat’s eye, or a bumble
bee, you’ll find plenty to choose from. Mel and I may be on the far
side of “mature,” but we were looking for a place to kneel down and
shoot a game or two by the time we were halfway through the displays.
spent the afternoon prowling around the beautiful old Union Station
railroad depot. The first thing that struck me when we entered the
historic building was the ornate ceiling. They just don’t build public
buildings like this any more.
Built
in 1914, Union Station is huge, 850,000 square feet to be exact, and
originally featured 900 rooms. In its heyday as a working train station,
tens of thousands of passengers came through here every year; servicemen
going off to war, farm kids from the hinterlands coming to the big city
to seek their fortunes, travel weary businessmen, and families going off
to new lives over the horizon. During World War II, an estimated one
million travelers passed through Union Station. The North Waiting Room
could hold 10,000 people, and the complex included restaurants, a cigar
store, barber shop, railroad offices, the nation's largest 
In
the 1980s, Union Station closed and sat empty, except for the rats and
the ghosts of the past who inhabited the cavernous hallways and great
rooms. The old building barely escaped the wrecker’s ball on more than
one occasion, but forward thinking community members spearheaded an
effort to restore Union Station, and
today it is once again a busy place. People come to browse the shops and
restaurants, attend special events at the 
We
stumbled into the tiny community of Horton (population 1,885), and I was
ready to set up housekeeping! What Horton lacks in people and services,
it more than makes up for in friendliness. Horton is called the 
The
Horton Headlight newspaper has been in business since 1886, and even
though it was a Saturday, managing editor Linda Messer was in the office
when we poked our heads inside the open door. Linda invited us in and
gave us a tour of the cramped backshop and basement pressroom. Years ago
the newspaper switched over to computerized offset printing, but the old
lead type cases and Linotype typesetting machines are still sitting
there, dusty and neglected. The ancient press still has a newspaper
hanging off the folder, and if you did not know better you’d expect
the pressmen to return from lunch and fire it up any minute.
and my first job was as a printer’s devil, cleaning and sorting type,
then delivering the papers on a route after they came off the press.
From there, I moved up to setting type by hand (a skill that doesn't
exist any more) for flyers and broadsheets before they ever let me set a
slug of type for the actual newspaper itself. I guess that ink got into
my blood, because I've been involved in the publishing business in one
way or another for much of my adult life. I was on a trip down memory
lane and didn’t want it to end.
A
couple of doors down from the newspaper office, we met Luke Pollock at
the English Leather Shop At age 24, Luke is one of the most impressive
young men I’ve ever met. He said he stumbled into the shop in 2002
looking for some neatsfoot oil for his boots, and the shop’s owner,
Lawrence English, asked him if he wanted the five gallon jug or the
large 55 gallon economy size. The young man and the shop owner became
friends and Luke soon found himself learning the shoemaker’s trade,
and when English retired, Luke purchased the shop.
eavers who wanted to learn,
because he’d like to pass the trade on to future shoemakers, keeping
alive the tradition Lawrence English started with him.
I
found them next door at the Electric City Emporium, owned by Tom Reed.
How do I best describe this place? Picture a combination of an old time
five and dime store, a flea market, and an antique store, all rolled
into one. The aisles are cramped and filled with every kind of novelty
and goodie you can imagine, from toys to kitchenware, to books, to
horehound candy, with no apparent rhyme or reason to how they are
displayed. But that’s half the fun.
We
have been playing tourist here in northeast Kansas and having a
wonderful time!
Who knew Kansas could be so much fun? Yesterday Mel and Carolyn took
Terry and I on a day trip through some of the small towns in the area,
and there was so much to see and do that it will take a couple of blogs
just to catch up!
Doniphan
County Courthouse. The courthouse lawn also holds a 27 foot tall Indian
sculpture named Tall Oak,
which was created by noted Hungarian artist Peter Toth.
for years. On a bluff a half mile or so from downtown a wooden viewing
platform gave us a magnificent 360 degree view of four states, Kansas,
Nebraska, Missouri, and Iowa.
When
Sarah died in 1930, the story is that John did not want her family to
inherit any of his money after he was gone, so he spent his fortune
creating a memorial consisting of eleven life-sized Italian marble
statues of he and his wife throughout their married life. The first
shows them as a young couple courting, other statues show them as they
aged, and in the final statue, John sits alone in his chair, an empty
chair beside him with the word Vacant chiseled into it.
The
other day while cruising along a back road in rural Illinois, we came
across a used buggy lot, where the local Amish farmers can trade up for
a new set of wheels. I wonder if used Amish buggy salesmen wear white
shoes and white belts?
We
also love old architecture, and on the back roads we have seen
everything from stunning brick storefronts to rustic log cabins. I’d
stop and take pictures of every one we see, if there were enough places
to pull over and enough hours in a day. Another favorite for us is
historical signs. I have Miss Terry convinced that there is a special
endorsement on my drivers license requiring me to stop and read every
one of them we come across.
Wednesday,
we left the bus at Elkhart Campground and drove the van west
on a sorties of U.S. highways, running in a downpour for the first
couple of hours before the rain finally cleared up. We stopped in the
small town of Arcola, Illinois, where we saw the world’s only monument
dedicated to the hippie movement. It was an interesting piece of
sculpture, and well worth the trip.
Arcola
was also the hometown of Johnny Gruelle, the author who introduced
Raggedy Ann and Andy to the world’s children, and the Visitor Center
there has a nice display of dolls, toys, and coloring books about the
beloved dolls. Arcola was also the Broom Straw Capital of the World, and
once supported several factories that made brooms. The Visitor Center
has the world’s largest collection of straw brooms on display.
Thursday
morning, after saying a reluctant goodbye to Ron and Brenda, we stopped
at the Mark Twain Shrine at the state park, which holds the home the
celebrated author was born in, as well as an excellent display on his
life and work. It was interesting, and made me want to go back and read Tom
Sawyer and some of his other classics all over again.
After
three days of hard work, the inside of the van is not finished, but it
is to
a point where we can use it on our trip west. We covered the interior
walls and ceiling with insulation and then plywood, and built storage
boxes over the wheel wells. Those boxes also serve as a support for the
plywood base for our air mattress. It’s not fancy, but we’ll have a
place to sleep if we don’t want to pay for a motel room. As time goes
on we’ll cover the walls and ceiling and add a few other creature
comforts that will allow us to get by for a few days at a time away from
the bus.
Yesterday
we got most of the plywood attached to the walls and ceiling of the van,
except for one section about 30 inches wide that we’ll finish today. A
while back we got some expanding cargo bars that we use in the van to
keep things from sliding around, and they came in very handy to hold the
ceiling panel up until it was screwed into place. Today we’ll build
boxes along both sides over the wheel wells, and figure out exactly how
we’re going to set up the platform for the air mattress. We won’t
get the entire project finished before we leave later this week for our
trip west, but we’ll have it basically functional.
Here
are photos of the inside of the van before we insulated it and after.
Several people came by while we were working on the van to check out our
progress, and I think they were surprised to see Miss Terry doing most
of the work. My job is to stand around and look pretty.
For
many people, campfires are an essential part of their camping
experience. A while back a company called CampCentral sent me a nifty
product to evaluate. Called Firepliers, they are a set of heavy duty
tongs perfect for reaching into a fire to move that stubborn piece of
wood into position without burning your hands. Measuring 30 inches long,
and capable of moving wood over a foot thick, these are a handy item to
have around the campsite. Check out their website at 
While
we were visiting with Trina Ambris, who runs RV Surplus, her son 
The
next innovation was a gadget about the size of a calculator, called
PocketMail. It consisted of a little keyboard with which you could type
a message and then hold the device up to a telephone and send and
receive e-mails. No attachments or graphics, no web surfing, and
messages were limited in character length, but it was convenient for
basic communication.
when some dealers for the expensive automatic dishes waged a propaganda
war against those of us who opted for the cheaper tripod setups. There
were rumored threats of having our systems, and even our RVs, seized by
the FCC, for using the “illegal” dishes, urban legends about some
RVer somewhere who was killed when an improperly aimed tripod dish blew
an ink pen in his shirt pocket through his heart, and even attempts to
intimidate RV park owners and rally sponsors into banning tripod systems
because of supposed liabilities they faced if someone was injured by a
customer’s poorly aligned system. All of that nonsense eventually died
down, and thousands of RVers use both the automatic and tripod systems
to good advantage.
The
latest, and in my opinion greatest, thing to come down the technology
highway is the air card. We changed to an air card several months ago,
and have never looked back. Some critics of air cards will tell you that
in remote areas where there is no cell signal, they are worthless.
That’s true, but the signal footprint of our satellite dish, also had
limitations, in our case in the far northwestern part of the country.
Yes, you can request Hughes switch you to another satellite, but what
happens when you travel to an area that the new satellite’s footprint
doesn’t cover? 
Sometimes
we see things that leave us scratching our heads and saying “huh?”
Such was the case the other day when we spotted this car going down the
street ahead of us, with a dog hanging its head out the window. That’s
not an uncommon sight, we see dogs with their heads sticking out car
windows all of them. What struck us as odd was that we couldn’t see
anyone in the driver’s seat.
short. But then the dog crossed over to the driver’s side window and
stuck its head out there, and we said “Whaaaat?” How could anybody
drive with the dog in their seat? Was anybody
driving? The car stopped at every traffic signal, then took off again
with the rest of the traffic, though it was tailgating the Sara Lee
truck ahead of it.
According
to the historical sign at the bridge, the three span 270 foot long
bridge was built in 1922 and is the longest example of a concrete
camelback bridge in the state. The highway has been rerouted and a much
newer bridge carries traffic across the river now, but the old bridge
has been preserved and is used for foot traffic. Can’t you just
imagine a shiny Model T rattling across this bridge, back when they were
both new and state of the art? We find treasures like this on every back
road in