Out And About

Yesterday Terry was feeling better, and we both had a bit of cabin fever, so we decided it was a good day to get out of the motorhome and run some errands.

Our first stop was the post office in Wildwood, to drop off some orders that came in over the weekend. Since I had already printed labels from Stamps.com, it was a simple matter of pulling up to an outside mailbox and slipping them in the slot.

Then we drove about 20 miles south to Bushnell and dropped off sample bundles of the Gypsy Journal at several RV parks in the area. I also found a big newspaper recycling dumpster to get rid of the bundles that our printer screwed up or were ruined by UPS when they were being shipped to us from Michigan. I hate to throw that many bundles away, but at least they’ll get recycled. And the printer is giving us an adjustment on our invoice for their poor work.

When we stopped at Sumter Oaks, the Escapees campground a few miles outside of Bushnell, we ran into several subscribers, including Wayne and Marti Aanerud. We had a nice chat with them and a couple of other people, but I’m afraid I can’t remember everybody’s names. I wish I was better at that, but it’s just one of my (many) shortcomings.

We stopped at Breezy Oaks Campground, a nice little RV park just off Interstate 75 to drop off a printed copy of my book Crazy Days in Big Lake to our friend John Culp. John is one of the true pioneers in the world of fulltime RVing. He lives in a 1947 Westwind Coronado travel trailer that he and his parents bought new, and John and that old trailer have been running up and down for road for over 60 years! That’s a lot of years!

Our pal Al Hesselbart spends his winters at Breezy Oaks and we had hoped to catch him and run over to a Chinese buffet in Brooksville that we’ve made it a tradition to visit the last couple of years, but John said Al had just left with a group of people and they were headed to the very same buffet! I guess great minds really do think alike.

When we got to the buffet, not only was Al there, but also Bob and Rita Meredith, Gypsy Journal subscriber Dennis Shankle, and a nice couple named Dick and Dot Tate. I know all of these names because Miss Terry wrote them down.

Besides being the historian for the RV Museum in Elkhart, Indiana, Al is also the author of a great book titled The Dumb Things Sold Just Like That…A History of the RV Industry in America. Bob Meredith is an artist, who creates amazing drawings of vintage RVs and nautical scenes. Bob also does large format work, and when I say large format, I’m talking big! He likes to find antique trailers and create rolling works of art out of them. Here is a link to a blog I wrote about one of Bob’s creations a while back.

As it turns out, Dot is also into fiber arts, and even carries a spinning wheel with her when they travel in their RV, so she and Terry hit it right off. I’m sure we’ll be going back down to Breezy Oaks so they can talk shop. Spin yarns. Or do some wool gathering. Okay, I think I’m done.

Thought For The Day – We all talk about leaving a better planet to our kids. Maybe we should work harder to leave better kids for our planet.

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