It’s been cold and rainy here in northern Arizona. In fact, they had snow in Pinetop-Lakeside, about 10 miles from us. I highly disapprove.
Besides a fair amount of sniveling, I’ve been spending the time working on my next book, Big Lake Reckoning. I wrote a little over 3,200 words yesterday, which takes me about to the halfway point in the story. I’d like to have it out in the next month, but that probably won’t happen, since it’s almost time to put it on the back burner for a while so I can get started on the next issue of the Gypsy Journal.
While I was writing, Miss Terry was busy doing everything from laundry to grocery shopping to making a couple of delicious dinners, to weaving. She always makes me look like a slacker.
Our month here at the Show Low Elks lodge is up on Tuesday but we may hang around for a few more days before we hit the road. I’m waiting on an order of books to arrive and then we’re off on our next adventure. Our first reservation is June 23 in Florence, Oregon, and I don’t know which route we’ll take to get there or where we’ll stop along the way. I’m sure we’ll find something to occupy our time between now and then.
Several people we know have been talking about RVing in Alaska and asking me why we have not made the trip in all of our years of fulltiming. There are several reasons, not the least of them being that in our opinion, no place on earth is as beautiful as the Oregon coast. But probably the biggest stumbling block for us is that as long as we continue to publish a printed edition of the Gypsy Journal, there is no way to get it printed and mailed on an Alaskan trip. There is nobody in Alaska who can print it at a cost we can afford, and having our regular printer ship it to us there would be prohibitive. And we’ve never found a commercial mail house that will do the job right unless we are there to monitor it. And even then they cut corners that lead to returned and undelivered mail.
Since the paper comes out every other month, we would have at most a five week period between mailing out one issue and getting back to the Lower 48 to have the next one out. And of those five weeks, at least one would be spent putting the next issue together. It would take a good chunk of that time just driving there and back. We’ll stick to the Pacific Northwest for the foreseeable future.
Actually, as much as we love the Oregon coast, we both have been missing Florida, and if it weren’t for the fact that it’s about to get pretty hot and humid there, and that hurricane season is coming, we’d probably point the nose of the motorhome east and not stop until we hit the Space Coast. We really like Titusville, but a friend has been telling me about New Smyrna Beach, a small beach town about 30 miles north, that we really want to check out.
Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an audiobook of Chesapeake 1880 by my friend Ken Rossignol, a tale of life in the Chesapeake Bay region as the industrial revolution changed the world forever. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn this evening.
Good news for George Wier fans! George’s newest book, Sentinel In Elysium, is now available in e-book and paperback. George is the master of Texas intrigue and mystery and he’s done it again with the Elysium series, where small town secrets can be lethal.
Thought For The Day – You know you’re getting older when it takes you longer to rest than it did to get tired.
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Nick Russell
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Oh Nick don’t come to New Smyrna Beach unless you are ready to park that camper forever! We have lived here since 1985 and had to leave twice for work but both times we gave up better paying jobs to come back. Its a wonderful small beach town with a relaxed atmosphere that has a strong magnetic pull. Once you visit you will find it hard to leave and even harder to stay away!
Oh, the secret is out! I am dreaming and planning of retiring in New Smyrna Beach within 10 years. Love it!
I tell people who can’t take the time for a full Alaska trip to go to Hyder AK/Stewart BC, just 900 miles from the border. If you go between late July and early September the salmon come up Fish Creek in Hyder, so out come the bears. They have a nice boardwalk over the creek, so you can be safe. Drive further up the road past Fish Creek and you can look down on Salmon Glacier, which is huge and clearly visible from Google Earth. Have a little more time coming back from Hyder? Then visit the Canadian Rockies, Jasper, Banff, Yoho and Kootenay National Parks are well worth visiting.
You lose money on the print edition of the paper and it keeps you from going the places you want to go while the electronic edition makes money and you can do it anywhere. What’s wrong with this picture?
Having made the trip to Alaska twice, I always wondered why you two hadn’t gone. Today’s blog post answers the question. I would like to second Bill Joyce’s comments about Hyder, Alaska and the Canadian national parks. They are not Alaska but its clearly worth the trip. Yes it’s getting hot in Florida. It has been consistently hitting 90 and the daily thunderstorms have started to come in. Weather on my phone says high of 91 and low of 73 for the next five days. We get to hit the road Wed.
We did the Alaska thing two summers ago and swatted mosquitoes and black flies the whole trip. Yes it’s beautiful but also expensive and often wet and muddy. I agree for us the Pacific NW is just as beautiful if not more so.
I love New Smyrna but my wife hates it. She’s a desert rat and would spend her life boondocking in Quartsite if I’d agree. So we compromise and do what she wants.