A longtime reader contacted me yesterday saying they are considering a Thousand Trails campground membership and asking me for my thoughts on the matter. Thousand Trails is like any other membership campground system. If you use it, it can be a good deal, and if you don’t, it’s a waste of time and money. We […]
Note: We had a long day yesterday and didn’t get home from Terry’s appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville until late. Much of the drive up there and back was in the rain, and I’m just too tired to write a blog. So here is a repost of a blog from March, 2016, about […]
I’m back with more questions from blog readers about RVing, what’s happening in our lives since we hung up the keys, and all kinds of other things. While I try to answer all questions individually, I also share some here occasionally. Q. I know that you and Terry taught for Life on Wheels for many […]
After reading yesterday’s blog about the campers from hell, I received some interesting comments from campground owners and workampers. They were all in agreement that 99% of the people who come to their campgrounds are wonderful guests and a joy to be around. But they all agree that there is always that small number of […]
Wow, it’s over already? That was a fast year! They say that as we get older time goes faster, and I think that must be true. So what was 2016 like for us? We started the year in Tucson, Arizona, where I was getting follow-up treatment at the VA hospital for a medical issue that […]
Most fulltime RVers and RV snowbirds are either in their winter roosts already, or will be headed for them right after the holidays. Many will be joining us here in Florida, others will be headed to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, or to Arizona or Southern California. Anywhere the sun shines and the snow […]
I will never forget our first Thanksgiving on the road. We had been stuck in the Phoenix area waiting for RV repairs and when they finally got done we just wanted to be gone. We hit the road and found ourselves in an RV park in Saint David, Arizona that night. The next day we […]
For the most part, the weather has been pretty good here in Florida all winter and we have dodged the worst of the storms that did come through. When we were at the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve in Clermont they were getting hit hard down in the Tampa Bay area. Then, when we spent a […]
Yesterday it was time to say goodbye to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve, known simply as TTO to Thousand Trails members who frequent this huge campground in central Florida. It’s become almost a second home to us; this was our second two-week stay this winter, and when we are in Florida we have stayed several […]
One of the nice perks of publishing the Gypsy Journal RV newspaper and this RV blog is that we get to test a lot of neat RV accessories and gadgets when something new or updated hits the market. Over the years we’ve been able to evaluate everything from cordless vacuum cleaners to inverters, GPS units, waterless […]
When you have been fulltiming as long as we have you pick up a trick or two along the way. One of them is to always carry a supply of wood. No, not for campfires. Fulltimers seldom have campfires. We are usually inside our homes at night, just like when we lived in a sticks […]
Is there any better way to sleep than with the sound of rain on the roof of your RV? If there is, I haven’t found it yet. It beats the heck out of any kind of over-the-counter or prescription sleep aid ever invented as far as I’m concerned. We got a late start yesterday just […]
When we had dinner with Charles and Chris Yust Friday evening we had discussed going to New Smyrna Beach yesterday. They have not been there, and there were three or four properties that we wanted to look at. So we were up early yesterday morning but the weather didn’t look too good. I messaged a […]
We’ve been in a lot of campgrounds that have different kinds of entertainment over the years, including everything from bingo, to jam sessions, to movie nights. But my buddy Gary Greene, the manager of the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve, goes the extra mile and provides alligator wrestling! After a day out exploring with our friends Charles […]
Never underestimate the power of positive sniveling! I wrote in yesterday’s blog that the temperature here in central Florida had dropped into the mid-60s after our friends Charles and Chris Yust from C&C Insurance arrived. But Chris learned that my powers are greater than hers. I whined, I sniveled, yes, I threw a tantrum, and […]
For years I have had a reputation for bringing bad weather with me everywhere I go. A community could be in a year-long drought, but about the time I show up they get torrential rains. Folks can be planting their gardens on a sunny spring day when I pull into a campground, and the next […]
Yesterday was moving day for us, but it was a short trip of about 45 miles to the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve. We were up early and it didn’t take us all that long to get ready. We pulled out of Three Flags RV Resort about 9:25 and drove a couple of miles into Wildwood, […]
It’s always fun to meet our readers and make new friends, and that’s just what we got to do yesterday. Sometime in the early afternoon there was a knock on our motorhome’s door and I opened it to find Terry and Diane Pyatt standing there. They introduced themselves and Terry said he is a devoted […]
I finished my newest book, Big Lake Brewpub, yesterday afternoon and started giving it a read through, tweaking things here and there. I’ll finish with that today and then turn it over to Miss Terry for the first round of editing and proofing. When she is done with that I’ll make the necessary revisions and […]
You can tell it’s mid-March in Florida because the crickets are chirping and the snowbirds are starting to make their migration back up north. Low fuel prices and cold weather in other parts of the country have made for full campgrounds here in the Sunbelt all winter. But in the last few days we’ve seen […]