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Blogs

Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

The Best Laid Plans

On Friday, January 24, 2014, just five days before our scheduled departure for New Zealand, we stopped on our way into the park to pick our mail. In the mail was a summons for jury duty for me, Tom. Oh, Great! I read the information carefully. The report date was scheduled for after our departure. There was an information sheet to be completed and returned within 5 days. It was possible to submit the information by computer, so I logged on and filled out the required information. At the
tbutler

tbutler

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

Turning Plans Into Reality

Preparations for the trip took much of my time in the months leading up to our departure. We had passports but needed international driver’s licenses to be able to rent and drive cars and campervans. The international driver’s license is actually just a translation of the provisions of our US driver’s license into four languages and converting weight and vehicle restrictions into metric units so that someone in a foreign country can assess our driving qualifications and understand what our li
tbutler

tbutler

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Tom and Louise on Tour in North America
 

An Idea Takes Shape

In 2012 Louise and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. We couldn't decide what to do or where to go for the celebration. Living in south Texas now, we didn't want to travel north in December so we decided to postpone the celebration for a special trip of some kind. We received an advertisement for a cruise from a company we had cruised with once before. This was a really exotic cruise, perfect for an anniversary celebration. Two weeks cruising the Fiji Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledo
tbutler

tbutler

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The (mis)ADVENTURES of PopNDelly
 

We picked the wrong Winter to live in our RV!

We picked the wrong Winter to live in our RV!!! Yep, I am conceding that this Winter has been a little too much for this newbie. I am sitting here watching a squirrel try to maneuver a tree - he slid down the ice like a sliding board! 30 inches of snow - no big deal. I (Delly) love snow - as do Pop and Elly May. 18 below wind chills - staying warm with 400 gallons of propane connected to the coach. ICE STORM --- no electricity or water to hook up -- doing just fine as long as we can get fuel
popndelly

popndelly

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The (mis)ADVENTURES of PopNDelly
 

DANGER! DANGER! Watch out for those Slides!

Danger! Danger! Watch out for the slides! On the first morning of our RV adventure, Pop went outside to walk to our office - another perk to our simplified living. We were given an office on the mountain where we live - complete with internet connections and space for Pop's books. The sun was shining, it was a perfect Fall morning. I (Delly) was organizing things in the cabinets since we had just moved in the night before. Clump, clump, clump, down the steps. Crunch, crunch, crunc
popndelly

popndelly

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The (mis)ADVENTURES of PopNDelly
 

Almost Full Time RV Living

Almost Full Time RV Living We are now completing our 4th month of living in our 2014 Winnebago Sightseer 33C. In the winter. In Maryland. During a record cold winter. With 30 inches of snow so far....... Yep, most people think we are either completely crazy or having a really wild mid-life crisis. If this is mid-life, then we have many more years for the adventure! The saga began nearly 20 years ago with a desire to simplify our lives. Then, four years ago we were bored and decided to
popndelly

popndelly

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Roadtreking Blog
 

Stolen Roadtrek Recovered: The Victim’s Story

Dennis George couldn’t believe his eyes. It was the morning of Tuesday Jan. 28, and he was staying at a Hampton Inn in Lakeland, FL He looked out his hotel room window and saw an empty parking spot where he had parked the brand new Roadtrek CS Adventurous the night before. “I thought maybe the hotel had towed it for some reason,” he said. “So I ran down to the desk and asked them. The clerk said no. Then one of their workers came in and said there was all sorts of broken glass out on the asph
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

2
Travels with the FMCA Prez
 

Gloria's Confession

Sorry it has taken so long to put another entry on this blog. I must confess that I (Gloria) have been writing Charlie's blog and will continue to write it. As you know, I am traveling with the "Prez." We left home on December 26 and went to Kennedale, Texas, to visit with Sheri Brewer and Gene Miller. We spent New Year's with them along with Rod and Ethel Sartwell who were also at Sheri's house. On January 2 we left Kennedale in Sheri's coach along with Sheri headed for Indio, Calif., and
AmerEagle07

AmerEagle07

1
Roadtreking Blog
 

What Offseason?

We just came back from our latest trip, a 1,000 mile journey that took us to northeastern Pennsylvania and back. We had spent exactly one day at our Michigan home before leaving for that trip, returning from a 2,000 mile journey up to the north shore of Lake Superior the week before. We leave in about 10 days for Mississippi, the Gulf Coast and Florida. In fact, since the so-called RV season ended in October, we’re averaging two long trips a month. That’s about what we do during the summer.
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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GrampaDennis' Blog
 

Visited the MH in its winter storage

Today, Grandma and I visited our "Cottage on Wheels" in its winter storage, inside a warehouse of a former lumber yard. Due to some health issues now being evaluated, we have decided to forego our previously planned winter trip to Florida. Therefore, the MH will stay in storage until April sometime. When I parked it, on Nov 16, I used the "battery disconnect" switches, but did not physically disconnect the batteries. I was pleased to find that I had ample battery power today. The engine sta
GrampaDennis

GrampaDennis

3
Roadtreking Blog
 

RVing to Gobbler’s Knob for Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney

Okay. Do not panic. So the groundhog saw his shadow here atop Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa. The rodent, if you check the history books, has been right just 39 percent of the time since this little community in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains . But that didn’t stop tens of thousands of people from all across the U.S. from traveling here, many in RVs, like us. While the campgrounds are closed, the local Walmart welcomed them. For us in our Roadtrek eTrek Class B, wherever we stopped
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

1
Roadtreking Blog
 

How We Roll in our RV: Finding Rental and Used Roadtreks

You can tell winter is wearing thin and folks are starting to think about spring and warm weather because we’re getting lots of questions about people wanting to rent a Roadtrek or find a used one to purchase. So in this edition of How We Roll in our RV, we try and answer both. Bottom line is – you will have to work at it. Roadtreks are in high demand, both for rental units and for used ones to purchase. The main Roadtrek website has a dealer locator feature that you can use to find the neare
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

An RVing Trip to the Beargrease Dog Sled Marathon

I think I have become a big fan of winter RVing. And dog sled races. Last year, we reported on the Michigan UP 200 dog sled race. Our friend and fellow Roadtreker Gary Hennes met us up there and told us about the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Duluth, which is the longest such sled dog race in the Lower 48 states. And so we went this year. We boondocked overnight in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere and I volunteered and worked on the communications team, using my amateur rad
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

Yes, You Can Happily Boondock at 21 Below!

We just hit the road after a long weekend boondocking in our Roadtrek eTrek in the wilderness of northeast Minnesota, spending the weekend in it miles from civilization when the overnight temperature dropped to -21F/-29C. Call us Ice Station eTrek. Those frigid temperatures in the woods were the ambient, real temperature. But we had a very stiff northwestern wind that not only swirled up snow drifts all around s but made for wind chill readings of -50F/-45C. We could not have been more comfor
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

1
Roadtreking Blog
 

How to Dress for Warmth on Winter RV Trips

We’re in northeastern Wisconsin and Minnesota in the midst of what the news media says is the coldest stretch of prolonged frigid temperatures to hit the continental U.S. in a century and yet, everywhere I go around here, the locals seem to shrug it all off and continue with their winter activities of snow shoeing, cross country skiing, hockey playing, hiking, ice fishing and dog sled racing. They seem to actually embrace the cold in an area where the snow is three feet deep and the snow drifts
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

0
Roadtreking Blog
 

RVing Into the Arctic Vortex, Part 2

It took two days and 700 miles – all of it in the face of bitter cold and most of it on snow covered and slippery roads – but we finally made it to Minnesota and saw not a single other RV on the road. “They don’t know what they are missing.” I said to Jen as we dodged logging trucks, snowplows and snowmobilers in the Great White North. Truly, now we know how that saying came about. I have never seen so much white. Not the slushy, dirty snow of the city and suburbs but sparkling clean, pure, dee
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

RVing Into the Heart of the Arctic Vortex in Michigan’s UP

I’m not going to lie to you. We didn’t sleep in the Roadtrek eTrek last night. We spent the night in a motel in Escanaba, at the far western end of the Lower Peninsula’s northern Lake Michigan shoreline. I suppose if I looked around long enough I would have found a place to camp. But all the state and federal forests where we normally boondock up here in the UP were all but inaccessible because of unplowed roads. Somebody told me there was an Indian casino a dozen miles out of town but they we
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

0
Roadtreking Blog
 

Driving the Sprinter RV in Extreme Cold

What a winter this has been. The arctic vortex or whatever we call the cold air that has been making repeated appearances throughout the Upper Midwest has kept many an RVer housebound before the fireplace. Not us. We’re about to head up to Northern Minnesota along the Lake Superior northern shore where the temperature is expected to be -26F/-32C. I wrote about it earlier when the bitter cold forecast was causing our plans to waver. Many of you offered advice. Most said don’t go. Some said head
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

0
Roadtreking Blog
 

The Ghostly Mystery of the Paulding Light

Every place, it seems, has its own ghosts and mysteries. So it is just north of the tiny Upper Peninsula town of Watersmeet where, for generations, people have gathered at the end of a gravel road to watch some mystery lights. The lights appear nightly, year round near a crossroads community called Paulding. The first reported sightings were back in the 1960s and various investigations have been inconclusive, though a university team from a Michigan Technological University claimed the lights w
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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Roadtreking Blog
 

When is It Too Cold to RV?

I am beginning to have some serious doubts about the wisdom of taking our Roadtrek eTrek to the wilderness of Northern Minnesota next week to report on a dog sled marathon from Duluth to the Canadian border. The long term weather forecast predicts lows of -20F/-28C along the Northern Shore of Lake Superior, where we would be boondocking with no outside power. I had really looked forward to this but it seems foolhardy to do camp out under such extreme cold. We handled -5F/-20C last year in Febru
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

2
Roadtreking Blog
 

Anticipation: A Month of Travel Awaits

Anticipation, they say, is half the fun. I think there’s a point there. Thinking, planning, dreaming and looking forward to the next trip is indeed pretty exciting. And as Jennifer and I look at the calendar, we have a lot of miles we’ll be traveling in some pretty diverse places. Here’s what’s on our Roadtreking road map for the next month: Northern Minnesota – A Jan. 23-29th winter camping trip to Duluth, MN via Michigan’s UP from, and then north to the Canadian border as we do reporting
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

1
Roadtreking Blog
 

RVers' Health Risk: Sitting Disease

If you’re like me and the pounds have been hard to get off lately, maybe you have sitting disease. Yes, there really is such an disease. And it’s reached epidemic proportions, linked to all sorts of other ailments, the first and foremost of which is obesity. Blame it on our sedentary lifestyle. Our desk-bound working days. Our computer and Internet use. TV watching But the fact is, the average American these days sits — at a desk, in the car or RV, on a couch – eight to 10 hours every day. Sit
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

1
Roadtreking Blog
 

Warming Up the RV When It’s -12F Outside

My Roadtrek has been encased in ice and snow for the better part of a week now with several days of subzero temperatures. Inside, shielded from the wind with the sun helping to mitigate the extreme outdoor temperature, it was about 15 degrees. So, I got to wondering, how long will it take to warm it up, if, indeed such a thing was possible? Slipping on my boots, a parka and my fuzzy warm hat with ear flaps, I donned my Google Glass and set out to video a first-person experiment. Everythin
Roadtrekingmike

Roadtrekingmike

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