I’ve messed around with some low end flying helicopters before and found them to be lots of fun. But I’ve just, gulp, added a big ticket item to my photographic and video arsenal of tools to be used while Roadtreking: A Phantom 2 drone.
I’ll be using it for AVC, or aerial video cinematography. It’s really a flying machine, a quadricopter, with four opposing blades sending it up and our as far as a kilometer (3,240 feet) from where I’m standing with the controller.
The unit I bought carries
We’re about to set off on a 3,500-mile trip that will take us farther than if we drove across country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And although we till visit eight states, we will never really leave the Midwest.
We’ll be driving much of the U.S. shorelines that touches the five Great Lakes.
I’ve wanted to do this trip for years.
ow, thanks to Verizon Wireless and in partnership with Pure Michigan, we’re about to set off, starting from the Lake Ontario shoreline near Otswego, NY, and the
We’re just back from a 1,100 mile RV trip that took us across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – in the wintertime.
We headquartered our trip in Marquette, where we got a chance to take in all the excitement around the annual UP200 dog sled race, one of the nation’s premier such events, a qualifying race for Alaska’s famed Iditarod. I wrote about that the other day.
We really fell in love with Marquette, a city of about 21,000 in the north central UP, right on the shores of Lake Superior. The town
As we wait to set off on our next trip, I’m thinking about all the things I like about this new small motorhome lifestyle we have embraced.
Waking up to sunlight streaming around the edges of the shades of our Roadtrek and the smell of that first cup of coffee brewing as I start the day.
The first peek out the window at our surroundings. We boondock a lot so often, it’s wildlife I see. I love to sip that coffee and quietly watch the world wake up.
The smell of bacon frying as I start to
In this edition of How We Roll in our RV, we tackle two completely different questions:
Jennifer answers a reader named Karen, who wants to know how the Roadtrek eTrek we have works out for her putting on make-up. Jen shows the mirrors she uses along with a handy sticky pad called the Dash Stick that holds a magnifying mirror in place.
My question came from a reader named Maggie, who asks about how to find a rental Roadtrek to try out, something Jen and I wish we could have done before we boug
8 Simple & Easy Ideas to Make Small RV Life More Comfortable
If you’re the new owner of a new or experienced Class B you are probably figuring out how to outfit it for travel. The tendency is to bring too much....
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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RV Recipes: Crock pot Tangy Barbecued Chicken Sandwich
My favorite season is fall. Here in Michigan, the temps are crisp and comfortable for walking trails through the woods filled with an array of amber and scarlet foliage. Seeing...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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RV Restorations
One of the really, really awesome things about going to trade shows is finding the small, out of the way corner where the restoration people live. Some of these are...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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Like a lot of RVers, I’ve been reviewing memories and photographs this winter. That’s what we do during the down time: Go back and look at our photos and thus get excited by the places we’ll be going once the weather arms up.
If you’re like me, I bet you have a lot of photos of your RV. We take pictures of them in the places they take us.
That got me thinking about pulling a bunch of them and putting them together in a slide show.
So, here’s about 100 of them, taken all over North America ove
Two very different questions from readers this week as we continue our “How We Roll in our RV” segment:
Jennifer answers a question about cooking while traveling in our eTrek and I assure a reader that the fabled black flies that invade Michigan’s Upper Peninsula every summer should not deter him from traveling to one of the least-visited but most beautiful places in North America.
I did a video called “The curse of the U.P: Black flies” last year you may want to check out.
Got a question ab
One of the biggest challenges for couples and families these days is staying connected…and keeping busy and often confusing schedules coordinated. When you throw in an RV and lots of traveling, life can really get complicated.
That’s where smartphone technology can really help. I have some great apps I juts shared with my NBC-TV audience this week that will help you stay in touch with your spouse and other family members and bring some organization to those busy schedules.
One of the handiest
We spent much of the weekend in Georgia at a soccer tournament one of my grandsons was playing in and found yet another use for our Roadtrek eTrek – as a place for the younger brothers and their friends to hang out in.
It wasn’t planned. They just sort of took it over once they discovered how much fun it was. And between games, I became babysitter-in-chief.
We went through four bags of popcorn. Pretty much a case of bottled water.
We charged iPods and iPads and watched TV and the DVD. Oh yeah
At first glance, the 250-plus Roadtrek Class B motorhomes gathered at the 40th anniversary corporate rally in Branson, MO look alike. But when you start walking among them, you soon realize that these touring coaches are not as alike as you may have first thought.
Each Roadtrek is tweaked, modified and personalized. To various degrees, of course. But all have been individualized. Sometimes it’s as simple as a vanity license plate. Maybe some bumper stickers. With others, it’s something more ela
It sits out there in the driveway with the season’s first snow flurries dusting its windshield as the last of the leaves fall from the trees.
Inside the RV, there’s the faint but sweet smell of the antifreeze I ran through the plumbing last week. The doors to the refrigerator and the freezer are open to air out. The food and coffee in the storage cupboards are emptied. Only a Roadtreking sweatshirt and a Family Motorcoach Association nylon jacket hang in the once crowded wardrobe.
My wide brim
On June 22, 2013 – at sunset local time from coast to coast, across the U.S., into Canada, as far north as Alaska – 19 different Roadtrek owners took a photo of their Roadtrek.
Some were parked at campgrounds. Others in their driveway. Some drove to a special setting near their hometowns. I was at a rodeo in Cody, WY with mine.
The point was to get a photo of our Roadtrek motorhomes at sunset, wherever we were.
We’re thinking about doing this sort of thing a couple of times a year. Maybe for
In this edition of “How We Roll,” Jennifer answers a question about budgeting and how much it costs us to take a typical week to 10-day trip. In these days of $4+ fuel, that’s the killer to any budget that involves mileage. Jennifer shares our actual costs and ways we try to save money.
Then I tackle a stinky question ... about odor control and how we’re trying something called the “Geo Method” that mixes water softener and household detergent in a gallon of water that is poured down the toilet
Protecting your digital assets
In this information age, gathering up and securing the most important information – the critical passwords, user names, insurance, savings and important documents we have – is a vital task...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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On this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for many things that have come our way since we embraced the world of RVing.
I’m thankful in a new way for the awesomeness of God’s creation, for the many places we visited that I had never seen before. For the majesty of Yellowstone National Park, the beautiful sunrises and sunsets we witnessed in the Bighorn Mountains, the Pictured Rocks National Seashore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Emerald Coast of Florida’s panhandle, the sandhill country of Nebras
Quick now, when I say we visited the Colorado National Monument, what did you think?
Unless you’ve been here and seen it, I bet you thought is was a statue of some sort, didn’t you?
I know I did when my daughter, Wendy, first insisted we include it in our list of ”must sees” during our Great Roadtreking Family Vacation of 2013.
The monument is not what we expected.
It is nothing short of stupendously beautiful, a long stretch of spectacular rock monotliths cut deep into the sandstone and ev
My Giant Permanent RV Bed
One thing about full timing is that you have ample opportunities to evaluate the comfort of your RV’s sleeping arrangements. In our 2003 190 Popular with the dinette setup, we...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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We're in the midst of prime time for RV shows.
Starting in January and running until early March, dozens of RV shows are staged in cities across the country. Jennifer and I have attended a slew of them this year as we, along with tens of thousands of other RVers, await warmer weather.
One thing you can expect to find at just about any RV show – besides motorhomes, travel-trailers, fifth-wheels and lots of salespeople to haggle with -- are exhibitors like campground operators, RV accessory make
There's nothing like the sight of one of Yellowstone National Park's magnificent bison to slow traffic.
These shaggy giants seem oblivious to the traffic. They cross the road where they want. They go where they want. The National Park Service says humans need to stay far away from bison. But they don't. People, in quest of a photo, get very stupid.
As you can see on
, people are stupid. Every year, someone gets hurt. Sometimes very badly. Bison can kill.For these animals will charge. They u
I confess to being a bit of a snob about the east. My journalist days often took me up and down the eastern seaboard, mostly to big cities where crime, decay, overcrowded neighborhoods and a general malaise of discontent seemed to be the chief characteristic of the people and places.
Such is the danger of journalism. Seeing bad news makes you skeptical. Seeing too much bad news makes you a cynic. And being cynical is not a good way to live.
So it’s good to visit the east now in an RV, where we
Why we boondock
It sounds like it’s raining. But it’s not. It’s the sound of acorns dropping from the oak trees all around us as we boondock in the middle of the woods...
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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
