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
If you thought you saw Devils Tower in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you haven’t seen Devils Tower.
It’s much more impressive, even without the Hollywood special effects aliens.
We made our way to the Devils Tower National Monument from Gillette, WY, about 55 miles away. It’s a great drive through lush and wide open Wyoming rangeland and prairie. There are two RV parks there, one from the National Parks Service, one from KOA. Both offer spectacular views of Devils Tower.
But w
Please do not call it a rally. There was no itinerary. No organized programs. And no nametags.
We all made our own reservations and the only coordinated planning was letting the word out on our Roadtreking Facebook Group that a bunch of us were going to meet on a particular weekend at a particular campground in Michigan.
It was more fun than any of us expected and a great example that great RVing times can be spontaneous and as easy as just showing up and getting together.
In all 10 coaches
Gillette, Wyoming, is a certified American boom town. It’s 30,000 residents have grown by a whopping 48% in the past decade as this western city has become the nation’s self-declared “energy capital of America,” thanks to its vast quantities of coal, oil and coal bed methane gas. But today, it just grew by thousands more as 2,500 motorhomes of all shapes and sizes rolled into the sprawling CAM-PLEX exhibition center just east of town. Add another 5,000-plus people to Gillette.
Most of those her
Sometimes, as we Roadtrek across North America in our RV, we run into stories that are so amazing that you don’t know how to categorize them. So it was with us in downtown Kansas City when we toured one of the most fascinating museums we have ever seen.
It’s a museum devoted to the Steamboat Arabia, which sunk after running into a tree snag in the muddy Missouri River on September 5, 1856 as it was carrying 200 tons of supplies destined for a string of frontier towns to the west.
But like the
Sometimes, as we Roadtrek across North America in our RV, we run into stories that are so amazing that you don’t know how to categorize them. So it was with us in downtown Kansas City when we toured one of the most fascinating museums we have ever seen.
It’s a museum devoted to the Steamboat Arabia, which sunk after running into a tree snag in the muddy Missouri River on September 5, 1856 as it was carrying 200 tons of supplies destined for a string of frontier towns to the west.
But like the
Thanks to the Internet and email, text messaging and Facebook updates, it’s easy to stay in touch with friends and family while traveling.
But a very active group of RVers takes such connectivity to a whole new level, out-Interneting even the Internet when it comes to being able to communicate with the world.
They take their own radio stations with them.
They are members of the Amateur Radio Chapter of the Family Motorcoach Association and their radio stations are ham radio transceivers that
When blog reader Harry Salt sent me these spectacular photos (see below), I just knew I had to share them.
They are from the annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, now under way in New Mexico.
Harry was part of two RV groups that attended – a Class B group and a Roadtrek group.
“The festival goes thru Oct 13,” writes Salt. “After Oct 7 some of the group went on a ’walkabout’ for about 30 days. Supposed to have been at National Parks and Monuments but now they are improvising. It wi
After 43 years, a return to Indiana Dunes
The last time I was at the Indiana Dunes was on a field trip my senior year in high school. That trip was so cool that I knew some day...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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One of the most discussed how-to threads on the blog and our Facebook Group has to do with the latches and hinges used on the cabinets on new Roadtrek Sprinter models like the RS Adventurous, the eTrek and the CS Adventurous. The same push button latches are on some of the recent Chevy-based models like the 40th Anniversary Special. They are sold by a Montreal-based speciality hardware import firm called Richelieu.
The issue is, depending on a lot of load and environmental factors, the latches
RVers love their GPS units. Can you imagine traveling without one?
But do you know that many of today’s most popular units can be customized to show the special places you are most interested in? Called POIs – short for Points of Interest – there are so many lists of them available now that downloading them to your GPS unit can make travel much more efficient and convenient.
You need to have a stand alone GPS unit that can connect to your computer to be able to download POIs. Tom Tom, Magel
One of the challenges of being on the road so much and doing a blog like this is being reliably connected to the Internet in a whole bunch of different places.
I’ve been a huge fan of the Verizon Mi-Fi card and the network’s strong nationwide footprint of 4G connectivity. It very reliably gives me near broadband speed as I travel. Sending video gobbles up a lot of bandwidth and almost all the videos I do for this blog were sent via the Verizon network.
But lately, I’ve been going to some reall
We’ve now officially begun our trip west, a journey that will follow parts of two historic routes: The Lewis and Clark Expedition and the Oregon Trail.
It’s hard to over emphasize the importance of these two 19th century routes. Lewis and Clark discovered the overland route to the Pacific, thus opening up the nation to east-west travel in the days immediately after the Louisiana Purchase. It was a trip that in its day, was as monumental as the American landing on the moon is to ours.
The 100,0
http://youtu.be/tTDWY2plCBs
It's a long way to Michigan's UP -- 450 miles from my house north of Detroit to Marquette, our destination for the big UP200 dog sled race this weekend. For me, besides the fun of this big event – a qualifier race for Alaska’s famed Idiatrod – it was also a chance to test out the new Roadtrek eTrek in the winter.
One thing we learned. Plan on extra time at rest stops. Once people see the eTrek, they ask questions. And want a tour. At the Linwood Rest Stop, two broth
If you like peace and quiet and lots of elbow room where you camp, you will not want to be on RV Row at the Kentucky Derby.
But if a non-stop party is what you’re looking for, then the private parking lot right next to Churchill Downs is where you’ll want to be Kentucky Derby week.
The parking lot is owned by Fred Stair and he rents RV spaces out for the Thursday-Sunday Derby weekend as the Captain’s Derby Parking, even providing water, a dump station and limited electricity. Cost is $650 for
A Visit to the RV Museum: When did Class Bs Start?
Recently we spent nearly an entire day at the RV/MH Museum in Elkhart, IN, soaking up history of our favorite travel vehicle. They have on display over 35 recreational vehicles...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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It’s pretty amazing what a few hundred miles can do to the view. That was driven home to us today as we made our way across South Dakota, taking in the vast green prairie and its lush grasslands, the wind-carved canyons, ravines and hoodoos of the Badlands and the rolling thick pine forests of the Black Hills.
Our Roadtrek heads across South Dakota, en route to FMCA'S Family Reunion and Motorhome Showcase in Gillette, Wyo.I’d send along a video but I’m barely able to get a cell signal from
Last night in Iowa, I was complaining abut the gnats.
Tonight in South Dakota, it’s the Frankenbugs.
The bugs have only gotten bigger as we’ve moved west
Honestly, I dont know what they are. Way bigger than a gnat. Some are beetles, or what we used to call June bugs. But there are so many and they are so big that as we drove down I-90 in South Dakota, they hit the windshield with an intensity that sometimes sounded like hail.
Jennifer said it was a bugout.
You can see from this photo and t
EDITOR’s NOTE: I don’t normally accept guest posts. But I have made an exception for Graham Gibbs. Graham is from Ottawa and the following post is excerpted from a 5,800-word article he sent me. I think you will enjoy it. It is still very long but I think he captures wonderfully the fun of Roadtreking and the joy of packing and planning. I think you will enjoy this!
By GRAHAM GIBBS
Special to Roadtreking.com
I have been inspired to spend time at my keyboard documenting our Roadtrek experien
It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S., a few weeks after our Canadian friends celebrated their nation’s holiday of the same name.
A tradition at our family is that as we gather round the Thanksgiving dinner table – and yes, we always do turkey and all the trimmings – each one of us says what we are most thankful for this past year.
Remember that old Irving Berlin song, “Count Your Blessings?” If we’re breathing and relatively upright – though football and ODing on turkey will probably render many of u
With the Mercedes Sprinter chassis still driving the big spike in Type B motorhome sales, RV manufacturers are continuing to innovate in design and options as they get ready for the 2013 RV season.
At the big Florida RV Supershow in Tampa this January, most of the North America big Type B makers were showing off their new models front and center.
We thought it would be helpful to take a look at the interiors of the leading Type B Sprinters.
As you’ll see, despite the same space, there are big
It’s no secret that many of us RVers are, ah, shall I say, horizontally challenged?” With obesity already at epidemic levels and good, nutritious food hard enough to find, our laid back on-the-go nomadic travels can sure pack on the pounds. Sometimes, it’s time to get reprogrammed, to find a way to jump start a new and healthy living style.
That’s what Jennifer and I found deep in the rolling hills of south central Tennessee, two hours south of Nashville at a place called the Tennessee Fitness
A Dog’s Life
Rambling Ruka Robinson here, on the road again, with my chauffeur/minion/BFF Laura. I love to travel and have already marked routes all the way to Idaho,Oregon, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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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
It’s hard to believe how much a $16 purchase at Walmart can brighten your day. Such it was the other day when we spotted a pile of Crock-Pots on sale.
It was exactly what we needed. Small, round and just the right size to fit in the sink of our Roadtrek eTrek RV.
The sink? Exactly. That way, as we travel across the country during the day, the slow cooking crock pot can prepare our evening meals. By the time we reach our destination, a hot, sumptuous dinner is ready. Let’s face it, one of the b
