This is only temporary. That’s what I keep telling myself when I look out in in my snowy Michigan driveway and instead of seeing our Roadtrek eTrek out there, we only see an igloo.
Look for yourself at the accompanying photos, below.
We got our first big snow over the weekend and while it indeed is looking a lot like Christmas, it just seems, well, wrong, to see the RV covered under all that white stuff.
I snowblowed the driveway and then took some photos before I removed as much of the snow
The RV promotion industry may argue over bragging rights to what is the biggest show of the year but if you poll both dealers and fans, it becomes pretty clear that in terms of influence, size and excitement, the annual Florida RV Supershow this week at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa is the one that sets the tone for the entire RV year.
The sponsoring Florida RV Trade Association proudly claim this show is not just the nation’s biggest – it’s the best.
This is the show in which RV owne
Sprinter RV lineup joined by new Roadtrek CS Adventurous
A major reason for the huge spike in Class B motorhome sales over the past year or so is the Mercedes Sprinter, a rugged and flexible van that offers RV makers all sorts of customization opportunities. Roadtrek Motorhomes is about to introduce a new full sized Sprinter model, joining its popular RS Adventurous and the new all-electric, solar powered eTrek.
For 2013, there’s a third model – the CS Adventurous… CS for Camping Series.
Inside Advanced RV’s new Ocean One Type B Motorhome
As a sure sign that the RV industry is bouncing back, a small Cleveland-based startup has introduced a high end Mercedes Sprinter motorhome that is targeting the extreme high end of the Type B market. It’s new Ocean One model.
Set up with all the extras, it will retail for around $155,ooo, easily making it the most expensive Type B I’ve seen.
Luxury features include a heated floor, heated captain’s chairs, a wine cabinet, lots of fine crafte
It can heat up very fast inside an RV and in this edition of How We Roll in our RV, Jennifer and I answer a question from a reader named Danielle who asks:
“I’m thinking about taking my freelance writing business on the road in a small motorhome, and I have a question. I’ll be bringing my dog with me and I’m concerned about leaving her in the RV while running errands. Can a dog overheat in a motorhome as they can in a car? Can the A/C run off the battery while sitting in a parking lot, or would
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
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
Not all is always good about RVing.
Here are our top five RV frustrations:
1) Deplorable campground conditions – This, we believe, is one of the biggest scandals of the RV world. There are many campgrounds that could more accurately be described as overcrowded slums. What amazes me is that they have good reviews in the big publications, which tells me that either the reviews are phony, the publication doesn’t physically inspect the campgrounds or they are so out of date they are worthless. Jus
Canada is a very popular destination for American RVers.
And it’s home to several of the world’s best-selling Class B motorhome makers.
So a lot is us travel there. Canada feels very much at home. It’s people are open and welcoming.
In the last year, I’ve made over a dozen visits to the Kitchener, Ontario, headquarters of Roadtrek Motorhomes. And while I am very comfortable in Canada, there are some cultural differences.
I’ve been taking notes. Here are 15 things to know about Canada:
It’s
I love getting reader mail and I do my best to answer them. But lately, as the fall RV RV shows start getting underway and lots of people are thinking about purchasing a motorhome and more new people are discovering this blog, the questions are somewhat the same. So I thought I’d share here the answer to the one question we get asked the most.
Q: WHAT WOULD YOU AND YOUR WIFE DO DIFFERENTLY IN BUYING AN RV NOW THAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A WHILE?
A: The short answer is…nothing. We now have
People wonder why we prefer boondocking over campgrounds. Here’s why: Too many campgrounds are dirty.
Not all. But way too many.
In the bathrooms, there are almost always spiders, bugs, things in the toilets and stalls that disgust you, broken windows, mold, rusty pipes, grimy sinks. In Mississippi earlier this year, one of the showers I used this year had a cracked floor. When you stepped on it, blank gunk seeped out around your feet.
In Missouri, a long broken and unrepaired window had the
I’m a sucker for hats. Ball caps, cowboy hats, straw hats, watch caps and lately, Stormy Kromer hats.
We picked up our first Stormy Kromer hats while doing some winter camping last February in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Seemed like every Yooper we saw was wearing one. So Jennifer and I both got one, me a rakish black, Jennifer’s a demure grey with pink trim.
As we returned from that trip but kept wearing our hats, we met lots of other people who either had one, knew someone who had one or
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
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 easy to see why American Indians and the early settlers called the area of southwestern South Dakota the Badlands.
They are dry, unbearably hot in the summer, rugged, isolated and - in the days before modern transportation – extremely difficult to navigate.
But while it may be an inhospitable place to live, these days the Badlands make for a very good visit by RV.
Jennifer and I try to spend time here each year. You could say we’ve gotten hooked on the Badlands.
The Badlands National P
I hate flying. In my past life as a journalist, I was frequently in the air, flying here or there for this story or that. I grew to dread air travel.
But now that I travel in an RV, I hate flying even more.
I write this from Albany, GA, where we are visiting family. It’s a quick visit, to watch the grandsons play football and to attend grandparent’s day at the youngest one’s school. We’re flying on gift tickets, down here just for the weekend and then back to Michigan.
This is the first air
The Beartooth Highway is one of the more spectacular drives you can take when touring in your RV out West, comparable to the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. It’s a 1930s WPA project that opened access to the Yellowstone region from the northeast, and an impressive engineering accomplishment.
Fortunately for us, it’s still in good repair and easily traversable by all but the most anemic RVs – there are probably a few gas Class As that shouldn’t attempt it, but the rest of us can
Ever wondered how Campskunk got his name?
Or how it is possible for he and his wife and their cat to life full-time in a 20-foot camper van?
Then click on the Campskunk interview below. It's the latest in our series of live chats via Google Hangouts. We chat for an extended period about full-timing, life on the road and how to manage grocery shopping, doctor and dentist appointments and bill paying without a permanent address.
I also ask Campskunk why he chose a Roadtrek for his home.
I’
I’ve never been one to worry much about the weather. If I have something planned and the blow-dryed weather guys on TV are breathlessly warning us that a snow storm or some weather situation is about to cause the sky to fall, I usually scoff and just go on with my plans. Weather forecasters like to scare us and keep us tuned in for ratings. I know this from firsthand experience back in my local TV reporting days when they’d scramble “storm teams” and bombard the public with 24 by 7 weather alert
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
At FMCA's Family Reunion in Redmond last week, I presented a seminar called Apps for the Open Road in which I share some of my favorite apps and online resources for RVers.
Now we RVers all have our favorite technology devices, with Android and Apple smartphones and tablets accounting for the vast majority. Most apps now come in versions for different platforms. Most, but not all.
I am a pretty diehard Apple fan. Though I’ve used Android gizmos, I keep coming back to Apple, especially the iPho
RV rallys can be small or spectacularly huge. FMA's 88th Family Reunion and Motorhome Showcase in Gillette Wyoming, in June 2013 was one of the big ones. There were more than 2,300 coaches, 5,000-plus RVers and several hundred other vendors, dealers and exhibitors. Gillette’s massive 1,100-acre CAM-PLEX exhibition center was jammed with motorhomes literally as far as you could see in any direction.
Big rallies like this are not for everyone. Camping spaces are cramped, with rigs parked just a f
Florida’s panhandle is a special place. And the area from Panama on the East on to the Alabama border on the west may be the most special. It’s called the Emerald Coast, named after the stunning color of the Gulf of Mexico. Check out our video to see why we were so taken with this area.
Our base for this trip was the new Destin West RV Resort, located on Okaloosa Island in Fort Walton Beach.
http://youtu.be/2jQ_OR-tPxI
We lucked out with an awesome spot, yards away from the 27-mile long Choc
I’m lucky. To tend to the mechanical work on my Roadtrek eTrek on the Sprinter chassis, I have two great technicians: Daryl and Josh. Plus Eric, a great service manager who always manages to squeeze me in.
I was just in the other day after a check engine light came on. Wouldn’t you know, it was one of those erratic issues. When I drove it into Hoekstra Transportation in Troy, MI, I felt somewhat sheepish. The warning light had something to do with a sensor that we had replaced about 20,000 mile
In this edition of How We Roll, Jennifer and I tackle questions from readers asking about how we dry bath towels while we’re on the road. Jennifer shows some hooks I attached with stick-on tape and a very simple but effective bungee cord clothesline we have in the bathroom. She also recommends fast-drying micro fiber towels.
Besides the bungee-clotheline (which hangs and dries two full-sized bath towels very effectively and out of sight behind the bathroom door), I have strategically stuck on p
