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
The Morefield Campground at Mesa Verde National Park is nestled into a scenic canyon some four and a half miles off US 160 from the park entrance. With 267 sites, it seldom fills up. That’s because all but 15 are for dry camping only and of the 15 with full hookups, none accomodate RVs over 45 feet in length. The Class A congestion that turns so many other campgrounds into “tinominium “complexes is refreshingly absent here.
Each site has lots of space between its neighbors and native Gambel oak
There are few animals as universally popular and liked as much as the Florida Manatee. Yet there are few animals in more danger.
The Florida Manatee, a large and slow moving aquatic animal, is protected by the federal Engangered Species Act of 1973, primarily because they are too big and slow to get out of the way of speedboats. As Florida’s boating population has exploded, the manatee has declined to an estimated statewide population today of under 5,000.
They used to be everywhere. And despi
Craters of the Moon is a U.S. National Monument and National Preserve in the Snake River Plain in central Idaho that is like no where else on earth, a volcanic wonderland that is easy and fun to explore in one of the weirdest landscapes you can find anywhere.
And it’s perfect for Class B recreation vehicles.
Craters of the Moon formed during eight major eruptive periods between 15,000 and 2000 years ago. Lava erupted from the Great Rift, a series of deep cracks that start near the visitor cent
I love getting reader mail and I do my best to answer them. But lately, as a new RV season gets 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 about 60,000
Another reason to RV: It saves money
I knew RVing made a lot of sense for us as we travel about North America. It gives us freedom, mobility and we get to bring most of the comforts...
Roadtreking : The RV Lifestyle Blog - Traveling North America in a small motorhome
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Yellowstone National Park is a captivating place. It grabs the soul and pulls us back year after year. At the top of every RVers bucket list, it is a place so majestic, so wild and big that it calls us to return, to explore, to get to know the diversity of its land and animals over and over again.
Some RVers make annual pilgrimages. Some volunteer as workers or hire on as temporary employees at the various concessions and park businesses. Anything to spend as much time there as possible.
A few
All my life as a journalist- for more than three decades – I’ve been on deadline.
The presses would roll, the red light on the studio camera would blink on and, that was it. I had to be ready. Done. No more time.
So the clock ruled my days. I was single-mindedly focused on finishing, getting to press time or air time. Then, I could breathe a little… and get ready for the next day.
It was a wild, crazy, fun, frustrating and high-adrenaline occupation and I wouldn’t have traded it for the worl
A horrific, fiery crash along I-65 in Kentucky that claimed six lives has focused new attention on the need to be able to break through automotive safety glass to rescue people trapped in smashed cars.
The six people who died were in an SUV from Marion, Wis., traveling north near Glendale. The vehicle caught fire after it was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer.
Lynn and Roger Brucker, from Dayton, Ohio, were driving home in their Roadtrek van when the crash occurred behind them. They had slowed b
Over the last week, I’ve been organizing the thousands of photos I’ve taken over the past few years and noticed that I have a pretty good collection of animal crossing signs.
Like a lot of people, I love seeing wildlife while Roadtreking. Somehow, I started taking photos of them as we traveled.
From there, well, it sort of evolved into all sorts of signs about critters … of all sorts.
Since I had them all organized, I thought I’d put them together in this little slide show.
I know. taking ph
On this Labor Day weekend, we’re in Southwest Georgia, after driving down from Michigan last week with some fun stops along the way. We plan to take our time going home, too, enjoying the freedom that our little Roadtrek eTrek RV gives us.
After almost two years of this lifestyle, Jen and I are finding ourselves on the road more and more. We were at our Michigan sticks and bricks home for less than a week all August. We just turned 30,000 miles on the new eTrek we picked up in December!
When w
There’s a dusting of snow on my RV
The first accumulating snow of the season fell last night near my Michigan home and as I look out at my motorhome sitting on the driveway, I swear I hear it calling me to get out of town and get warm.
Alas, as I look out, that’s all I can do. Look. I’m standing with the support of a walker. Five days ago, I had a total knee replacement.
I picked this time for the surgery specifically because it is the least busy time for RVing. Although the first wave of sno
The 40th anniversary Roadtrek corporate rally is going on this week in Branson, MO, with more than 500 Roadtrek owners and 250 coaches gathered for a week’s worth of fun celebrating the four decades the very popular Class B motorhomes have been sold.
Attenders from across the US and Canada were greeted with cloudy skies and heavy rain warnings on arrival Monday, but that didn’t deter many from taking advantage of a free Roadtrek wash organized by the company.
Check the vanity license plate mes
All the winter storm advisories, alerts, watches and warnings that we’ve had lately can be confusing.
The National Weather Service does a great job of disseminating weather predictions but sometimes it can be hard to know just what is what.
So, for your future reference, here’s a weather lingo tutorial.
Weather watches
A watch means conditions are right for dangerous weather. In other words, a “watch” means watch out for what the weather could do, be ready to act.
For events that come and
I have a serious bone to pick with whoever calls Michigan’s Upper Peninsula a paradise. Not this trip. This RV adventure was a battle of the bugs.
And while it looks pretty out the window of the motor coach, venture outside and you are fair game for swarms of insects that see you as smorgasbord.
The mosquitoes and biting black and stable flies of the Lake Superior region are the worst they’ve been in years. Locals blame it on the unusually wet spring and summer we’ve had this year.
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“Not all those who wander are lost,” so wrote J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings.
It is so true when it comes to RVing. We love to meander, to take roads less traveled, off the Interstate. But even the Interstates are fun, especially out of urban areas.
As Jennifer and I made our way west this week to attend the Family Motor Coach rally in Gillette, Wyo., we realized something about our wanderings:
We love to drive.
That is so weird for me to write because when I commuted to and from
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
I love fall. The blue skies are more blue, the air smells clean and crisp and has no more of the sweltering heaviness of summer.
But it also makes me a little sad because, living in a northern climate like Ido, the approaching cold weather means it’s time to curtail my travel.
It means long stretches of RVing inactivity.
Of watching snow accumulate on top of the Roadtrek.
Of having to winterize it.
Of sneaking out there, turning on the heat, and sitting in it, remembering the places we’ve v
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
Our Roadtrek Etrek now has its sea legs.
Sometimes, to really appreciate something, you have to immerse yourself in it.
So it was with Lake Michigan as we’ve been traveling around the Great Lakes Region these past several weeks on our Verizon Great Lakes Shoreline Roadtreking tour.
No, we didn’t go swimming in it. The heavy ice up this past winter has left it and the other four Great lakes, abnormally cold. And normal is cold. This summer, it is really cold.
So instead of getting wet in the
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
Episode 2
This has been such a blast to do. I’m thrilled by the response from so many who listened to our first podcast. I have dozens more planned!
This week, we have released two episodes, to get the ball rolling. Starting next week, a new podcast episode will post every Wednesday morning.
Jennifer joins me in this episode to help answer some questions.
Each episode of these podcasts comes as a direct result of our travels across North America in a small motorhome, reporting about the inte
One of the main reasons people buy RVs is because they like to travel with their dogs.
But the fact is, not all places are dog friendly. If you want to bring your pooch along, you need to make some adjustments.
On our big Roadtreking Family Vacation of 2013 out west, we traveled with six adults, two kids and three dogs.
You need to understand, our dogs are big dogs. Their heads are the size of most other RVers pets. The lightest among them is my Norwegian Elkhound, Tai. He weighs 70 pounds. N
As part of our blogging, we now have the ability to do live videos and interviews with folks of interest to the Roadtreking world. With that, we can answer questions, too.
The videos are broadcast as live events on the Net, but also available for later playback on demand from You Tube.
The first one I did was this week with my friends Jim and Chris Guld of Geeks on Tour fame. Many of you have met the Gulds as they’ve taught technoogy at various RV gatherings around the country.
Today, while t
In this episode of our How We Roll in our RV series, we answer reader questions about taking care of our home while we’re off RVing and how we like the Roadtrek eTrek.
The first question came from Roger Bohnke who asks:
Q: Maybe a question for your How We Roll series… Mike and Jen, I’ve been wondering how you take care of your house while you two are on all these wonderful long trips? Do you live in a townhouse or condo you can just lock up and walk away from? We want to travel a lot when we r
