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Ramblings of a Motorhoming Melancholic?

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Entries in this blog

 

Pilgrimage to Elkhart, Day 1

It is the 100th anniversary of the RV industry, so it seems appropriate to make a trip to Elkhart. Actually, I had no idea that it was or is the RV Centennial until I walked through the doors of the RV Hall of Fame in Elkhart, but I am getting ahead of myself. Diane and I, along with our friends Gary and Janis, have been planning on a trip to Elkhart, Indiana, for some months now. We were hoping to go there this past March 2, but the weather gave us all cold feet. In some places in Ohio there

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Couch Cushion Fort

The kids have grown up. They are doing other things now...working, raising kids, taking pictures, playing music..... http://www.myrandomviews.com/blog/2015/5/9/couch-cushion-fort-musical-interlude

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The "It's a Wonderful Life Rally" part 2

On Christmas night, Diane and I met Gary and Janis for dinner and a movie. We got together at the Commodore Theater in Portsmouth for smoked chicken salad and fruit, ice tea and popcorn. We had not seen each other since the rally so we chatted about that before the show started. We all came away from the rally knowing that everyone who attended, including us, had a good time. Many, including Gary, learned to appreciate “It’s a Wonderful Life” more. Gary watched it again when it was aired just la

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Looking Up! (from my archive)

I am not sure if taking pictures of a Great Horned Owl nesting in a large live oak over our coach made me think of this old FMCA blog entry or not, but if it did then that is okay. I wrote it not long after we lost our grandson.  I re-read it myself this morning and I like it so maybe you will too.   Looking Up!

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Off to Florida!

The Night Before. It will be a day later than we planned but we are going to St Augustine for New Year's eve. We will do our best to make up the time that we lost. We lost it due to ten inches of snow or maybe it was twelve? It will be a long day on the road tomorrow. Hopefully we will pull into North Beach Campground late Wednesday instead of early in the day. Jeri, Tom and Dilly will arrive sometime Thursday Morning. I think that due to the snow eating the start of our trip, I will add an

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Depreciation

Here is something worth posting again from my blog here, now moved to my own blog page Depreciation:This subject pops up every now and then in the Internet forums, rv.net, IRV2.com, FMCA.com, where I hang about on a regular basis. It may be a post titled "Is your Class A a Money pit?" or "A motor home costs a whole lot more than you think it does!" The people who post these kinds of entries may or may not really have a problem with what a coach or any other large RV may cost. They might jus

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Rules For Owning A Motor Coach: Number 4

Number 4. (Maybe the Last Rule!) Owning a motor coach is a never-ending learning experience. And just when you think you know it all, you find out just how stupid you really are. I have learned a lot about my coach, more than I ever wanted to know. I have had to study the mechanics of my engine, my slides, and my power seats as well as learn how it is wired for Surround Sound and cable TV. And, how it is plumbed including the ice maker, the fresh-water tank, the whole coach water filter and o

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Practicing Rule Number 2

It has certainly been awhile since I posted anything having to do with motor coaching. I guess I could just ignore that fact and just post like I don’t have a care in the world and no time has gone by at all since my last new entry. I won’t do that, however. I will tell you that Diane and I have managed to make it to some chapter campouts where we had some weekend fun with our fellow FMCA and Good Sam members, while still longing for a good long trip on the road. Three weeks or so ago we final

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How Did It Start? Part One

PatrickH's blog entry From the beginning ... got me thinking. When did it start? When did the idea of being part of the motorhoming community first start to grow inside our brains? When did the idea first hit any of us, including Kay Toolson or John Crean, who founded Fleetwood, or Warren Buffet, the owner of Forrest River? All of us have our own story about how we ended up owning a motorhome company or, like most of us, just owning a motorhome. This is my story. Just about eight years ago m

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Rules for Owning a Motor Coach: Number 3

You know the old saying; it's the Journey not the Destination. There is a church two doors down from us. The church allows us to hook up our tow in their parking lot and we leave from there. It is quite convenient. When Diane and I have a trip it starts for us the moment we leave the church parking lot. Actually it starts the moment we start packing up the coach, no, it starts the moment we start thinking about THE TRIP. The trip, made up of two important parts, the route, and the destination

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Living Small

LIVING SMALL May 22, 2016 From my Blog: My rules for full time living in a small space, that happens to be on wheels.        LIVING SMALL-JUST CLICK HERE (but you knew that already!)  

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Here Be Dragons!

It is commonly believed that early geographers used this phrase to mark the uncharted areas of their maps. They had not explored these areas and therefore assumed them to be dangerous. The actual wording was Hc Svnt Dracones. The mapmakers would put images of sea monsters on the edges of the map because it was the best way to say there is bad stuff “out there”. This past August 2nd I turned sixty years of age. I am now entering into uncharted territory. It is for me anyway. Others have been th

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A Premonition?

Yesterday morning started out normal, almost. I woke up with the memory of a disturbing dream. I was walking Nickolas, our cocker spaniel, down a long faded green hall. It reminded me of an old high school corridor, or maybe an old office building. It had a polished dirty brown vinyl tile floor. There were exposed fluorescent lights, the long two-lamp kind that flicker and make a lot of ballast noise. At the end of the hall was a metal door with a reinforced glass window in the top half. The bot

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The Rally

When I write a blog entry about a current trip in our coach, I tend to just write it in a matter of fact style, like the following: Well a lot has happened in the last week. Diane and I hosted an FMCA chapter rally at the Deer Creek RV Resort in Galax, Virginia during the last weekend of July. The campground Is located just across the golf course from our home at the Deer Creek Motorcoach resort. Some people call the golf course Derrick's Nine Holes, because I am the person who plays there the

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Rules for Owning a Motor Coach: Number 4 continued

Rule 4: Owning a motor coach is a never-ending learning experience -- continued. Well, I had so much fun coming up with a list of things that I have learned over the five years that my wife and I have been motorhoming, I figured why not write down a few more? So here goes: I have learned that men need a precise set of directions when parking the coach. And women know just how to give them. For example: "I SAID STOP! STOP! DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT STOP MEANS?" "DON'T BACK UP, YOU WILL HIT IT AGAI

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A Different Perspective

Woof! The last two entries of this blog have been kind of serious and sad. Too much for me, to tell you the truth. I think we should go back to having some fun. Gramps' rules for owning a motor coach, especially number four, are just that. So, in order to lighten things back up, I have decided to hijack this blog and post one entry for myself. I don't think Gramps (I know him as Dad, but he really is my person) will mind all that much. This entry is about Motor Coaching, but from a different p

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The Last Inning: Giants and Phillies Part Two

It was an amazingly (is that a word?) fun thing to watch that ball zoom over the fence, but I, we, still have a game to win. The Last Inning (The Giants and the Phillies-Part Two) Once again, I have to corral all my players back into the dugout. They are still whooping and hollering and Chris is really pleased with himself. "Did you see that coach, did you see that? Blam! Right over the fence. Sorry I hit your van, coach." I hadn't noticed that the ball bounced off MY car! "Hey, that's ok

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Who Is Rescuing Who?

Or is it Whom? Never mind. I can't remember the exact quote, but at the end of the movie Seabiscuit, there is a line something like this: We may have saved a banged up life, but the truth is we found each other and he saved us. The truth is we may have saved each other. The words printed above are most likely very misquoted, but still, that line describes what has been going on around my house for the last three weeks. Diane and I took a simple trip in the coach, found a dog who has been mov

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A Real Hero

A Real Hero..... http://www.myrandomviews.com/blog/2015/12/7/a-real-hero

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It's Smokin!

Our sixteen pound turkey is currently relaxing inside my electric smoker. It has been getting the smoke and steamed beer treatment for about two hours now with four to go. I keep checking the remote thermometer and making sure that the bird doesn’t finish its spa treatment too fast. This takes a lot of patience on my part but it will be worth it. Patience is the key, not just for smoking a good turkey but also to enjoying the Motorcoach lifestyle. In case you don’t already know it, rule numbe

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Old Decorations Part One

Diane and I had a pleasant and mostly uneventful Christmas. I was busy trying to cure a large phone system suffering from hiccups for some days leading up to The Big Day. As a result I became a last-minute shopper (I have always believed I work best under pressure) and visited Macy's on Christmas Eve in the late morning. I intended to purchase just the RightSomething for my wife. Apparently many other procrastinating men had the same idea. After carefully shopping I found a Murano blown-glass h

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Warming up the coach

Well, it is supposed to get down to 18 degrees tonight around here. I have the wet bay heater running. I bypassed the snap fuse and replaced it with a 30-amp auto fuse. There is a 120-volt heater running in the cargo bay next to the hot water heater. I have 4 inches of insulation stuffed in the fridge access, with the ice maker water supply disconnected. I have insulation in the wet bay and more in the fresh water tank compartment. A second ceramic heater is running in the coach with all the cab

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