Category: Humor
HOW TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE
September 29, 2011 by Professor95 · 9 Comments
The air smells magnificently crisp and clean. There is no trace of the usual smog or exhaust fumes. When I take a deep breath and fill my lungs full, I feel refreshed and stronger. The sky is dark blue. Only a few cumulus clouds move across the horizon. The temperature is a perfect 78 degrees and the sun gently warms my exposed skin. There is no noise – no cars, no trucks, no boom boxes, or sirens. The only sounds I hear are the ocean waves breaking onto the sand in front of me. No, wait – that was a seagull calling out as it flew overhead. Moments ago, I was kicking the light brown sand with my toes as I walked to my reclining chair next to a small tidal pool. I brought a cold drink with me. It sits at my right so a smooth movement brings the cool amber liquid to my lips. My doggie, Oscar, is digging in the sand to my left – his leash in my lap. Nancy is further to my right enjoying a book downloaded to her Kindle. The book I have in front of me is thrilling. ... [Read more...]
Unforgettable Trips — Franconia Notch, NH
September 28, 2011 by Traveler8343 · 2 Comments
Dateline October, 1979 One of our favorite destinations in New England is the Franconia Notch State Park area of New Hampshire; the White Mountains. There are lots everything we enjoy: mountains, deep dark woods, pure, ice cold streams racing over rock strewn, water-carved flumes and small New England villages. It was easy to visualize the ghosts of courageous 17th and 18th century fur trappers and Native American hunting parties prowling through the woods. My children and I would create stories about “The Last of the Mohicans.” We imagined the last chief of the mighty Mohicans, Chingachgook, along with his BFF, Natty Bumppo, called “Hawkeye” by his native friends, creeping silently along the forest game trails on moccasined feet, tracking a regal 15-point elk with flintlock and bow, while their renegade Huron arch-enemy, “The Wily Fox,” Magua, creeps up behind them, ready to add their scalps to his already hirsute belt… What? Yes, yes, I know that Fenimore’s... [Read more...]
Akin to lawyers…
September 27, 2011 by Dana Ticknor · 4 Comments
Shopping for a new RV should be a very fun experience, shouldn’t it??? Not if the salesmen have anything to do with it… I don’t know if it is because we fulltime, because we just experienced frame failure and are nervous about buying another 5er, or maybe it’s because we travel with 10 of our children… what ever the reason, RV shopping this time has not been fun. Because we fulltime, we need an RV that will withstand the rigors of 20k+ miles a year. Because we just had a 5th wheel totalled out (well, we are still working on paper work), we want an RV with some structural integrity. Because we travel with 10 kids, only a few floor plans will work for us, narrowing down our choices excessively, so we are searching the entire country for just 4 models, 2 of which are discontinued! All that makes it not so fun – besides the fact that we won’t even be able to see our final choice in person due to where we are currently at (traveling with... [Read more...]
Unforgettable RV Trips — A Series — Number 1
September 12, 2011 by Traveler8343 · 3 Comments
Dateline 1974 We were a young family with two children. We loved camping and often went out six or more times a year but, as our family grew, things were becoming complicated. During a tent trip to the Smokies, our youngest had breakfast in his highchair while sitting outside—in his snowsuit. It was then that we decided it was time for a change. We began putting money aside for one special trip every year in a rented RV. We still went tent camping in between our RV trips whenever the weather was mild, and even purchased a VW camper in 1970. Well, not the official VW camper, that was beyond our budget. We bought a new VW van and then made some modifications, including a jalousie screened window, a roof vent, an exterior oil cooler, a front-end spare tire mount, a large rooftop rack and a storage box-bed-bench seat. Between our van, our tent and a sometimes-yearly RV rental, we spent the next fifteen years roaming the east coast between Maine and Tennessee. We were happy, but we still... [Read more...]
From Tacoma to Nashville, RV Repairs Slowed Us Down, But Didn’t Stop Us From Having a Great Experience
August 18, 2011 by Guest Blogger · 1 Comment
(Guest Blog Post by Bob Kasprzak) My trip from Tacoma to Nashville has been plagued by repairs that have cost us a months delay. But the people who repaired out vehicle were excellent, cost efficient and timely. We traveled from Tacoma to Zion to Albuquerque to Nashville, TN in our 1986 Mini Winnie. We stopped at 1000 lakes Campground in Torre, UT to get a leaky tire fixed. The owners brother, ‘Biggie’, operates an RV repair service next to the campground. He repaired our problem, a frozen wheel axle quickly and at a very reasonable price. Just outside of Memphis an passing motorist notified us that we had a trailer problem and I pulled over to find the tire in shreds. Our road service insurance took us to a local Walmart where I bought two new larger tires and changed them in the parking lot at 10PM. Once we arrived in Nashville, our transmission quit working and ‘Mr. Transmission’ came to our rescue, fixed the tranny in one day again at a decent price. We found... [Read more...]
Sally’s Revenge and the Bear that came to Dinner – Part 2
August 17, 2011 by Traveler8343 · 2 Comments
(Continued from “Sally’s Revenge and the Bear that came to Dinner,” Part 1) Well, that big pile of hair that Sally pulled out of the bag wasn’t a wig; which was my first guess. As both families stood around that first morning; deep in the forest in Matthew’s Arm Campground at beautiful Shenandoah National Park, I might have grumbled a bit. We had been waiting for forty-five minutes while Sally finished her morning preparations for taking a short hike on the Appalachian Trail. She primped, painted and brushed. But it was the amount of time and effort that she was taking with that huge mass of hair that she was pinning onto her head that finally got to me. “Is she ever going to be finished with that wig?” I whined (yes, I whined, but I was at my breaking point, okay?). It’s not a Wig; it’s a Fall!” my wife hissed, “And keep your voice down!” “Well,” I hissed back, “I’m going to go berserk if she decides that she needs a pedicure before we... [Read more...]
Sally’s Revenge and the Bear that came to Dinner – Part 1
August 8, 2011 by Traveler8343 · 2 Comments
Dateline: Late 1970’s, Shenandoah National Park, Matthew’s Arm Campground, Virginia Although this story didn’t just happen, I thought that you might appreciate it. It came up during a story telling evening around a campfire while we were in Moab, Utah. If you’ve been camping long enough, you’ll each have stories like this to tell. If you don’t, well you’re just not trying hard enough! BTW, since this story is a bit longer than my usual, I’ve broken it down into what will hopefully be two easy-to-absorb sections. I hope that you’ll enjoy them. *** After car-pooling to work in Manhattan for nearly a year, we were, in some ways, like an old married couple; finishing each other’s sentences and familiar with every like, dislike, and mood. One thing we learned about our likes was that we both enjoyed camping. And so Ted and I began hatching a plan to take our families camping together in the Shenandoah National Park. It all sounded great in the planning stage, but we should... [Read more...]
APPS THAT NEED TO BE WRITTEN (or, What if you don’t own an iPhone?)
August 5, 2011 by Professor95 · 4 Comments
This week, our editors have decreed that we should write about our favorite smart-phone apps. This is, of course, dovetailing in with the release of the new, free, iPhone app by Woodall’s that gives you instant access to RV Park and campground information without the need to carry around a laptop computer or big, thick directory. I think this is absolutely great – except I don’t own an iPhone. So, all these new apps like the one from Woodall’s don’t do a thing for me – that is, unless I decide to lay down a hunk of cash for a new iPhone or agree to a 20 year provider contract that also demands the life of our first born child and the deed to our home. OK – it isn’t really that bad. It is just that I prefer NOT to get into contracts for things like phones, TV service, and such. So, I usually end up buying my equipment from the bottom of the display shelf or off of e-Bay. That is how my “smart phone” ended up being a Palm Pre rather than an iPhone or Android.... [Read more...]
Huh? What’s That? NO!
July 26, 2011 by Traveler8343 · 4 Comments
If you’ve heard this story anywhere else, you should know that it’s true and it’s mine. It was after 8 PM on a Thursday and I was at our vet’s office with one of our dogs; Sam, short for Samantha. Sam was a Golden Retriever-Collie mix. She was a beautiful dog; steady as a rock, loyal and a member of our family. The reason she and I were at the vet’s was because she had returned home about an hour before with a badly cut paw. She’d been out behind our apple orchard in the stream we had there and had probably stepped on some broken bottle glass. I knew she’d been in the stream because she was also muddy and it had been dry for the past few days. And I knew that it was probably a broken bottle that she’d cut herself on because our stream was full of broken glass. Several month’s ago, I caught a neighbor’s two sons—a couple of future felons—throwing empty bottles off the hillside at the back of our property and down onto the rocks in our stream. The bottles were the... [Read more...]
What is it with snarky campers???
July 22, 2011 by Dana Ticknor · 10 Comments
I realize that my next post is supposed to follow suit of my previous few and be about traveling with school-age kids, but today I really need to vent. It has to do with our new neighbors, injustice, inconsideration, and snarkiness (is snarkiness a word???). Of course it also has to do with a campground… We have put approx. 45 thousand miles on our trailer in the last 2 years. We have met thousands of other people on the road, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. But we hadn’t met snarky until yesterday. I should probably explain that we are dry camping in a public campground on a lake; we pulled in on Monday, snagged the best spot in the campground (under the only tree), and moved our son’s camper in 2 sites down since the site next to us was occupied (by someone we knew no less). We talked with the camp host, who said that when the gentleman in the next site moved in a couple of days, that we could move our sons camper over and the site change... [Read more...]
