Time To Think About Vacation

Wow, things sure have changed around here. A few days ago, we had 14 inches of snow and now the temperature is 61 degrees and most of the snow is gone. Guess that is why Michigan is so strange weather wise. The Great Lakes can make the weather do a 180 and sometimes that happens all in one day. In the morning you can have lake effect snow and by afternoon a thunderstorm. This warm weather today does remind us that we should start planning our vacation schedule for the year.

Being RVer’s, we need to do a little planning on campgrounds and the direction of our travels. We also have to give our house and cat sitter our schedule so we do not interfere with their schedule. Our four cats are not RVer’s yet so we need a sitter for them. Maybe someday we will get them used to traveling but not this year.

Our first planned trip will be to Branson, MO for a rally of about 100 rigs. There is a website called www.rv-dreams.com and they are having a rally for all their website fans. They are both in their early 40’s and decided to leave the corporate world and try fulltime RVing. After two years, they are still enjoying the lifestyle. Be sure and check out their website.

We usually spend a week in Cambridge, Ohio to do a little antiquing and visit the Fenton factory. The Fenton factory was going to close last year after over 100 years but supporters have kept it going. I hope that it will still be open this summer.

We will probably include many short trips to quaint places such as Shipshewana, IN, Frankenmuth, MI and Houghton Lake, MI. The Branson trip will be the longest of about a week and a half. Joanne is still semi-retired working at the Police Station so we still do not go for long periods as most retired folks. She has a flexible schedule at work but why push it too much when she loves her job. Next year we will probably head for the Black Hills of South Dakota for a couple of weeks. Of course, the other thing that keeps us locally is the grandkids active summer schedules of sports and activities. They all want Nana and Papa to come and watch. By the time they are teenagers, they won’t care as much as they do now.

Before we do all these trips, we need to take the fiver into the factory for a few fixes. I think we have a leak on the water inlet point that has gotten the wall above that point wet at some time. Need to fix that and a few minor fixes that always occur when you haul your home behind you at 65 mph. We love our 40-foot Travel Supreme but as I get older, I think that maybe I should cut back to maybe 38 or 36 feet. Backing up a 40-foot fifth wheel is a challenge at some of these campgrounds. However, we love it and that is what counts.