Getting ready for Quartzsite Big Tent Show

We will begin our biggest show of the year starting Saturday. It will be our 14th year to work the Big Tent. My how time flies! It is a huge circus tent full of vendors selling everything from soup to insurance (me). For those of you that have never "experienced" Quartzsite in January, I highly recommend that every RVer go there at least once. I have told people for years...you will either love it or hate it! There is no other place like it. The little, desert town of 3643, balloons to several hundred thousand during January! There are many smaller shows mainly focusing on rocks, gems and minerals. But you will find ALL things RV too, from T-shirts to sewer caps! Oh, and you can buy a new or used RV of any type, kind, size or budget. Windshield broken? Need solar panels? You name it, it is there. Plus it is fun to park in an RV park or boondock out in the desert for free or almost free. Sitting around the campfire, visiting the shows and flea markets, potlucks and rallies are all there for the taking. You will get to know other friendly RVers and enjoy the nice, winter weather and daily dose of sunshine!

For us it is work, work work but we also squeeze in a little fun! We will arrive early on Wednesday and set up our motorhome on the show grounds after standing in a LONG line to check in.. We will then go see our friends Carol and Jerry Dale who winter in Q and we will all head over to the annual Escapees Happy Hour out in the desert. There will be music, food and lots of RVers giving hugs all around! A great place to see your friends and make new ones. And lots of fun! From there we will go to Silly Al's for pizza and beer.

Thursday we will be heading into the tent to get our booth all set up. Of course my work on these days and the following 11 days does not stop, so I will still be helping customers via phone and email. Email is best because unfortunately I must make phone calls at night. Just impossible in the tent! I usually work until midnight or later every day of the show. Crazy!

We usually are able to take a couple of hours on an evening or 2 to see our friends for a quick visit or meal out. They don't call Q "The Gathering Place" for no reason! The Show starts on Saturday, Jan. 21st and goes through Sunday the 29th. But there is plenty to do before and after those dates too.
Hope to see you there!

Alaska Trip Planning 2017 and Stubby 2

It hardly seems possible that it has been 2 years and 4 months since we were last in Alaska! We are literally chomping at the bit to return, and started our preliminary planning about a year ago. Where do we want to go? Who do we want to go with (if anyone)? What do we want to travel in? What do we want to see? Lot of things to think about and discuss. In our discussions, we decided we really wanted to go in a smaller rig again. We sold Stubby, our 05 Itasca Cambria when we returned to Texas in Oct. '14. We loved it, BUT...The quality of workmanship was outstanding and it served us well for 6 months of travel (and 3 shows!) but we both agreed that 23 ft, 1 slide and "NO BED" was just too small for us and my running a business to boot! The "no beds" part was the deal breaker. Sleeping on a sofa (Charles) and a dinette (me and 2 dogs) just didn't do our backs or other achy, old parts any good! Plus making them up and down daily and removing all my business stuff daily made for too many chores. So we started looking in June 2016, for a longer Stubby when we were in upper NY state in. We found RVTrader to be a great resource. We decided we wanted to find one on the east coast so logistically it would be much easier for us to pick it up and store it on our FL Lot. And find it we did! In fact we are still pinching ourselves over "THE DEAL" we got! We found a 2014 Itasca Cambria, 30J !!  Much newer and fancier than what we were looking for but could not pass it up! Used twice; 3100 miles (most from factory to FL) and every option not even imaginable on a Class C! It was located in central Fl. After many emails and phone calls we struck a deal and told the owner we would be there in 9 days. We were doing the Escapees NYC HOP with friends Lynn and Mickey Waite the next week. (We had a blast!) Then the week after that we had to head to VT to work Escapade! How were we going to do this?? It's called... store the big motorhome at our campground in NY, jump in the SUV with the dogs,and an overnight bag, and in one and a half days we were in central FL! Whew! The owners were so gracious and had Stubby 2's frig stocked with breakfast! We spent the weekend in their backyard! We loved it! Monday a.m. we got all paperwork finalized and Charles drove Stubby to our south FL Lot with me following behind. Our wonderful friends, Jim and Michael, took us for a special Mexican dinner. It was so wonderful seeing them!

Stubby 2

NYC skyline from top of
Empire State Bldg.

HOP cake

Michael and Jim

We spent the night and headed back to NY at 5 a.m. the next morning. WOW, what a crazy but fun trip!  Of course there is more to the story.....