Rv Navigator

July was a month at home, but we are thinking of RV topics. We do an extended interview with our single RVer friend Mike about his adventures since our last interview. Now that his rig is more that a year old, he is considering an extended warranty. Does an extended warranty give you peace of mind? It should, but do the contracts really deliver what most RVers expect in terms of service. Hear our take on this topics (with RNR) plus bad weather horror stories, getting into VR and drones.

The final leg of our marathon 5 month travel adventure was completed just after Memorial Day with 2200 mile drive across the high planes back to Chicago. We hosted two visits from new motorhome owners while will provide interesting listening. We interview Marc & Sara who just picked up their 2016 Newmar Dutch Star at the factory. They have never RVed or driven a large motorhome before selling their house in Washington to buy this new motorhome. Their comments plus many topics of a more general nature make up the July edition of the RV Navigator.

We traveled from SF to Vancouver Island during May as the final leg of our 6 month long west coast adventure. This month we drove the PCH, and visited the Olympic NP and many places in between in Oregon and Washington. We’ll have driven 8500 miles in the motorhome by the time we return home. We travel via ferry to Vancouver island as well as had many adventures. We talk about the campgrounds, roads, weather, seasons, and tourist activities on our itinerary so join us for an interesting description of this area.

Travel this month was mostly in CA from the East where we visited Sequoia NP to the northern coast and Redwoods NP. In between we hosted our Australian friends & listeners in SF. We are now heading north on the PCH, the beautiful coastal highway. Our intention is to head to Vancouver Island later this month and then go east to Chicago.

Major travels this month to the bottom of the world in South America. We spent 22 days away from the RV in Chile & Argentina traveling to the remote Patagonia region. Follow our adventures on the sea and land as we tour the bottom of the world.

We are traveling in the desert west this month with stops in Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Lake Havasu. Lots of photo ops as we attended the fireworks extravaganza & modernity week on our travels. We also visited Death Valley NP. Good weather made these adventures lots of fun. Death Valley which boosts the hottest temperatures in the world, was a pleasant 70 degrees at this time of year. This park is very large with several camping opportunities. The newest option are the FHU sites at Furnace Creek which we were lucky enough to find an open spot. Otherwise it is boondocking only. The month ended in Pahrump, NV just prior to our travels to South America.

We are celebrating our 10 year doing the podcast with a raffle that will take place in February, 2016. Entry details in the podcast & on the web. Our travels have taken us to many scenic places so far this winter but we are podcasting from Lake Mead Recreation Area near Las Vegas. This is just one of several very scenic camping sites that we have spent time in so far this winter. The weather has not been too kind, but we have gotten some great views and even made a snowman.

This month is our full report on our African Safari this month. We returned from 28 days on the Dark Continent with a 1000s of great animal photos and wonderful memories of a great trip. Our adventure ended mid month with a very long flight home and days of jet lag. We did manage to get some RV questions answered and interesting topics discussed on this edition of the RV Navigator.

Even a fairly new RV needs repairs so this month we visited Newmar in Indiana. Thus just before heading for Dubai, UAE & Nairobi, Kenya for our African Safari. These plus lots of good RVing and travel info make up this episode.

After returning home, we have been trouble shooting problems both in the RV and at home. We share ideas, letters, tech tips and much more in this episode done from the home studio. This is a brief pause in travel before we head to Africa early next month. We are practice packing for this trip. Unlike the RV where we bring everything, the African Safari allows only 33 lbs total - suitcase and carry-on. This actually requires more planning than the RV trips. Other topics this month includes our recent experiences with directv, upgrading your WiFi router, and new and interesting ideas from the RVing world.

Two months in northern rural Canada and we didn’t see a moose. Lots of other sites as we ferried to Newfoundland & Labrador on our journey north. We are now headed home for a short stay before heading to Africa. The Caravan turned out to be a nice way to see a lot in the shortest time possible. Overall driving miles were over 3700 plus the trip to and from. We did see lots of wildlife and eat our share of sea food. We are bringing home several pounds of lobster and crab in the freezer.

Traveling North into Canada one sees lots of trees in this country of 35 million souls (1/10 the size of the US). We start our Maritime caravan that will take us to Labrador. We are 18 rigs that camp & tour together. This is our ½ way point on the travel Northward. We have remembered many things from our trip of 20 years ago, but next month the territory is all new as we load the rig on a ferry bound for Newfoundland and Labrador. We have many observations about the trip so far so take a listen if Canada is in your future.

After several weeks at home, we began our 2 month adventure that will go as far north as Labrador. The trip out involves 1200 miles to get to the caravan starting point. Lots of topics invade this podcast so give it a listen.

June fines us home with plans to leave at the end of the month for the Canadian Maritimes for the rest of the summer. Lots of tech talk today as Ken has been using his Apple Watch for most of the month, plus serval other tech topics make up this episode.

After purchasing our RV lot at The Great Outdoors in Titusville, FL on April 1st, we drove home to the cold of Chicago in the Spring. We feature an interview with fulltimers, Dan and Jonell who workcamp at Amazon for several weeks during the holiday season. Ken has also been busy updating his technology so you’ll want to hear the latest. Based on a listener email, we talk about boondocking tips for the novice. How do you manage that ever elusive resource, electricity?

March was spent traveling in SC. We started with the Freigthliner Wkshp in Gaffney & ended with our nieces wedding in Charleston with stops in Jekyll Island and Myrtle Beach thrown in. We had visits from listeners, old friends and family along the way. This month we share many ideas about RVing in an interview with our single RVing friend, Mike. He had taken his first RVing trip with his Winnebago Via. We post the episode links on our web page at RVNavigator.com.

February turned out to be busy month for your RV Navigators. After a quick change of sites within the Great Outdoors, we met several listeners who tracked us down because they were in a campground near us. Of course we are always doing the tourist thing as we are new to the Titusville (space coast) area of Florida. This involved the Kennedy Space Center, rocket launches, and the Daytona speedway. A couple of installs a microwave & a CB radio also took a few days. And, yes, we became campsite owners within TGO. As of April 1, 2015, we’ll be driving in as property owners - and we have a golf cart for transportation.

Having escaped the winter cold, we headed to the Tampa RV show early in Jan for a great time meeting many listeners. After 5 days park on the fairgrounds grass, we drove over to Titusville to find our site on the golf course at the Great Outdoors RV resort where we’ll stay until the end of February. This RV resort has it all and is one of the most inclusive and extensive “campgrounds” that we have every encountered. Expensive, yes but it has the amenities to warrant the expense. It is a place where “being in the bubble” takes on new meaning. We hope that by the end of Feb, the weather will be warm enough for travel elsewhere in the country.

The beginning of 2015 see us traveling south to Florida. With old motorhome sold, we are unburdened and financially strapped so we can enjoy the winter travels. Champaign was flowing on NYE, so this podcast have different character. Enjoy 2015. We’ll be at the Tampa Super show in mid January at a campsite near you? If so let us know. We cover lots of other RV topics this episode, so give us a listen and then give us a review on iTunes.