Rv Navigator

We left shortly after the last podcast for a land adventure in Eastern Europe. After 3 weeks of travel, we are ready to share our experiences on the podcast. We’ve been traveling with 13 fellow travelers to the Czech Republic and other close by countries formerly part of the eastern block. The adventure has been eye openning, but we also chat about some interesint RV topics and the latest technology. Have you used whispers(?), do you have plans for snowbirding in the South. These plus many other topics are on our agenda this month.

Finally back on the road in the RV, we travel to FL on a round about itinerary that included stops in Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina and Georgia before our final stop in Titusville, FL. September is a great weather month in these northerly states so we took advantage of fall (before the colors) to slowly drive south. A major stop along the way was in Gaffney. Not a tourist stop but an important MH stop for this is the home of Freightliner - the maker of our chassis. We found the important of letting the pros work on the MH as they performed our annual check-up and found several major problems - and solved them before they became issues. Expensive, yes, but worth it if it keeps from being stranded on the side of the road. We are getting ready for our Alaska adventure next summer so reliability of our Rig is very much on our mind. With a 12 year old MH, we never know what will go wrong, so we try to do as much preventative maintenance as possible. Florida proved to be its usual hot an humid with a hurri

“According to Nielsen's recent podcast analysis, the number of Americans listening to podcasts has increased by 45% in the last five years alone - more than doubling in the past decade to reach 183m people.” https://content.nielsen.com/PodcastingToday Your RV Navigators are waiting for the money to come knocking, but even though we have been podcasting for 18 continuous years, alas we have not been offered the big bucks mentioned in the article above. We continue because we love our listeners and enjoy the feedback, but we make no money. We remain non-commercial and ad free.

This month's big project was upgrading our battery bank to lithium batteries. We added about 1000 amps of battery power to our rig in the conversion process. After a couple of days for the install, we headed to annual Indiana Dunes mid summer trip. New this month is the Starlink mini as a standalone unit.

As most of our listeners know, we’ve traveled most of the US (and Canada) in our RV. We have been to New England, NE Canada on several RV trips. Always enjoyable. Our current adventure is via cruise ship with an itinerary from NYC north through the St. Lawrence to Quebec. Approaching this itinerary from the water side proved to be a different experience. After this topic, we discuss several RV issues including new happenings with Starlink, and a follow up on the Tesla pickup for RV towing.

It is officially summer and the camping season has begun - but we'll let the family RVers have first dibs on the campgrounds. We'll be home for most of the summer. On our way home at the beginning of the month, we stopped to get our sofa recovered. The original factory fabric had peeled over the past few months, so we had it replaced - now it looks like new. But of course the real question is why did it peel. Cheap fabric from the factory. We learned that the key word is Ultra Leather when looking for quality long lasting fabric. The dri e This month we share many RV topics of interest as well as what's new with Starlink and other on the road internet services. How about a softstart that installs externally? What's new at Loves?

On the road this month on a 2400 mile trip north over 2 weeks. We visited some bucket list and out of the way destinations such as Crater of Diamonds State Park and Crystal Bridges Art Museum in Arkansas. These plus a couple of old favorite camping spots kept us busy for the month. Of course, the month started with a 5 night family cruise (with 22 participants) cruise aboard the Independence of the Seas sailing from Miami. We had a great time even though the ship was at capacity (4500) and packed with under 1440 under 18 year olds. This reminded us that different ships have very different vibes, so cruisers should choose their ship carefully. We drove back to our Florida headquarters (TGO), prepared the MH for the trip home and left on a longer than normal trip north. We spent time at Gulf State park as well as the aforementioned buck list stops. This month we share ideas about internet on the road as well as a couple of products that you may find useful.

As February ended, we headed to Rio in Brazil to begin a cruise that will take us in and out of the Amazon before ending in Miami. Early in February we headed to one of our favorite boondocking spots, Jetty Park near Cocoa Beach in FL. This park offers a nice Atlantic ocean beach, a prime spot to watch rocket launches and the cruise ships enter the port. Our new towed was taken on it maiden voyage with great success during the month. We review how it was altered to become a towed vehicle as well as our plans to switch to lithium batteries in the near future. Many other RV and cruising topics are covered this month on a show with 2 parts

Back to RVing! We spent the entire month in our RV doing what the podcast is about - RVing! The highlight was the Tampa RV Super Show held each January at the Florida State Fairgrounds. In our opinion this is the best RV show in the country with hundreds of rigs on display along with hundreds of vendors for specialized RV products. The weather in FL has been variable with lots of cool interspersed with warm. While the rest of the country is berried in snow or rain, we have avoided the storms. This episode brings an interview with a company in Iowa that recovers Flexsteel RV furniture.

The year ends with 123123 and our annual New Years Eve podcast with bubbly. Having just returned home from an extended trip to Southeast Asia, we are still struggling with a 12 hour jet lag. The year in review shows that we did alot of travel outside the US so the RV travel was limited. We will be heading to FL for our annual snowbird experience in a week or so. Join us at the Tampa RV Supershow starting on January 17th.

Greetings from Southeast Asia. After an unusual beginning of our trip, we landed in Singapore after 26 hrs of travel and 12 time zones. We began the land portion of the trip by adding two new countries to our growing list of visited countries. After traveling to Thailand, we made our way to Laos and Cambodia ending in Vietnam after almost 3 weeks. Returning to Singapore we picked up our 4 week cruise to Indonesia and Malaysia. We'll be sailing until December 23 when we return home just in time for the next podcast. We want to wish everyone a happy holiday season as holidays draw near.

Wd did enjoy the good weather of the Southlands as the temps headed down at home. Flying home was a shock to the system as the weather was quite cold for the season. We do share lots of RV topics this month including the possibility of an EV RV pulled by a Tesla tracker. Also what’s new with Starlink and T-Mobile for RVers, new AI features of Bing, the new iPhone 15 as a camera and much more are on our agenda this month.

On the road once again as we make our way to our winter home in Florida. But why drive directly for 3 days? Rather make it a leisurely trip of 3 weeks, do a bit of family visiting, sight seeing, and enjoy the camping. The eastern US is known for trees, so our campsites didn’t offer much of a view for our satellite TV, so we had to rely on streaming. Hear about our experiences and what option we had as well as many other topics of interest to RVers.

Greetings from the open seas of the North Atlantic as we cruise from Bergen, Norway to NYC over 28 days. Wildlife is always unpredictable, but during the recording of the podcast we spotted a whale outside of our cabin window. It was a WOW moment and indicative of our travels this month. All three countries that we visited had an abundance of fjords with picturesque little towns at the end. Of the three countries, Norway provided the best photo opportunities. And it was the warmest. Otherwise the trip to the north was a cold and rainy experience however interesting it was.

No camping this month, but we’ll be “on the road” for the next 9 months as begin our adventures with a cruise from Bergen, Norway to NYC for 28 days. July was fairly quiet as we celebrated the 4th at home enjoying great summer weather for most of July. The Chicago area has not been plagued with the weather extremes experienced by much of the country. We took the opportunity to get out doors but just not camping or RVing. With the knee given the final OK by the doc, we are set to travel once again as the adventure continue. After the cruise (leaving on August 2) most of September will be spent heading south with the RV

Our brief camping trip to the Indiana Dunes was a big success. Perfect weather, nice campground, RV working perfectly all came together to make a great experience this year. The beach in this park is very nice plus of course the water is fresh - and fairly warm at this time of year. We stayed for 3 nights. Even though I made the reservation on January 3, this was the longest midweek reservation available. What is your experience with campground reservations lately? We are working on reservations for our fall trip south to FL and are finding reservations at public campgrounds to be fairly easy to make. A major topic this month is photography Ai & its impact on my photos. The new Photoshop Beta includes generative AI as a major upgrade feature. It is amazing as you can see on this episodes webpage. AI has been coming to photography for a while, but this feature of Photoshop takes it to the next level. In this episode we also share some new websites focused on RVing. How about planning a RV trip that f

Another episode from the home base in Chicago as the copilot recovers from knee replacement surgery. Todays episode is based around an interview with the founder of CarGenerator.com. This product produces 110 volt power from your car for use in home or RV. It is an easy hookup, light weight, and powerful enough to keep either your house or RV operational in case of power failure or you're boondocking. This could easily replace that bulky generator that you have to lug around.We also have our fact or fiction question, an update on the CatSafe from last month, and what's new with RV fridges. Are propane powered fridges a thing of the past? We also cover the latest on StarLine internet as well as some steaming ideas with Pluto TV. All in all an interesting series of of topics that you'll want to hear about.

Due to Marthas ongoing knee problems, we scheduled an operation to replace her knee months ago. Finally on April 11 the surgery was completed very successfully. Successful does not mean pain free or nothing to do after the surgery. We have spent time in pain mitigation and PT as she works to make the new knee strong and ready for the many adventures to follow. It will take a couple of months, but after her complete recovery, we can hit the road in the RV to once again due justice to the RV Navigator podcast, but for now we are at home in recovery mode. We do have lots of interesting banter as well as an interview with Betty Chambers who authored a book we mentioned last month, RVing with Bikes. We also talk about the latest developments in AI technology, alligator safety, a computer monitor suggestion and much more. Let us know your thoughts and ideas at rvnavigator@mac.com

Your RV Navigators have just returned from a 63 day travel adventure to Africa and are a bit jet lagged after the long journey home. The trip included a 3 week Safari in South Africa and a 33 day cruise of South Africa ending with a trip up the west coast of the African continent. This portion of the trip gave us the chance to visit several less touristic countries that we had never visited before. This month we share travel insights about this part of the world, new AI technology, and e-bike experiences for RVing.

This month we continued the South African safari. We stayed in several tented camps along our route. Every national park has it animal specialties, so visiting several gives visitors a broad perspective on animal viewing and habitats. We did of course manage to see the big 5 (lion, leopard, rhino, cape buffalo, and elephants) plus hundreds of other type of animals and birds. Tented camps are outposts in remote areas that offer visitors easy access to the game and a secure compound to spend the night. Although they are called tented camps, and do have canvas tents, they are on the boondocking style tents pitched temporarily by visitors. Instead they are permanent tents erected on cement pads with rooms for sleeping, changing and toilet/shower. Most are run by generator so power is limited although some of our camps had A/C. Game drives are a daily event beginning very early (before dawn) when the animals are active. A game drive is just that, driving around in an open 4x4 looking for animals doing th