RV Navigator

By Ken & Martha, The RV NavigatorsSociety & Culture

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RV Navigator episodes

September 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 173 - Everthing Ecuador
Twenty-seven days in Ecuador gave us a chance to explore diverse areas of this small country. These 3+ weeks in Ecuador allowed us to visit the Amazon rain forest, Galapagos islands, and Andes mountains all within a country that is the size of Nevada. Small but diverse with rural-urban, hot-cold, and wet,-dry regions all on the Equator. For a small country in South American, Ecuador has a lot to offer. Our first stop was Quito, the capital. At 9000 ft and surrounded by volcanoes (some active) it is a scenically beautiful city. The hot jungle of the Amazon is what you would expect. Hot, humid and full of animals, bug and other critters. We toured on foot and canoe to see both land and water life. We then boarded a plane to fly 2 hrs off the coast to the chain of islands know as the Galapagos. They are part of Ecuador's national park system. As such they are protected and have strict rules for visitors. This control does maintain a good visitor experience (as long as the rules are followed). Getting close to nature is the rule and the preserving the animal life is the at the foundation of the visitor experience. Few places in the world have a an indigenous population of animals that do not fear man. This is one of them. Birds don't fly away and other creators don't disappear when they see your face. Long lenses are not necessary for animal close-ups. It an animal is curious, they approach without fear - and they did. This is a novel experience for most visitors.

From there we headed to the mountains that flow south out of the country. We drove parts of the Pan-American highway up to 13,000 ft before depending back to the ocean. Spectacular peaks some snow covered (even at the Equator) greeted our lenses as we took great photos of the landscape. We traveled on the "Devils Nose" train which is one of the few that handles mountain switch-backs in a novel way in order to manage the very steep mountain grades without causing engine damage.

Bottom line is that if you're looking to visit a country only 4 hrs by plane from the US that has wide range of climates and environments PLUS uses US currency and is quite stable, then Ecuador should be on your list of must visit places.
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August 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 172 - Getting it Fixed
Every RV needs to be repaired from time to time. Newmar has opened a very modern service center with campground for its owners. How you'll get your RV fixed might be a factor when you come to buy an RV either new or old. Newmar pride itself on fixing any RV that it has manufactured regardless of age. Not every manufacturer will stand behind its entire line of products this way. We were in the service center campground to have our captains chair ((driver and passenger) recovered with new fabric. Not something we anticipated deteriorating, but we are able to get it fixed.

Although we have not done any camping this month, we still have lots of RV topics to share- many of them the result of emails or facebook comments. Four season RVing, taking care of older RVers, and many other topics are covered in this episode. Be sure to visit our episode website for lots more info.
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July 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 170 - Storm Clouds
With Memorial Day behind us, we are ready for summer and the warm weather to begin. But, spring is still bringing rain and cold. We were worried about frost and the motorhome so we had to leave the heat on for a couple of nights this month. With June’s arrival, we are looking for long days and warm nights but of course we’ll be a home. We let our camping families have the campgrounds in the summer. Their season is short and we can visit any part of the year, so we’ll head out again in the fall. However, we will taking a short trip to Wisconsin just to exercise the MH systems during the summer down time.

Of interest this month is the new VR system from Oculus, the Quest. This system is the first to be stand alone - no extra wires or hardware needed. This is a major step forward for VR systems. I have enjoyed the games and 360 videos. It takes us to places we’d never get to via conventional travel.
This month we share ideas about RV generators, Harvest Hosts (which we just jointed, but have not used), inexpensive tablet computers, and much more.
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July 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 171 - Agressive birds
A quiet month for us. In summer we fall in to routine activities centered around home in Chicago. We did do our yearly “exercise the motorhome” trip to Lake Geneva, Wis. (about 2 hrs from home) for 3 nights at a state park. We focus on photography topics this month - our camera choices, new photo options, and thoughtful ideas about photography and RVing are our main focus this month. On our short trip, we were attacked by birds - literally. Why would a cardinal keep flying into the motorhome for days? We don't know, but it happened on our short trip.
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July 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 171 - Agressive birds
A quiet month for us. In summer we fall in to routine activities centered around home in Chicago. We did do our yearly “exercise the motorhome” trip to Lake Geneva, Wis. (about 2 hrs from home) for 3 nights at a state park. We focus on photography topics this month - our camera choices, new photo options, and thoughtful ideas about photography and RVing are our main focus this month. On our short trip, we were attacked by birds - literally. Why would a cardinal keep flying into the motorhome for days? We don't know, but it happened on our short trip.
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May 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 169- Up the East Coast
April 1st we fired up the RV for the trip back to Chicago. This was to be a meandering journey that would up the month. We planned to visit Savannah, Washington DC, Charlotte SC, and the Laurel Highlands of SE PA. All went well on this journey as we explain in this months podcast. We had several new systems to test out on this 1200 mile trip.

Although we had not been to these destinations in quite a few years, it was nice to relive earlier experiences. We enjoyed Washington DC because of the welcome it provides to tourists. Many attractions are free and the transportation is easy and inexpensive.

Of course we always have to consider weather on our travels. Spring storms can cause major damage, but we were not effect until we arrive home. Then the snow arrived. Up until the trips end, the weather had been good - mostly warm and just a little rain. Then the cold and snow arrived in Chicago.

In this episode we share experiences about using a towed, the new engine monitor called Bluefire, as well as new cell data plans as well as our experiences with campground reservations and camping in the nations capital.
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April 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 168- To the Cold South
this episode we are focused on our recent trip to Antartica. At the end of February, we headed South - way sou In th. In the land of ice, snow and rock that makes up the 7th continent. This land mass has no native animals, insects or plants (aside from a few liken). So why visit such a desolate place? The landscapes are bleak but beautiful with black rocky peaks and crisp white snow. The marine life is abundant with penguins, seals, whales, birds and many smaller lifeforms. Cruising is the only way to visit, as there are no public airstrips or outposts for visitors. Even the cruises only have landings at remote beaches or rock outcrops where the penguins or seals congregate. Cruise ships must bring everything their passengers will need for their stay. So we were provided with jackets and knee length insulated boots to put over our layers of cold weather clothing. Daily we suited up for our zodiac trip to the landing area for the day. Once there we “toured” on foot to see the penguin colony or snowy peak that offered views. We encountered both clear sunny skies and complete overcast with snow (and/or rain) with temps in the lower 30s. Not your usual cruise. This one was like a 3 week focused college course on the land south of South America. To make this a reality, the ships company included 21 scientist/lecturers that were specialists in some aspect of Antartica including marine biology, geology, history and ecology. We learned, saw and experience a different world which is very unique and remote in this modern world.
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April 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 168- The Cold South
In this episode we are focused on our recent trip to Antartica. At the end of February, we headed South - way south. In the land of ice, snow and rock that makes up the 7th continent. This land mass has no native animals, insects or plants (aside from a few liken). So why visit such a desolate place? The landscapes are bleak but beautiful with black rocky peaks and crisp white snow. The marine life is abundant with penguins, seals, whales, birds and many smaller lifeforms. Cruising is the only way to visit, as there are no public airstrips or outposts for visitors. Even the cruises only have landings at remote beaches or rock outcrops where the penguins or seals congregate. Cruise ships must bring everything their passengers will need for their stay. So we were provided with jackets and knee length insulated boots to put over our layers of cold weather clothing. Daily we suited up for our zodiac trip to the landing area for the day. Once there we “toured” on foot to see the penguin colony or snowy peak that offered views. We encountered both clear sunny skies and complete overcast with snow (and/or rain) with temps in the lower 30s. Not your usual cruise. This one was like a 3 week focused college course on the land south of South America. To make this a reality, the ships company included 21 scientist/lecturers that were specialists in some aspect of Antartica including marine biology, geology, history and ecology. We learned, saw and experience a different world which is very unique and remote in this modern world.
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March 31, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 167- The Shortest Month
February is always short, but because we are leaving for Antartica in late February, we are getting ready early. This maybe a time when we’ll be totally out of touch at the beginning of the month and thus not able to do the podcast, so we did it early. Our 17 day sailing will take us further south than we've ever been at the end of their summer. However we are expecting cold - in the 20s. This is a big change from February in FL. This month has been very warm while the rest of the country is mired in cold winter weather. After getting our alternator fixed for the second time, we headed off to do a bit of boondocking. For those who are new to RVing, boondocking is camping without hookups. In this case we were at the mouth of Port Canaveral with a great view of the ships (many cruise ships) sailing in and out of the second busiest port in FL. Our motorhome is nicely set up for boondocking - and we discuss this issue on this episode.
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February 01, 2019 RV Navigator Episode 166- The Golden Age of Podcasting
CBS News came a calling to check out our podcast this month. This took the form of a 4 man crew coming to our RV site in FL to set-up and record your RV Navigator being interviewed by CBS Correspondent David Pogue. This took place on January 4th with the final product airing on January 20th CBS Sunday Morning program. Our segment (1 minute & 11 seconds) was part of a longer segment (5 minutes) called “The Golden Age of Podcasting” with more info on podcasting in general. This was all quite exciting for us and totally out of the blue. It was a result of a cold call from the producer to us asking for an interview.

We were also pleased that David sat down for a brief interview that will be part of this months RV Navigator episode. He turned out to be congenial interviewer and a good interviewee although he has no RVing experience.

Since the Sunday airing, our podcast downloads have gone through the roof (at our expense). A usual months worth of downloads happened on that single Sunday after the broadcast. Consistently, we have about 15,000 download per episode over a few months. This Sunday (1/20/19) we had 16833 download in a single day! Obviously a new record for our podcast. The level of downloads increase for all episodes as new listeners worked their way through some of the most recent editions.

This was not the only news this month, as we visited the Tampa RV Super Show in mid month. As usual this huge RV show was displaying all of the new RV hardware. We took the opportunity to replace our Blue Ox tow bar and upgrade our interior LED lights. We also looked at lots of other stuff but didn’t buy anything else.

We touch on a few other topics, but this is the main trust of this months edition.
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The digital home for RVers. RVing is not camping anymore. It has evolved into a high tech life style that requires maintaining many technology systems. This podcast addresses the myriad issues that…