RV Navigator

After a busy fall, we spent the month at our home base near Chicago. As you know we don't enjoy the cold, so after the Christmas holidays we once again headed south for most of the winter. We rang in the New Year in our motorhome in FL with a NYE ball drop party from 7-9 pm - it is after all midnight somewhere!

January will find us at the Tampa RV Supershow. If you have a chance to attend, it is one of the best RV shows in the country. However this year has brought some major changes so well if that is true going forward.

In this episode we share some ideas about cruising (our second love) as well as the latest about the new MH sales ban in CA as well as a Thor large EV motorhome which may answer the question about alternatives. Our experience has taught us some must have items as well as essential techniques for a successful RV trip. We shared these tips and open a bottle of the bubbly during this annual party episode. Have a happy new year as you travel in your RV to all parts of the country.

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 hurricane thrown in for good measure. Our area was not impacted by the storm so we are feeling lucky this year.

This months episode features a new cooking segment done by the copilot. She shares some ideas for maximizing the kitchen space in an RV.

“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.”

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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.

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.

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.