RV Navigator Episode 34

Mon, 1 Dec 2008 11:35:54 -0600

A warm holiday greeting from your RV Navigators is the first order of business. We have heard from so many listeners about their RVing hopes and dreams this past year. It has been very rewarding for us. We are homebodies for the holidays. Since retiring we don't travel over the holidays, so we spend the time getting caught up on projects and seeing friends. Out of this busy schedule (oh, yah, very busy :-) we take time out to make the monthly podcast. Our thoughts are about the holidays, so we are doing our annual RVers gift guide in addition to a few other topics.
How about a 32 foot diesel class A motor home that gets nearly 15 miles per gal? Damon has introduced the Avanti which is just that.
We offer some great gift ideas - and we look to you for more. So send us your greatest hits for RVers list.
One of our projects has been the creation of a photo book of our New England Fall Colors trip. There are many choices, but we have settled on Blurb as our printer. For a few dollars they will print a high quality photobook which has been custom designed by you. These can also be view on their website. Do a search on "Peeparazzi" on the Blurb.com website to see our work.
With the cold weather taking hold, RVers are faced with keeping their RV warm and toasty. As we all know even the warm climes frequented by Snowbirds can still get cold. Should you use electric or propane heat? How to keep your expensive RV batteries in good share are both topics covered in this podcast.

Time to be merry, our gift list includes some big, some small, some funny, and some serious gift suggestions. We even end with a Christmas carol, so take a listen to this months RV navigator and send us email or a comment on the listener comment line, 815/230-0772.
Links
Damon Avanti 15mpg motorhome
Peek email device
David Pogue uses the Peek (video)
The Green Rver (NYTimes article)
National Parks podcasts
Yellowstone
Yosemite
Flip Mino
10 RV Battery Quick Tips Video

RV Navigator Episode 33

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 15:35:59 -0500

It has been quite a month on the road for us. With falling prices of diesel, we feel more like hitting the road and that is exactly what we did. We left you on the coast of Maine eating Lobster. We headed inland to take in the fall colors of New England. After a rainy and cold beginning, the weather turned perfect for leaf peeping and we got to work taking what turned out to be 24 gigs of digital photos. The crystal blue skies combined with the rich color of the foliage really made our photos pop. The website contains a link to some of the best examples. We also spent 5 days at a digital photo workshop sponsored by Elder Hostel. We took several field trips - some in the early morning - to get the perfect shots.
On the RVing side, although gas prices are down, sales of RV are not up, Why? We have an explanation. We also stayed a a couple of interesting campgrounds which will be interest to many listeners. Our trip to Speedco for an oil change proved enlightening and we share some of our digital photo experiences.
All in all a good month in the RV and we are anxious to share it with you.
Links
Elderhostel
Free Campgrounds
Core of Engineers Campgrounds

RV Navigator Episode 32

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 18:21:30 -0500

This month has been full of great experiences from interviewing two of our listeners to eating many lobster dinners in the RV. A week on Cape Cod in the off season was a great way to introduce us to the best of New England via some great beaches, scenic campgrounds, bike paths, good eateries, and new friends. This is RVing at it best. Leaving was hard, but we headed up the Maine coast to see some of the picturesque fishing harbors for which this state is famous. Boothbay was one of the most interesting but we found many smaller towns full of fishing boats just waiting to be photographed. With the trees beginning to change, we headed off to NH and Lake George (NY). Unfortunately the weather has not held out so our enjoyment has been diminished as the rain falls.
The POI (point of interest) file that I purchased for my GPS last month did not pan out. This file for a cost of $49, was supposed to give our GPS new power by installing a huge number of new searchable points of reference like campgrounds, state parks, and similar RV related destinations. The company could not deliver the product to me without a great deal of aggravation (who ever heard of a 24 hour download window that expired two hours after notification?) so I use an alternative source for this info, POI-factory. com. This website posts POI files (usable in most GPSs with a USB port or connection) created by fellow GPS users. These files are a free download and can be combined into a very useful set of additional POIs for your GPS. As an example, I downloaded Superwalmarts, Flying Js, State Parks, NH covered bridges and many others. Downloads are quick and transfer to the GPS is even faster. Once in the GPS, using the search function makes them accessible.
We also tried casino camping this month. Free is always a nice way to camp as long as you are self contained. The casino camper website provides lots of info and useful tips and a database of casino that welcome RVers. Our casino camping proved to be not only economical but scenic to boot.
We always wondered how it is to start off on an RV lifestyle without any experience. Our interview with listeners Geoff and Ellyn give us some insight into their decision to sell the house and belongings, buy an RV and head out on the road. I am sure that you'll be interested in their decision making process and can do spirit as they move into their RV.

UPDATE: It looks like their house has sold, so they plan to be full timers by October 1st. Great news and good luck.

As full timers you'd probably don't have to winterize the RV, but the rest of us in colder climates have to shut down the RV during cold weather (at least for a few months). We share our winterizing procedures and techniques with you during this October episode.

Last major topic this month is my purchase of a new hand held GPS. Geoff showed me a cool feature of his hand held GPS, its ability to create tracks. Tracks map your movements on a map for later download. Put the GPS in your pocket and it follows you on your sight seeing for the day. Not only didn't my old GPS not do tracks, but it needed a full view of the sky to read the satellites. My new Garmin Oregon 300 tracks us almost everywhere - even indoors. Amazing. Once you have the tracks, your digital photos can be tied to a specific location using the GPS info. Digital photos have a data record called metadata where all sorts of info about the photo is kept - and a blank space for GPS coordinates. Unfortunately, most cameras do not have a built in GPS so this data is missing - until now. Once the track is downloaded, it can be easily synced with your photos AND plotted on a Google map.
As always we appreciate your comments and suggestions both via email and listener comment line. Send comments, suggestions and ideas to navigator@rvnavigator.com or use the comment hot line 815/230-0772.

RV Navigator Episode 31

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 13:09:32 -0500

Labor day finds us in Boston, MA at a very nice campground. You'll remember that the weather in the Northeast was perfect this year and we made the most of it. We don't travel much on Labor day, but this year we wanted to be ready to see the fall colors a bit later in the month so we left a bit early. After a 1200 mile trip where we saw the price of diesel drop significantly (only about $4.10/gal), we'll be in this area for a couple of months. In the podcast we describe our 2 week trip to this area with a few nice stops in PA.

Our listeners have contributed to the podcast with both audio comments and a nice description of a TV install. This is an update to my efforts at swapping out our TVs earlier this summer. Over all our transition to all digital tvs has been very successful. Nearly every location has several digital channels now (several months before the mandatory change over) that are easy to received and excellent quality. This even when the old signal is questionable. At one campground in PA, we were able to receive 2 old channels and 4 digital channels. Of course the digital channels had a great picture.

Our monthly features include discussion of tire pressure monitor systems, solar panels, and new cabinets.
Show web Links:
Free POIs for your GPS - This is a large collection of free POIs for your GPS (most models are supported)
.Walmart Camping guide - includes listing for those that accept RVers and those that don’t. We found the lists to need updating, but after 3 tries we found a Walmart in which to spend the night.
AM Solar - the place to buy your RV solar panels and controllers.
Doran Tire Pressure monitors - Expensive but necessary for safety

RV Navigator Episode 30 August, 2008 - Listening to our Listeners

Fri, 1 Aug 2008 15:17:54 -0500

It seems like 30 episodes should be milestone. I never would have believed that we would be podcasting after 2 and half years, but here we are still going strong with a listener base of over 500 downloads per month. We are motivated by your input and comments (as you’ll we don’t take ads) so keep in touch with your RV Navigators as they roam the world looking for fun topics to discuss.
Thanks all who had participated.

Once again we are podcasting from the home front but we have lots of good RV stuff to share. Really our listeners have been sharing with us this month by sending comments via email and voicemail. In these days of bad news in the RV industry, we try to take a lighter approach to our usual RV news with several rather funny stories form the world of RVing. We are about to finish the TV swap project started last month now that we finally have a solution to the last problem. Included is a great book review from listener Suzi and a an extended question about full-timing from listener Ellyn. This last voice mail gets us started on an extended answer that takes through the entire RVing lifestyle - at least the way we live it. We end up with our usual recommendation of great web sites - but with a twist. This month we recommend free cell phone services that will make the life of an RVer easier.

• If you are still looking at swaping out your RV TVs, please look at the updated photo album in last months episode.

As always we appreciate your comments and suggestions both via email and listener comment line. Send comments, suggestions and ideas to navigator@rvnavigator.com or use the comment hot line 815/230-0772.

Links relevant to our full timing comments:
• Bernice’s Blog - read all of the articles
• Life on Wheels conferences
RV-Dreams - great website for fulltiming info
Gypsy Journal - RV travel newspaper also online