Product Description
Food Fest! Your Complete Guide to Florida’s Food Festivals is the first book to provide Florida residents and visitors with a comprehensive guide to the state’s year-round cornucopia of food celebrations. Food festivals, cook-offs, and “Taste Of” events are described and listed with the event’s activities, date, location, and contact information. Regional maps and festival directories (by month and region) help plan weekend getaways or spontaneous… More >>

Food Fest! Your Complete Guide to Florida’s Food Festivals

Why oh Why Wyoming Old West Days in the Grand Tetons American Odyssey Adventure RV Travels along the scenic by-ways of America

1.    Have some idea of where you’re headed and a general time frame of when you’re going to get there. If making reservations is too constricting for you, be sure to at least know your options at the end of the day. Campgrounds can fill up quickly and driving while exhausted can put you at as much of a risk as if you had been drinking. Once you get somewhere, make sure you feel comfortable. If the hairs stick up on the back of your neck, pack up and move on. Instincts are rarely wrong.

2.    Leave a trace. Before you go, make sure you have someone you can call to let know how far along you are on the trip. We never expect danger to happen to us, but it can. If someone needs to find us, the best place to start is where we were most recently. If you’re headed from New York to California, but detour to Seattle, it could take days for anyone to locate you or your vehicle.

3.    While food and water should always be stowed in a Class C RV just in case of emergencies, it is especially important on longer trips. Engines can die for no reason, or a nail in a tire can leave you stranded far from help. Food and water can keep you nourished until help comes. Having blankets and extra clothes will keep you prepared for every weather condition. Having your Class C RV looked over by a mechanic can help prevent incidents before they happen.

4.    If you are a Class C RV Enthusiast traveling alone, this doesn’t mean you have to stay alone. Camping out for the night in a busy campground as opposed to an isolated corner of a park makes you less of a target for potential crimes.

5.    Have a way to call someone if you need to. Cell phones are great, but can run out of battery, or get left behind. Make sure you have a calling card in case you need to use a pay phone or need to borrow a landline. It may sound out-dated but you will be grateful if you need to call a taxi or tow truck.

Being out on the road alone makes you feel like Indiana Jones or Jack Kerouac, exploring people and places. However, the mere fact of being alone, can make trouble look twice. When you’re out, keep the jewelry to a minimum. If you have high-end gadgets and accessories, keep them out of site as much as possible. Along the way, make friends. People are more likely to look out for you and help you out if you’re friendly.

Maps are a key ingredient when traveling alone, whether you are in a vehicle or on a trail. Take note of your surroundings in case you get lost, you’ll know how to get back to a safe place. But above all, be aware, be safe and have fun.

The first time we stopped for fuel it dawned on me that either I would have to raise the limit on my credit card or hold down costs somewhere else.  Right there, while watching my bank account disappear into the gas tank, the Beans and Greens tour was born.  Let me immediately state that my wife chose not to participate, but then she had already made a great sacrifice for the trip by limiting herself to taking only a dozen pair of shoes.

Cracker Barrel is well known amongst RVers because they usually provide decent parking and tend to be located along major thoroughfares.  They advertise Southern cooking in the south and home cooking elsewhere, but it is all the same.  One inexpensive meal consists of a bowl of pinto beans, and a bowl of turnip greens along with cornbread.  Why not, I reasoned, eat that meal whenever we stopped at Cracker Barrel?

True, the money saved by eating beans and greens would only purchase a gallon of gas, but at $3.00 a gallon every little bit helps.  Now this went on for several days since Cracker Barrel goes as far north as New York allowing me ample opportunity to compare the beans and greens across the country.  As I said, it is pretty much the same.  After a few days my wife sternly suggested I vary my diet.  I’ll leave to your imagination the reason for this request.

Our first objective was to tour New York City.  We accomplished this by staying in an RV Park in Florida, New York, and taking a tour from the park.  You can also do this from an RV Park in Newburgh, New York.  Both of these parks are over an hour’s drive to the city.  We spent a while at the Statue of Liberty and a few minutes at Times Square, but there is only so much you can do in the time available.  I’m searching for a better way to visit the city and would welcome your suggestions.

Then there was the moose tour in Gorham, NH.  We paid $20 to get on a bus with 20 other moose watcher wannabes.  The bus left at dusk and over the course of the next hour we traveled on back roads in the dark as our driver pointed a high powered spotlight along the sides of the road.  It was as this point I realized that six cars containing people who hadn’t paid the $20 were following us.

Then it happened.  The driver spotted a moose and we all piled out of the bus to see.  Sure enough across a large pond there was a moose, minding its own business and no doubt wondering what the heck we were doing.  Before the night was over we spotted seven more moose, mostly doing moose things.  My wife was happy.  I guess if you want to see a moose, this is the way to go.  The information center at Gorham can provide you with details.  You might consider making a reservation.  We didn’t and it was only because a couple from Israel was kind enough to let their four year old son sit in a lap that I got on the bus at all.

From Gorham we traveled across Maine to a small town close to Bar Harbor and the Acadia National Park.  Unfortunately at this point in the trip rain became common as did fog so we were unable to fully appreciate the scenery but we were able to enjoy a Maine lobster.  We took highway 1 south through Camden (heavy rain prevented us from enjoying this town even though it came highly recommended) and on to Kennebunkport where we saw the home of President George Herbert Walker Bush.  Kennebunkport is a cute little tourist town worth a stop for coffee and shopping.

During one of our stops a local newspaper front page story reminded me I was in Maine.  “Two arrested in case of purloined lobsters,” the headline read.  It sounded more like a Sherlock Holmes case than a newspaper headline.  Being from the south I expect to read about occasional robbing, stealing, holdups, and similar crimes.  But the following headline will never appear in my local paper, “Two arrested in case of purloined beer.”  Bubba may steal something when the opportunity presents itself, but he just doesn’t purloin.

I-495 sweeps way around Boston, but it is on I-495 where you will find a number of RV Parks.  A very nice KOA close to exit 6 will take you to the train station every morning and pick you up at night.  It takes about an hour to ride in at a cost of $12 for a round trip, but once at South Station it is easy to catch one of the several trolley tours.  For two days this was our means of seeing Boston.

We continued to flee the rain and finally enjoyed a sunny day in a remarkable little town called Staunton, Virginia.  Staunton is the birthplace of the 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.  For antique car buffs there is a fully restored 1919 Pierce-Arrow limousine on display at Wilson’s Presidential Library.  You will also find quite interesting architecture and a plethora of restaurants.  It is a great place to relax and enjoy unmatched small town hospitality.