During Halloween, campfire ghost stories aren't the only terrifying part of travel
You can count on two possibilities as an RVer. You will either have pleasant campground neighbors or you will not. Fortunately, annoying camping neighbors are the exception rather than the rule. Here are seven types of campground neighbors you could encounter sooner or later and a strategy for maintaining your sanity if you do. But
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Southwest Desert Holidays — enjoy the season from a regional perspective. The trappings of a traditional American Christmas include wrapped presents under a decorated fir or spruce tree, pumpkin pie, and the singing of Christmas carols and stockings “hung by the chimney with care.” But, if you live in — or visit as a snowbird
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These offbeat Utah RV destinations will thrill you. Utah is known for its iconic Zion, Canyonlands and Arches national parks, to name a few. But no trip to the Beehive State is complete without paying a visit to some of its smaller, quirkier attractions. Here are four memorable sites that rival some of the state’s
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Arizona snowbird day trips — discover winter wilderness a short distance from your home base. If you’re one of those fortunate RVers who spends winters in Arizona, you know that it’s not just the mild winter climate that makes Arizona so attractive. The popular destinations of Sedona, Phoenix and Tucson sit amid amazing desert landscapes,
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Good Sam Parks welcome holidays from coast to coast. Good Sam RV Parks across the nation celebrate the Holidays with decorations, fireworks and visits from Santa Claus. If you’re staying in the snowy north, expect sleigh rides, snowman-building and hot spiced cider. Wherever you are, a Good Sam RV Park will welcome you with good
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Bird watching RV tours are a great way to see North America’s flying creatures. This Halloween, keep an eye out for crows and ravens. These birds have been given a bad rap from scary stories, but the truth is more interesting than the myths. Ravens Can Make Revving Sounds The raven has long been associated
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RV Halloween haunts — 3 spooky Arizona ghost towns. There are two kinds of ghost towns: those populated by (some) humans and those populated only by ghosts. But we humans like company, and when there are no other living inhabitants around, that leaves only the non-living population — which can be a little creepy if
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Blogging for Good Sam has given me a chance to share some great travel experiences with fellow RVers. I retired as regional general manager of a national RV rental and sales company after 10 years to join the on-the-road community of fulltime RVers. Before I became a Good Sam RV blogger, I taught classes to
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Combine wildlife watching and RV travel. What could be better for wildlife watchers/photographers than to see free-roaming animals in their natural habitats? Here are some of the best places where you can watch unrestrained wildlife, from moose to bears to wolves. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming Yellowstone has the largest concentration of animals in the Lower
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Add these 7 wildlife sanctuaries to your RV itinerary. Viewing wildlife is a popular activity for RVers, but some animal advocates question how best to observe animals without doing them harm. At these seven sanctuaries, some dedicated to rescuing animals from abusive captivity, the animals roam free in their natural habitat. The Wild Animal Sanctuary
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Add an Idaho pow wow to your RV itinerary. Ah, His´Laqht! (Hello my friends!). This greeting comes with an invitation to the 2017 Coeur d´Alene Tribal Encampment and Julyamsh Pow Wow at Kootenai County Fairgrounds in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, July 21–22. It’s an event that shouldn’t be missed. What is a Pow wow? If you’ve
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Go on an RV owl prowl on your next road trip — and learn about the wide variety of an incredible species. I crept through the woods as silently as my human feet could carry me, careful not to break a twig, following Ranger Ken through the almost total darkness of the forest. The ranger moved as quietly as
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Combine RV travel and rail-to-trail bike rides. We’ve heard it often enough. We need to exercise more and lose weight. Unfortunately I can’t offer you a magic pill that will remedy those two, but the Rails to Trails Conservancy thinks that you can have your cake and eat it too, so to speak, on their national
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Follow the RV chili trail to festivals. “Feel the Bern” was a cheer you heard a lot during the presidential campaign. On the RV chili cook-off trail, “Feel the burn” relates to the amount of red hot chili peppers in the contestants’ mouth-watering chili. Some chili cook-offs are only open to licensed restaurants, but most
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RV travelers play pickleball across North America. As we get older, we find it difficult to play sports with the same effort that we exerted in our youth. But if friendly competition is still part of your DNA, you don’t have to give up the thrill of victory. Pickleball is one of the fastest growing pastimes in America, satisfying the need
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RV to 6 underappreciated national parks. The United States has 59 protected National Parks, giving travelers a long list of spectacular destinations to visit. While everybody knows the most popular parks — Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Glacier — you probably haven’t heard much about these less-publicized gems. These parks might not be household names, but they’re just
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RV volunteering can help make the world a better place. RV volunteering does not mean just camp hosting. It could include working in visitor centers, building trails, or inventorying plants and wildlife. Volunteering today is a way of joining in a common project to help and benefit others. It is also a feel-good way of using
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RV to Colorado ghost towns. Colorado claims to have over 1,500 ghost towns, though you will actually find only about 640. The rest have been reclaimed by nature, covered by mining tailings or flooded over from nearby reservoirs. Many are accessible with four-wheel-drive vehicles by long, rough dirt roads. However, many ghost towns are within reach
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RV organization and storage tips to avoid clutter. From my experiences of three years living on a sailboat and 17 years in a motorhome, I’ve learned a lot about how to stow my stuff. And the bottom line is organization. Plastic containers and bins are your friends, and carefully selecting rectangular containers (clear so you
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Take stellar snowbird trips in the heart of the Grand Canyon State. Snowbirds descending from the Pacific Northwest, the Plains states or the Midwest into central Arizona for the winter have several routes to choose from, though most often they take the most direct. RV Park Reviews Check out these Highly Reviewed Good Sam Parks in central Arizona. • Arizonian RV
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Holidays in the desert will make you forget snowmen and reindeer. In the Southwestern United States, RVers visiting during the Holidays will experience special customs, many with cultural links to our south-of-the-border neighbors. These festivities are quite different than the snow and jingle bells experience in the more northern states. For instance, visitors shouldn’t miss the lighting of luminarias — sacks
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Arizona’s living ghost towns beckon… Arizona boasts one of the most colorful histories of the Wild West. More than a century ago, the area’s vast open lands and boundless optimism drew starry-eyed Easterners to seek the riches of gold, silver and copper. There also were those who sought to take those riches from the lucky
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California ghost towns beckon to spirit seekers. In the 1880s, towns sprang up in the Wild West like weeds in a Spring vegetable garden, most of them rising in the wake of the discovery of gold and silver in the beds of seasonal Western streams. The towns lasted as long as miners could extract the minerals,
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Go on a Ghost Town tour of the Gem State. Those shiny minerals, silver and gold, lured thousands of hopeful wannabes to Idaho to strike it rich during the gold rush of the late 1800s. After the dust of reality settled, Idaho’s mining towns plummeted from boom towns to ghost towns. Today, you can learn the fascinating
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Most RVers buy their rigs to hit the road for camping and exploring new places—not to spend time in a repair shop. It’s not fun when you are excitedly nearing your park destination and your engine starts to spit and sputter. However, after 10 years in the RV sales and rental business and 17 years of full-timing on the road, I learned that
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Hunt for spirits in these abandoned Big Sky settlements
I stood in the middle of the street in the deserted town; the eerie silence was broken only by the soft whistle of the wind ruffling the willow tree’s leaves next to the hotel. I could see no other humans—though I’m told that the spirits of some of the departed still reside here. The decrepit,
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Store more with some simple kitchen tips
I’ve said it before, there is never enough galley storage in an RV. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative to maximize your available space. These tips will help you make the best use of room. 1.Use Bulk Bins for Dry Food Dry food stores from bulk bins eliminate wasteful space-filling retail packaging, providing more
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Southwest desert wildflowers have been scarce during the recent drought years, but this Spring may be a winner. The best wildflower blooming spots can be found in areas protected from cattle grazing and off-road vehicles. Look in state and national parks and national monuments, where the flora is protected, along with specially protected areas like reserves. The following places have
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Little remains from the earliest Native Americans that migrated into the Southwest. Still, archaeologists have been able to piece together a picture of this culture from some pueblos, stone and bone tools, a few buried skeletons, and carvings on cave walls, rocks and cliff faces. This ancient art, called petroglyphs (some call it Stone Age
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If viewing wildlife in their natural surroundings is part of your RV lifestyle, you know how hard it can be sometimes to identify partial tracks, or other signs. But with the wonderful new aids modern technology has brought us, you can use information in your smartphone (that you always have with you, right?) to alert
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If the predictions for this winter’s El Nino are even close to accurate, we’re in for a wet winter. If a storm catches you out on the road, here are some tips for remaining in control of your RV and proceeding as safely as possible. Slow down. Your RV will handle differently in slippery, wet conditions, and your vision will
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It’s that time of year again when we search for just the right gift to stuff into the stocking of our favorite RVer. So here are just a few ideas to get you started. • Rand McNally’s latest and most advanced GPS system comes preprogrammed with Rand McNally’s award-winning routing plus preloaded RV travel apps.
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Most snowbirds head to a warm and sunny Southern state, like Arizona, Southern California, the Texas Gulf coast or Florida. But there are other not as popular or well known options for snowbirds, like Southwest Georgia. The weather is not quite as warm as those destinations further south, but coastal Georgia’s average winter weather ranges between
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If you are caught out when Mother Nature throws some El Niño weather at you, or if you just like being out in the middle of the action, you may have to take refuge in a campground until the torrential downpours, blustery winds and hoards of locusts pass. Well, maybe not the locusts. But just
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Instead of putting your RV in mothballs at the end of summer, try some Fall trips to places too hot in summer, but that haven’t yet accepted winter’s chill. Here are some suggestions. Julian, California In the mountains at 4,500 feet an hour northeast of San Diego, Julian in Fall brings rich smells of bubbling
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The middle third of California covers a lot of territory, with RV destinations you may have missed when headed for San Francisco and Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. Check out these unique locations. Visit Good Sam Camping for nearby campgrounds. More than 30 miles of hiking trails wind through Pinnacles National Park, America’s
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At 163,694.74 square miles, California is the third largest US state. And I’ll bet you haven’t seen it all. So here’s a handful of locations in populous Southern California that you may have missed—most of them only a day trip away from a Good Sam campground. Add your great/unusual/hidden California locations to the comments. Red
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Arizona’s distinct climates are separated by altitude changes varying from the low Sonora Desert in the Southwest (lowest point: 70 feet along the Colorado River near Yuma) to the vast Ponderosa pine forests topping out at Humphrey’s Peak near Flagstaff at 12,633 feet. Wherever you are in Arizona, travel distances from low deserts to cool forests
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The easiest solution to driving your RV in high winds is simply to not drive. But that may not always be a choice. Just like if your main concern was safety in high winds, you would probably be driving an Abrams tank instead of an RV. But would you want to go camping in one?
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October was a good time to be in the San Francisco Bay Area. The San Francisco Giants were playing their across-the-bridge rival Oakland A’s in the World Series for supremacy in Major League Baseball. Unfortunately at 5:04 PM on October 17, 1989, the massive 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake struck. And all Hell broke loose. The
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The skill of building an efficient and safe campfire often distinguishes the camping newbie from the veteran. These tips will help you build a safe and controllable fire, and keep it going without having to kneel on your hands and knees and blow into the fire like a human bellows (a newbie characteristic). In the
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All groups and occupations have jargon that confuses outsiders and newbies alike. The camping community is no different. If you sometimes are a jargon-challenged RVer, think what new or wannabe RVers must think when they hear the confusing utterances of RV industry insiders and bloggers. So let’s clear things up—or maybe not. Mobilehome, motorhome or
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Sitting outside your RV on a balmy summer evening, watching the flickering campfire as the day loses it’s glow, and anticipating a quiet night’s sleep are among the joys of the RV lifestyle. But what do you do when something—like rowdy kids belonging to your campground neighbors—shatters this reverie? The
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We would all like to think that we are safe drivers, able to quickly make the right decisions, react to hazards and dangers instinctively, and avoid impaired thinking due to drowsiness. But “sleep is a powerful biological drive—one that can overtake even the best driver,” according to the National Sleep Foundation. ” Rolling down the
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Awwww. That raccoon is so cute. Look at how he rips the grocery bag apart and scatters the food everywhere, and how clever he was in removing the lids off the trash cans and spreading the contents across the campground. If you’ve had any of these raccoon escapades happen at your home or in your campsite, you
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Every year, countless RV travelers flock to Yellowstone National Park to see geysers, bubbling mudpots, and varied and abundant wildlife. Many visitors go out of their way to catch up-close views of American bison. Often mistakenly called “buffalo,” the bison is one of the most majestic animals you’ll see in the wild. Yellowstone’s bison population numbers around 4,000.
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What could be easier to use than a modern electrical system? You flip a switch and there is light. Push a button and your blender turns out a smoothie. But in your RV, it’s a different story. If you use the same amount of electricity in your rig that you do in your house, chances
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Sometimes we barbecue chefs lose our cool, and it’s not always from the heat of the grill. Things don’t always turn out the way we’d like—even though our family and guests assume that because we are the designated grillers we possess the same talents and skills of a short order cook. But don’t fret. Even if
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Most of us probably didn’t realize how vast this country is and how much there was to explore until we actually got out there doing it—in our RVs, of course. Some of the most compelling trips we take are to the many islands that lie off our shores, in lakes and in bays. Visiting islands
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Sometimes RV trips take you into the heart of big, congested, metro areas. As a curious, adventurous RVer, you may want to visit what looks to be an interesting city for its history, museums, events, night life or architectural interests. Or you may have to pass through a large city just to get where you
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