Published November, 1999
58,236 RV Links on the Web and still counting
Hi there! You must be a member of the Internet web-surfing society. You have a computer, you have an Internet Service Provider, and you want to know about RVs. You may even have one of those monsters sitting next to your house.
Well, log on to the Internet and go to Yahoo.com. Search for "RV". You will get over 58,000 hits on Internet web-sites where you can find information about RVs. Great!
But wait a minute. If it takes you one minute to search each site to see if that site is of interest -- forget the time to read it -- you will be totally busy for the next six weeks, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, just checking out the sites you found. By the time you are through you will hate RVs.
Welcome to RV Travel Links: an alternative to reading all those web-sites.
My name is Sam, and my goal is to get you started with the right foot in the right place for finding information on the Internet about RVs and the RV lifestyle. In each of the coming issues I will tell you about the best of the recent web-sites I have found containing information about RVs. Once you are started in the right direction, you can take advantage of the wealth of RV-related information you will find on the web.
Let's head right out. Today we make eight stops at web-sites that you will want to visit from your armchair and maybe check again and again.
Our first stop is to meet a couple who is about ready to go full-time on the road in an RV. At http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/fmueller you will find the web-site of Fred and Sandy Mueller. They are preparing to leave their nest at the end of the year, and their Coachmen Santara and two 10-year old labs are straining at the leash. They tell you what it is like to get ready.
Sandy Mueller suggested the next stop to me. It is a web-place for people who take their pets with them in their RV. It is called Pets Welcome, and you find it at http://www.petswelcome.com/welcome.html. This web-site has lots of good suggestions and even tells you about campgrounds that welcome pets.
RVing is about traveling. One of the most beautiful places in the country in which you can travel is the canyon country of Utah. Ron and Barb Hofmeister tell of their journey with their grandchildren through this land at http://www.movinon.net/Places/Utah.htm. Both they and their two grandsons had a great time and saw some great sights. Travelogues like this can spark your interests in places to go.
If you are trying to figure out how to fit and live in your RV, take a look at http://www.rvnetwork.com/members/phrannie/phredex.html. Here you find a gold mine of information by phred Tinseth, a renowned RVer who has written detailed "Source poop sheets" for how to handle many of the day-by-day critical issues for RVers. phred discusses RV electrical systems, phones on the road, satellite TV, RV waste systems, water systems, and more. You may want to print some of these reports and take them with you, just in case you cannot find a telephone line to get online.
Speaking of online access, connecting to the Internet when you are traveling in an RV is a real problem. The series of articles by Mel Chaney at http://www.rversonline.org/RV4Computers.html covers many of the major issues of getting online. He tells of some things that work and some that don't. Before you go out and buy an acoustic coupler for the rig, or even a laptop computer, check out his advice.
The last two stops are for those of you who are really getting serious about RVing and want to know more about with the RV lifestyle.
I recommend that anyone who is serious about the RV lifestyle join the Escapees RV Club. You can read about the details of the club at http://www.escapees.com/. This is an organization whose magazine alone is worth the $50 per year dues, and they offer you a number of other benefits as well, such as rallies, mail forwarding services, voicemail, email forwarding, and a number of campgrounds around the country where you can stay for a minimal amount. Most of all, the Escapees, or SKPs as they are called, are among the finest people I have met on the road.
Membership Campgrounds are organizations with one or more campgrounds that accept members only. You have to pay an upfront fee to join the organization, as well as annual dues, but if you plan to spend much time on the road, it may be the right thing for you. Take a look at Thousand Trails/NACO at http://www.thousandtrails.com/ to get a better idea of what this kind of organization is like. They have over fifty campgrounds around the country for their members.
Well, that's all I have for now; drop by next time. And maybe we will see each other down the road.