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One Last Summer Road Trip The waning days of summer, and it seems that everyone is heading out on road trips. In spite of record gas prices, road trips and RVing remain comparative bargains. Instead of venturing far from home (and eating up the trip budget on gas) many folks are choosing to explore places closer to home that they haven’t been to before, or returning to old favorites. Another strategy is to car pool to a destination, rather than taking two or more cars. Car top carriers provide extra space and gas can be split with the driver who has an RV or larger car/SUV. If you aren’t RVing, try renting one condo, rather than separate hotel rooms – or use your timeshare points and bonus times. A great condo rental site is www.vrbo.com. We’ve used them many times with great satisfaction. The important thing is, don’t let the summer slip away into Fall without taking one last road trip. We're headed to Lake Chelan in Washington for Labor Day. Drive safely and have a great time. Live Your Dreams!
Phil and Carol White
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Money Magazine features us!
Things happen in the strangest ways. Like many of you, I subscribe to a variety of newsletters on many subjects. One day, I’m reading the retirement newsletter from Lucent Technologies, where I had worked. There was a little note about Money Magazine looking for families to interview with a specific profile. “Wow, that’s me and the kids,” I thought. So I zipped them off a little bio and information and forgot about it. Fast forward a month or so, and we had been selected as “the” family to be profiled in the October issue. The subject is parents with defined benefit pensions (old style pensions that are becoming very scarce) with children who won’t have access to that planning tool – and how our outlooks and preparation for retirement differ. The most fun was the three-hour photo shoot in the community where we live. Even the smallest grandchildren got into the act and we’ll have some great professional family pictures as a result. It should be an interesting article. The book won’t be mentioned by name, although we did talk at length about retirement travel and reinventing ourselves into writers/publishers in our retirement and they will talk about that. Look for it on newsstands in mid-September.
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The Guys find their Pleasure-Way to be "just right"
Your e-mails just keep coming about all the fun trips you are taking – many as a result of reading Live Your Road Trip Dream. We've featured families, singles, retirees, couples and more.
This month we visit with Jim Johnston and his pal Tom Watson - the Steinway Piano man. Just goes to show that you can run any type of business while traveling on your Road Trip Dream -- and they travel in a Pleasure-Way van like ours -- not much room for the baby grands in that rig (named Pancho)!
Jim and I have had an extensive email exchange on many topics, but here is a bit of what they are up to: On the day we pulled out of San Diego, I started the trip by setting the clippers on "Shave" and buzzing my hair off. ************* I won't tell you which one of us was at fault.
A little of the blames rests on one...and alot on the other. But we shared the embarassment equally. Gratefully, there were few witnesses when, early on in our travelling roadshow, we committed "RV New Owner Mistake No. 1".
Ready?
We traveled via many types of transport -- but we didn't take a Segway tour like Tom and Jim - here in "Keep Austin Weird", Texas
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You never know how much you use your computer until you don't have one! My main computer has been out of service for nearly three weeks. Dell finally has agreed that it needs a new motherboard (thankfully, I did buy a service agreement for it!). Unfortunately, much of the information for this month's newsletter -- including pictures, is trapped inside its hard drive. I apologize for not providing complete information this month -- I promise we'll be back on track next month. The lesson? Be sure to keep a really current back-up and don't let your whole life --either at home or on the road -- depend on your computer! |
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Do you all know about geo-caching? It is one of the hottest crazes around (after Sudoku! – also a fun pursuit) and perfectly suited to road tripping. Just go to www.geocaching.com to learn all about how to participate. Some people do it a part of their road trip experience, while others pursue road trips specifically to geo-cache along the way. Either way, it looks like great fun. The Gregorichs' (July newsletter) have a section of their website devoted to their geo-caching activities. It is a great family activity that everyone can participate in. Who knows, you may even want to hide your own cache. Have you been looking for an online community to call your own? If you are an RVer, we may have just what you have been looking for. It is called RVScrapbook and provides ample room to have your own online community chat room and much more. There is MySpace for the kids (great idea, but it has really become questionable) and now there is a great new place for the RVing road trippers amongst us. Check it out. Don’t forget! Personally autographed copies of the book are always available on our website They make perfect retirement gifts too! |
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Send us your tips and questions! Always feel free to email us with your road trip questions or tips, or thoughts about the book. We’ll be printing some of your comments in the months to come. Where have your dreams taken you? Please send us your travel pictures taken on your road trip dream. We want to share stories of trips that were inspired by reading Live Your Road Trip Dream – Travel for a year for the cost of staying home. Upcoming Appearances None in September Until next time.. Keep Dreaming...
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