Escapees March-April 2023

three Sears catalogs that you neither want nor need. Actually, mail forwarding works just fi ne 99% of the time, it’s that remaining 1% that gets you. Campgrounds Hey, I like campgrounds! I spend a lot of my time at them. It’s just that sometimes I wonder about the folks that lay them out. Most of the time, it’s no problem, but once in a while…! Like the campground that has a vicious “S” turn that you have to negotiate to get in or out. Are they trying to test our driving ability? Or, the place with no signs and no obvious way to choose between the dirt road I’m supposed to drive down and the one that dead-ends at the ravine. Or, my personal favorite: the place that has gravel roads with tight turns and 50-percent grades conveniently hidden way in the back. Once, I stayed in a site at the bottom of one of those steep gravel turns and it was exciting (terrifying?) to watch big class-A motorhomes slide down that hill directly towards me. I’m also fairly fond of the places with really low-hanging trees or trees strategically placed to make my pull-through a pull-in-back-out. I guess it’s all part of the adventure. Then, there are those parks that have huge signs saying “We welcome the big rigs” then, after several miles of roads you wouldn’t take a scooter on, there it is! With nowhere to turn the “big rig” around when all the spots are full and the road ends at a river! You get the joy of unhooking in the rain, driving the toad back to main road, backing the coach about two miles to a farmer’s lane, turning around, re-hooking and trying it again at the next place that welcomes the “big rigs.” Or, the one where you’re looking for a campground and there is the state-placed sign on the highway showing a campground at this exit. You drive several miles through a housing development only to discover the campground was “developed” four years ago and the state never took the sign down! Maintenance This is a tough one for me. I would rather walk up to a stranger on the street, hand them a scalpel and say “Go ahead, take out my appendix!” than allow someone else

In 1997, MARK NEMETH #45776 quit his job, sold his house, bought an RV and joined Escapees. He has been the club’s technical advisor for 22 years, and served as director of both the SmartWeigh and Boot Camp programs. He is a regular contributor to Escapees magazine and other RV industry publications. Mark maintains an RVer’s resource website with technical articles, tips and information at www.marxrv.com. Even with all these challenges, full-time RVing is a pretty neat way to live. Just remember your bottle of Jim Beam, your baseball bat, your name tag and your jar of quarters. Besides, they say “suffering builds character,” and, if that’s true, then I’m full of it! What I mean is, I’m full of character—why are you laughing? to work on my vehicles. It’s not that I don’t trust other mechanics—well, actually I guess it is that I don’t trust other mechanics. I do most of my own maintenance while on the road. This can sometimes lead to angry confrontations with campground managers, so I try to be as discrete as possible when working on things. The problem is that with out a garage of my own, I wind up working in less than ideal conditions. Laying in the mud, on sharp rocks, or on top of an anthill tends to remove some of the joys of doing it yourself! And nothing hurts me more than to have to go out and buy a special tool to do a particular job when I know that I already own one—only it’s in Texas and I’m in Tennessee. Road/Construction Surely the bane of any traveler’s existence: road work. It can offer you some impressive challenges! Such as: the uneven pavement zone that empties the contents of the fridge onto the fl oor, or the freshly graveled road where oncoming 75 mph semi’s are throw ing up rooster tails of gravel, or the detour that takes you and 20 semi’s onto some farmers tractor path for 15 miles, or my personal favorite, the squeeze play. That’s where they set up big concrete barrier walls on both sides of a single lane and you are expected to drive in this narrow corridor for several miles. Then, as you are driving down this narrow path, the barriers slowly get closer together. Ahhhhhh!!!

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March/April 2023 ESCAPEES Magazine