I had a number of people email me late yesterday and last night, plus people commenting on my blog yesterday and today ... telling me to keep blogging, even if I wasn't traveling yet. Some pointed out they only travel part of the year but still blog all 12 months. Others saying they enjoyed what I wrote about. Some requested more photos of the hounds.
While the blog was covering both words in the title of "Hounds and RVs" there was no traveling (yet) involved and that may have been where my hangup was. If it were me and I saw a link after searching google or seeing my blog had updated on some other blog sidebar, I would expect some sort of posting about RVing, traveling and hounds. Why would other people be any different?
My problem is I write what I feel or am thinking at the time. Al over at Traveling With the Bayfield Bunch brought up that same point in one of his comments yesterday. Those wide open commentaries I sometimes go into, opens me up for comments, or emails that are rather passionate and may not agree. Individually, confusion arrives because I think of myself as a private person. I then start asking myself why did I ever decided to blog and writing my thoughts and decision process with a lot of people that I do not know?
So at times to me, it's a double edge sword. One, I THINK I am private but another side of me enjoys blogging, taking photos and hitting that 'publish' button for all to see. This is the time I think of no longer blogging and then I write about it for all to see. In social settings I'm a storyteller. A few friends have told me I need to write a book sometime based on the experiences I have had. They enjoy all the stories they hear when we visit but the difference is, I know them. It doesn't bother me to open up. Blogging is a little different.
So when I decided to blog, I didn't expect the following and the number of readers. I was just writing a public journal on my thought process, deciding if RVing was even possible with the hounds I have. I wanted to ask questions that might reach experienced travelers to gain knowledge about this traveling lifestyle I found. People I didn't know were traveling all different periods of time, different rigs, different trucks, some solo, some with cats and dogs .... this research I started in October 2011 showed me a lifestyle I did not realize existed. All I basically knew of "RVs" were Class A's staying in RV Parks and very few if any that did that lifestyle full-time. I was never interested in that type of travel.
I admit I am somewhat disappointed in myself that I am not on the road by this time like I had planned. I know the main reason, a reason I blogged about after our roadtrip in September 2013 to pick up the Lil Snoozy trailer ... where I backed out of the deal. That main reason is the hounds. I know for a fact with the size of hound Sadie is, it will/would be hard to travel unless I was in a 36' Class A with slideouts. The problem is, that is not the rig I want to do my travels in, plus I have two shorter legged hounds that each push 50# - 60#'s each. All of them take up a little floor space. It took me a while to figure out if hounds and travel were possible, although there are a lot of people that do, even with bigger dogs.
If I were solo, I would have been gone a long time ago. I'm not sure I'd be taking the RV route even with no dogs. I was always interested in doing my traveling with a VW Camper. I favor the 'split window' VW, so that would have included all campers older than 1967. When I had that idea, I always planned on keeping the house as a base camp.
I also know myself well enough, that living without at least one hound in my life probably will not happen. I bought my first basset hound in 1987 and have had bassets and bloodhounds every since then. It's been a long time since I had only one hound. Some were rescues, and others were bought as 8 week old puppies. It's been 27 years since I have been without a hound wandering around. So traveling will always include at least one hound.
I decided that blogging is what I do, good or bad, and it's something that I enjoy. I didn't start it out to have followers, really didn't think about that angle of it. I was just wanting a personal journal and blogger was easier than working with Microsoft Word and inserting pictures. Then, due to my personality, I posted what I thought, what I was thinking, without phrasing it to be less personal. That resulted in some pretty interesting blog posts where I even wondered if I was going crazy or not. That type of writing will continue since I really don't know any other way to write. I think it might also be better to start including more photos than I have in the past. Those photos might give a better feel of what I am talking about.
I am going to add more tags across the top with some of my other interests that ties in with traveling and photos to go with those tabs, with a little history behind them.
I looked back over some of my posts of the past two years and realized some of the information I wrote about when I was looking at the different rigs was actually good information for people that might be just starting out on their own research. I wrote about why I was buying them, only later writing why I didn't buy them...LOL. Maybe that type of information will help someone new that stumbles into this blog looking for information on the rv lifestyle. I've heard from some readers it has helped them in their rv lifestyle research.
So my blogging will continue during the times at home which will include more local traveling and the times I finally get on the road and explore the western states. I've been through a lot of those states by car but due to my schedule at the time it was mostly high speed runs, a little sleep and no sightseeing. I've always loved driving cross-country and use to drive with very little stopping. I'll have to learn to slow down and explore the country I am traveling through.
As it stands this past week, I can back off the increased effort of prepping a house for sale and spend a little more time traveling the local areas with the hounds, some sleeping bags and a tent that hopefully Sadie doesn't think it's just for her. For those a little confused by that comment, look to the right and click on the label called "Bloodhound Property Laws", then you will understand where that comment came from. She never get's aggressive but once she finds her spot to sleep, she isn't moving.
I've been following Gary Ramsey for few years. He no longer blogs but does writes about his travels along with great photos on his website and his Facebook account. He found it better to cut the electronic media down to two, so the blog was deleted. He travels solo in the Starcraft ARE-ONE trailer and has a great camera that produces great photos of where he is or has been. It's photos like his recent New Mexico photos that keeps me wanting to travel. His Starcraft trailer also got me thinking that was the trailer to use last summer. Check his traveling site and great photos out here.
Here are a couple of things I would like to do sometime in the future, at least get started on the first one. Really, only the second one would be blog related. The second one would take some time, 2-3 months, since I would be stopping in the exact towns I stopped in before, in 19776. A lot of tent camping would be involved.
1. I want to take my hand written journal from my 1976 solo-bicycle trip that started in Indiana, riding to San Diego, then up the coast highway to Seattle and transform that into a Word document. I still have all of my maps I used and marked up. I could possibly add those to a google map tracking page or something of that nature. I have the poor quality photos I took with a small instant camera. I can't remember the size of film except they were thin negatives and possibly cartridges that were loaded into the camera. I could get those photos transferred electronically and uploaded. I would put all of that information and all the photos of the summer trip in some sort of electronic journal or as the Apple software calls 'Keynote'.
This next thing is more blog related. I'm not sure when I would do this but it's something I've always wanted to do when I finally had the time.
2. I'd like to load the hounds into the FJ and follow my exact path of that bicycle trip mentioned in #1. It would take 2-3 months to complete that trip as I would plan to stop and stay at the same towns and places I did in 1976. I rarely camped in a campground on that trip. Most of the time I slept in a sleeping bag outside of town on open land, the town park, the local school yard and one night on the only green grass I could find, which was in front of the El Centro California City Hall building. I always woke up early enough and was gone by the time anyone could notice me. I also had some great people along the way invite me into their homes for a hot home cooked meal, a place to stay in exchange of telling them where I had been and what I had experienced traveling on a bicycle that many miles. Some of the cities and towns where I did stayed, I have seen written about from RV travelers on their blogs. Their articles must have stirred of memories of the best summer I ever had, full of traveling.
So in the future blog posts there will be more photos, more discussions of places to go or where I have been that are RV related and might interest some of you for visiting. I always feel like writing, its just that sometimes it's not RV or Hound related.
Thanks for all the comments and emails!
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