Randy Badeaux - Are We There Yet? Tips and Tales from a Full Timer - Professional Tourist

ARE WE
THERE YET?

TIPS AND TALES FROM A FULL
TIMING-PROFESSIONAL TOURIST

BY
RANDY BADEAUX

Copyright 2005 Randy Badeaux. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

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ISBN 1-4120-4437-5

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Contents

To my wife June,

Who smiled and went along with all this!

My wife and I started Recreational Vehicle camping (RVing) in 1975 in a used tent trailer that I had to rebuild before we could use it. We didnt have a lot of money at the time and without the Pop-Up we wouldnt have been able to afford to go anywhere. We have since had two brand new tent trailers, a 25 foot, High Low trailer, a 16 foot, and a 28 foot travel trailer and a 34 foot motor home.

I retired after being a Police Officer for twenty five years. We moved out of our house, sold all of our furniture and moved into the 28 foot, travel trailer that we had at the time. We were off on a great adventure in spite of the fact that a lot of friends and some of the family thought that we had gone off the deep end! We ignored them and became Professional Tourists or Full Timers as some call us.

In the following chapters I want to share with you some of the wonderful places we have been, the people we met, the great things we have done, some of the things that happened to us along the way and a few tips to make your travel easier.

So pull a lawn chair up next to the campfire, pour yourself acup of coffee and come along on our adventures!

Randall Badeaux

Location: Somewhere in Southern Louisiana

I did not witness the following event, but my Dad, who has since passed away, swore it was the truth until the day he died.

A young couple with two children pulled up into the campground with their Pop-Up trailer. (a Pop Up is a tent trailer where the upper canvas tent portion folds up and is stored in the bottom portion of the trailer for travel.) The man was driving and backed his trailer into the campsite, got out, unhooked the trailer from his car and began setting up the unit. He cranked the tent portion of the trailer up and pulled the beds out. (They generally pull out of both ends of the trailer.) He fastened the elastic cords that keep the canvas taunt. He pulled down his leveling jacks and carefully made sure that the trailer was level. He plugged in the electric cord and was all set, or so he thought.

There were two bicycles in a rack on top of the car. He took them down and each one of the children took a bike and they were off amidst the warnings of, Watch out for cars, and Be careful! and Have fun.

The man and the woman went into the camper and closed the door. All was quiet and serene on the campground.

After a little time had passed, suddenly one of the beds on the end of the camper came crashing down! The man and the woman both tumbled out of the camper off the broken bed onto the ground. THEY WERE BOTH AS NAKED AS THE DAY THEY WERE BORN!!!

The man jumped up and ran to the door of the camper. LOCKED! (of course!) He ran back to the end of the camper where the bed had fallen out and where his wife was doing everything possible to try to cover herself up! He scrambled up into the camper on the bed and in seconds had the door opened, his wife in the camper and the campground was once again quiet and serene.

After about ten minutes the man and woman again appeared. They immediately began to fold down the trailer. He lifted the leveling jacks and pushed both of the beds back into the unit. He cranked down the canvas portion of the trailer after unplugging the electric wire. The man and the woman hurriedly tucked in the canvas and latched down the roof. He hooked the trailer to the car and anxiously looked around for the children.

A few minutes later the children came by on their bikes. The parents flagged them down and told them they were leaving. There were a lot of protests from the children as the man put the bicycles back into the bike rack on the roof of the car.

Why are we leaving? Where are we going? We just got here! Arent we staying for the weekend?

All complaints being duly noted the children were loaded into the car and the family sped off in a cloud of dust!

Now when you pull out the beds in a Pop-Up camper there are usually two steel rods that fit between the outer edge of the bed and fasten into the frame of the trailer. In this case the man, obviously being in a hurry, forgot to put the bed braces in place, but, Ill bet he never-ever forgot about those braces again! Pay attention to the details!

Location: Morgan City, Louisiana

I bought a used Starcraft tent trailer (we called it a Pop Up) in 1975. I had to take the canvas completely off of the rig and bring it to an upholstery shop to get the holes in all four corners patched. I had to repack the wheel bearings, paint the frame and scrub the walls and floors. Finally after several weekends of repair we were ready to go on our first trip.

We could have taken our maiden voyage on a weekend trip to a nearby campground but, I was hesitant to go because my wife had absolutely no experience in the outdoors and neither of us had ever camped in any type of R.V. We had planned a trip to Florida for our first ever vacation and I thought that if we took a weekend trip and it didnt go well, or if she decided that she didnt like camping, then the vacation would be off.

Finally the day arrived and we headed down the road with our Pop-Up trailer following our Toyota Corolla smartly down the highway. (Toyota cars were much, much smaller then and if you came up behind our trailer on the highway you couldnt see the car, so you thought that the trailer was going down the road by itself!).

Think Before You Act

Location: Styx River Resort, Mobile, Alabama)

We arrived at our first campground. It was a KOA just outside Mobile, Alabama.

We popped-up the trailer and hooked up the electric and water lines and we were camping. A heavy (and I do mean heavy as it rains only on the Gulf Coast) rain storm came up. We immediately went inside and zipped up all the canvas and were sitting there looking at each other while the rain pounded the roof so hard we could hardly hear each other talk.