Favorite RV Travel Apps 2013
Traveling fulltime requires a constant stream of preparation. In the old days that meant pulling out a road atlas, an enormous campground directory and a CB radio. But these days, apps are a traveler’s best friend. Not only are the databases much larger than the printed directories, but the good ones are updated regularly with comments and more information than one could possibly use.
Two things are most important to me when finding and using any app:
Firstly, I want it to be either free or only have a one-time nominal fee. I won’t pay high prices or monthly subscriptions.
Secondly, I want the location-based apps to be map based. This means that when I click on one, the first screen I see is a map with my current location flagged and with flags of whatever I’m searching for surrounding it. There is nothing worse than having to work your way through lists to only find that there are none of what you’re looking for in the direct area you are searching.
1. WeatherBug: I absolutely love this app. I have the free version yet it keeps me up to date on multiple locations with active weather alerts and can be enabled to keep a constant watch on “My Location” as one is traveling. I keep alerts active on my home base, my close family locations, my current location and wherever I happen to be heading to next.
2. We Camp Here: This is the best all-inclusive campground directory I found that is also map based.
3. Scanner Radio: This app allows one to listen in on local emergency radios. It is more useful in larger metro areas and I liked to use it when in extreme weather.
4. Fandango: Who doesn’t need a good movie break every now and then? This app works nationwide and I could always find the chains that I prefer.
5. Allstays CRV Military: There are many categories of Allstays apps. The military app lists campgrounds and areas open to military and DOD civilian personnel. These locations usually have required identification and specific affiliation for use.
6. Allstays Walmart: Lists all Walmart and Sam’s Club locations and whether or not they have allowed overnight RV and/or semi-truck parking. There are often notes for individual locations, and app users can add notes about where to park, friendliness of staff, noise, lighting, etc.
7. Allstays RV Dumps: Lists both free and fee-based RV dumps, including campgrounds that allow specific services on a fee basis.
8. Allstays Rest Stops: Lets one know where state rest stops are located and often has notes about allowed length stays and whether overnight parking is allowed.
9. Domino’s: Our favorite pizza chain with all of our favorite pizza and order combinations saved in one place. Simply enter your current location. If there is a Domino’s in your area you’ll be able to find out if delivery and/or pick-up services available.
10. History Here: Ever wonder what there is to do or go see where you are? This app can be set to automatically alert you to nearby sights. A similar app that many roadschooling families(homeschooling families rv’ing fulltime) use is “Field trip.” Be careful with these though, if you turn on he automatic alerts you might get more of an earful in notices than what you would prefer.
11. WordPress: My favorite place to write about traveling tUUsome!
12. myPilot: This app lists locations for both Pilot and Flying J travel stations. Especially great are the Flying J stations with dedicated RV lanes. These lanes normally provide unleaded gas and diesel, propane, dump stations, air and longer windshield cleaners in easy in-and-out lanes. With a free myPilot card for rv’ers, one can also get gas and store discounts and half-price dump station use.
So what are your favorite travel apps?
Share them here or on our Facebook page. We’d love to try them!
Sharing for survival
The feeder out the dining window is always our first view each morning. On this day, the suet feeders were frozen in the subzero temperatures so I put out a tray of wild bird seed. At first the mighty tried to keep it to themselves, but after several dive bombs for seed, all of the usual fighters gave out to peace-and-love in the face of survival.
Usually there is one more on board–a particularly grumpy Blue Jay that honors his expected behaviors by hoarding and chasing all others away. Maybe today the cold kept him home and left the females to reign supreme over those that dared approach!
Ready to rumble!
Back on the blog and writing again feels so good! I’ve got a busy schedule ahead, beginning on Monday when (Arctic blast willing!) I begin the Purdue University Master Gardener Training Program.
Deer have been passing through the woods behind us every day so in preparation for the weather a salt lick is out, the bird feeders are full, and we’ve got some loose seed ready to put out during the negative temperatures expected this week.
Jeep is ready and packed with emergency supplies for the heavy snow expected tomorrow and I’ve got lots of UUA reading to catch up on. Putting on a slow cooker with homemade soup and baking some bread. Hopefully we’ll all make it through warm, cozy and well fed!
To learn about the Purdue University Master Gardener Program, visit: http://www.hort.purdue.edu/mg/about.html
Louisville tomorrow
On my way to Louisville, Kentucky, tomorrow for my corneal transplant. This is my second one and after the pain of the last I’m not all too excited for the experience but, I am excited for the results. None of what Austin and I have done the past couple of years would have been possible had I not had the surgery in my left eye in 2005–no driving for sure. Which means it would never have been possible for us to have lived on the road fulltime and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the country.
So with the New Year at hand, I hope to begin it with the ability to see the world with both eyes, clear and beautiful. Only another reason to be out there and enjoying all that Mother Nature and the road have to offer. And to think of how much more fun my photography hobby will be with a new lease on how I see the world!
So wish me luck, good blessings and adieu for awhile, with hopes of still making our plans to be in Chicago by the second week in January!
Why I’m getting surgery: https://travelingtuusome.com/2013/11/25/keratoconus-ker%c2%b7a%c2%b7to%c2%b7co%c2%b7nus/
The Midst of Icepocalypse
Austin and I find ourselves in the midst of Storm Cleon, or as friends have titled it, “Icepocalypse.” Following a full inch of sleet and freezing rain throughout the night, we now have about six inches of fresh, wet snow and still more falling.
Cooking Thanksgiving Dinner in a 2’x4′ RV Kitchen
Cooking a multi-course meal in a tiny kitchen can be a bit daunting, but last year our meal was a success. With only two of us and a tiny oven, I wanted to make just the right serving sizes to have for our dinner and few leftovers.
My first plan was for the turkey. I decided on crockpot cooking and a 3# Butterball turkey breast. The breast comes in a plastic bag with the turkey wrapped in a string net along with a bag of gravy starter.
I started by taking the turkey out of the string net. There were two large pieces and a few small chunks. After cleaning the pieces, I set them aside and cut a red onion into 8 chunks and readied two garlic gloves. I layered the ingredients in the crock pot as such: 1/3 stick butter, 1/2 of the onion chunks, 1 diced garlic clove, 1/2 the turkey, spices, 1/3 stick butter, 1/2 bag baby carrots, the second 1/2 of the onion, second clove of garlic, all topped with the second 1/2 of turkey, skin side up. At the very top I added the last 1/3 stick butter and spices and 1/2 cup water.
Next I went about making the side dishes. With only two saucepans, I had to cook, clean, and cook and clean again. I first made the cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries (the only way to have it!) Easy to make for two in a small pan with 1/2 bag fresh cranberries and 1 cup sugar boiled with 1/2 cup water until the berries open and the sauce thickens just a bit. I then put the sauce in a bowl in the refrigerator to cool and thicken, washed the pan and started on the gravy.
At first I tried the gravy that came with the turkey but my son and I both agreed that the gravy just did not meet up to our standards. I then tasted the au jus and it was perfect as-is so we decided on using it. The last two dishes to be made were the stuffing and mashed potatoes just before ready to serve. I always make my mashed potatoes with skins on and a bit too much butter, and I usually make the stuffing homemade but with limited space and time, I opted for the boxed variety cooked with turkey drippings.
And although in an RV, we had a delicious homestyle Thanksgiving dinner made just for two!
This blog updated from last year–just in time for those needing it this year!https://travelingtuusome.com/2012/11/26/cooking-a-thanksgiving-feast-for-two-in-an-rv/
If facing a Thanksgiving dinner emergency, you can call the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line® at 1-800-BUTTERBALL (800-288-8372) for help.
keratoconus /ker·a·to·co·nus/
Some of you may know about my issues with poor eyesight and the associated problems I live with because of bi-lateral Keratoconus. I’ve worn contacts since 11-years-old, with near-sightedness since even younger–likely stemming from an accident when I was 6-years-old when my eyes were full flushed with leaded gas while trying to help fill a gasoline container from an elevated farm tank.
I had a corneal transplant to my left eye in 2005. Prior to that, my eyesight had gotten so bad that I could not drive in rain or at night, or on any road that I was not already familiar with because I couldn’t read the street names in order to navigate. At the time, my left eye was the worst of both eyes and so it was operated on first. The transplant was a success and quickly I was able to wear glasses and could see enough to regain my driving freedom. And just a year ago, I was able to start wearing a hybrid hard contact lens with a gas permeable skirt that brought me back to 20/20 corrected vision in my left eye for the first time in many, many years.
Keratoconus is a disease that causes the cornea to thin and thereby grow into an extreme cone-like shape. It also causes astigmatism, which in my case is extreme with bumps and bends so numerous that my ophthalmologist cannot even complete some digital tests on my right eye because of the variations. In turn, both problems cause extreme light sensitivity because the eye is receiving light and bouncing it off of multiple plains into the eye. This is why I’m often seen wearing two pairs of sunglasses at the same time, a regular pair and then an over-glasses style pair on top.
But good news from my ophthalmologist today … on December 18th I finally get the transplant I need for my right eye which is currently legally blind. Not just good news, the best! From squinting and spending most of my day with my right eye literally closed so that it would not just blur my total vision, instead to the hopes of the success I’ve had with my left eye is a wonderous thought.
This also means that, while I’m still able, I need to get writing and posting some ‘lost’ services that never seemed to make it to the blog. Last time I had the surgery I was a full week locked in a blackened room, so dark in fact that on the fifth day post-op I finally allowed the television to be turned on and what little I watched was literally through a white pillow case draped over the screen!
But as we all know, my blessings are at the cost of another’s tragedy. For me to gain a healthy cornea, someone out there has lost their life and has donated such a precious gift to someone like me. I truly hope that I am worthy of the donated cornea I already have, and I hope to hold myself worthy to the one I shall gain during this holiday season. A blessed gift indeed.
To learn more about this disease, visit Keratomania.com at http://www.keratomania.com/keratoconus-vision-simulation.html, or visit The National Keratoconus Foundation at http://www.nkcf.org/
For more information on becoming an organ donor visit http://organdonor.gov/becomingdonor/index.html
Student of the Prophetic Sisterhood
So I am applying to a few seminaries for Fall 2014. I’m signed up to attend January convocation at Meadville Lombard in Chicago and am planning on visiting the Harvard Divinity campus. But with so much time before I can even make my final decision, I decided to be proactive by beginning the UUA ministerial required reading list.
Many of the seminarians I’ve already met often post on social media about the difficulty in attending courses, internships, writing papers, and all the while, attempting to read and absorb the rather large collection of writings meant to introduce ministerial candidates to the expansive world of Unitarian Universalism.
With a random spattering of documents and books, I’ve chosen as my first reading, a book that touches close to home in my personal journey. The Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930 by Cynthia Grant Tucker (Authors Choice Press, 1990.) The women in the book are independent, strong, and always choosing a path with love, difficulty, and leadership in the face of male dominance.
Always one for the unique path in life, and after competing in a few beauty pageants in high school, I graduated early and joined the Marine Corps at the age of seventeen. I was attending boot camp while my friends were attending prom, and I was at my first duty station during our high school graduation ceremony. If that wasn’t enough, I served as a C-130 (Cargo) aircraft mechanic and later did a tour in the Army as a heavy wheeled vehicle mechanic, spending all eight years of my tours as the only female in my workspaces. I followed these with now twenty-plus years in the social work field, working for the American Red Cross in multiple countries and volunteering for many other groups.
Now, much older and wiser from my veering paths in life (I say as I laugh half-heartedly!) I find my faith and family as the touchstones to my life–now merging my social work past, my love of literature (theology is strongly interpretation of the written word, is it not?) and my humble beginnings as a religious lay leader to my fellow recruits while in boot camp.
My path has lost its twists and turns and is now a single road before me. Dusty, rocky, and assuredly over more mountains than I’ve already climbed, but single and chosen by my life’s experiences and my heart’s longings to guide, love, and support my fellow human beings.
So, with the Prophetic Sisterhood, I begin.
Dear prospective UU seminarians (helpful advice. freshly squeezed.)
Sharing in the light of my seeking entrance to seminary!
Dear prospective UU seminarians (helpful advice freshly squeezed.).
Shared from Raising Faith {dot NET}
traveling tUUsome 