Archive for July, 2006

>The asphalt gleamed under light drizzle. The Challenger, 35 feet long and at least 12 feet high, loomed before me, a cruise ship on wheels. My friends and I had loaded our duffel bags and lawn chairs, and now we stared at it, our one-bedroom, one-bath home, our mode of transportation, our rented recreational vehicle.

We’d just been through a bewildering 90-minute orientation on everything from the retractable hand-cranked TV antenna to the order of emptying sewage tanks (black water first, gray water second). Nick, our RV guru, closed with these words: “It’s easier to drive than it looks. The most common thing is people hit the pole when they’re leaving the gas station. You’ve got to remember, this thing weighs 50,000 pounds. Anything you hit is going to tear off.”

That short lesson in physics didn’t seem like enough to qualify us for piloting this leviathan across the Great Plains to east central Kansas and back in four days, but it was.

Our destination was an outdoor symphony concert near Emporia, Kan. The hotels and motels nearby were booked up. An RV seemed like a simple solution. We’d just drive our own hotel to Kansas. Full Story…

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>THE Americans should start arriving at any moment.

Over by the picnic table, Gloria MacDonald busies herself with the forest of fluttering plastic bags, making one last count just to be sure.

“Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three.”

Somewhere out there, picking their way along the narrow roads of Hants County, orderly convoys of recreational vehicles are heading toward the large empty field where we’re standing.

Gloria is the Nova Scotia representative for Adventure Caravan International, a Texas company that organizes modern-day wagon trains of RVers, as enthusiasts are known. These travellers assemble with their vehicles, ranging from compact campers to huge homes on wheels, and set off for the horizon, roaming around the U.S., Mexico, Canada and beyond.

“They’re all sweethearts,” Gloria says of RVers. “The youngest we’ve had was 45. One chap was 85!” Full Story…

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>After a second day of investigation into the shooting death of a man who entered a motorhome parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot, Cedar City police had yet to determine whether to file any charges Thursday.

Steven Stubbs, 26, was shot in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun at about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday after he entered the motor home and refused to leave, Cedar City Police Lt. David Holm said.

“No decisions are going to be made until we get a chance to put this whole thing together,” said Cedar City Police Sgt. Jerry Womack.

The family in the motor home, a husband and wife and their two daughters, were on vacation from Cape Coral, Fla., and planning to visit Grand Canyon National Park.

Now they just want to go home, said Tracy Coltellino, the wife and mother. Full Story…