Archive for November, 2008

>Minneapolis Star Tribune – Minneapolis,MN,USA
Van Der Molen Recreational Properties Inc., the owner of a Jellystone Park camping resort in western Wisconsin, has sought bankruptcy protection two months after losing a Minnesota lender’s lawsuit over missing loan payments.

The company, whose children-oriented campground in Warrens, Wis., includes a water park, has assets of less than $10 million and debt of as much as $50 million, according to Chapter 11 documents filed Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago.
Full Story…
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DVD: Drive Your Motorhome Like a Pro
Learn how… and why…to drive a motorhome the right, safe way. In this 67-minute DVD, RVer/tour bus driver Lorrin Walsh. and host Mark Polk show you everything you need to know to confidently drive a motorhome. This should be essential viewing for novice motorhome drivers, but even experienced RVers will learn things they don’t know.

>The 1994 Safari Trek motor home parked in the green-living southeast Portland neighborhood draws curious looks.

Which is just what Ty Adams wants.

Curiosity breeds questions. Questions give Adams the chance to preach his passion — for alternative fuels and energy independence, for conservation of natural resources and for creative, sustainable design and construction practices.

An outdoors enthusiast who never dreamed he’d become an RVer, Adams learned about motorhomes while working for a Coburg RV manufacturer — then launched into his own campaign to bring environmental practices to the world of motorhoming.

His unlikely pulpit is the 27-foot-long “SolTrekker,” a paragon of sustainability in an eye-catching custom paint job of orange, brown and white, with yellow sun rays reaching from the wheel hubs.

It’s the blood and guts of the motor home that so audaciously flip the RV stereotype.

The SolTrekker runs on biodiesel. Solar panels heat its water and power its electricity. Special gutters channel rain through filters and into holding barrels to use for cooking and cleaning.

The composting toilet doesn’t need to be pumped out.
Full Story…
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The RV Handbook: Essential How-to Guide for the RV Owner
This new edition of The RV Handbook is for all types of RV enthusiasts – from a first-time buyer or renter to the most seasoned RV traveler. Packed with valuable information, checklists, photos, and charts, the guide tells you how to: buy an RV; avoid the single most common mistake novice RVers make; select a towing vehicle; avoid RV repair scams; benefit from technical trends in RV manufacturing; correct the bad towing habit that plagues even experienced RVers; and prevent explosive propane situations. With hundreds of proven RV tips, tricks, and techniques, this expanded handbook tells how to buy, maintain, and optimize RVs, saving both money and time.

>Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly – Fort Wayne,IN,USA
ELKHART COUNTY, Ind. — Elkhart County unemployment spiked this year as recreational-vehicle manufacturers and suppliers closed and laid off workers.

An economic downturn affecting what is known as “the RV capital of the world” is not new. And according to indicators, so far, it’s not as bad as the downturn Elkhart weathered 30 years ago.

Wholesale RV shipments turned lower over the last year and a half as gas prices skyrocketed and the credit crisis took hold. But shipments this year are expected to remain higher than 2001, the most recent low point.

Al Hesselbart, historian at the RV-MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart, said the downturn clearly is not as bad as one that occurred in the late 1970s.

“In the late ’70s, early ’80s unemployment was in the 20- to 21-percent range throughout Elkhart industry,” Hesselbart said. “When you need food stamps to go to the grocery store it’s bad. But everyone on the block is not in that situation.”

Nonseasonably adjusted unemployment rates in August and September of this year were more than double 2007 figures. The October unemployment rate reached 10.7 percent, the highest in the state, according to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.

RV shipments dropped 9.5 percent in 2007 from the previous year, ending a five-year streak of increases. Shipments are expected to be 266,800 this year, which would be the lowest amount since 2001, when 256,800 units shipped and the industry was experiencing another downturn.

Economic-development agencies in Elkhart County want to recruit other industry clusters to the area so it is not so dependent on manufacturing, which is about 50 percent of the county’s economy. A regional marketing group is in the works to sell Elkhart, Kosciusko, Marshall and St. Joseph counties in Indiana, as well as three neighboring counties in southern Michigan to companies looking to move or expand.

The RV industry, which attracts more than its share of publicity, amounts to only 8 percent of Elkhart County’s manufacturing base. As they work to diversify the economy, county officials still want to ensure the RV industry does not die.
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RVing 101 Training Course on DVDs
Get a box set of instructional DVD titles for hours of one on one instruction. Not only do you eliminate the guesswork as to which DVDs are suited to your RV, you SAVE significant money with the box set discount. There are DVD sets for Class A, Class C Motorhomes, Travel Trailers & Fifth Wheels.