RV’ing to Parks and Wineries in Italy

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Faye and I recently returned from Italy, a wonderful country that we last visited in 1985. The cuisine and the wine were even better than we remembered from our last trip.

One of the things that has changed is the emergence of RV’s across “the boot”. According to IdeaMerge, there are over 2000 campgrounds frequented by RV’ers in Italy. Their prevalence surprised us for a couple of reasons: there’s a lot less space in Italy than in North America - 58 million people in an area just larger than Arizona; and gas prices there are about twice what they are in the US. On the other hand, rigs were smaller than at home, and since stuff is closer together there are fewer miles to pump up for!

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On the Trail…Inside Lookout Mountain, Tennessee

This is one of those places that should be on everybody’s short list of places to visit. A big slice of American history was written here at the battle of Lookout Mountain during the Civil War in the fall of 1863, and how often do you get to tour an underground cavern with a huge subterranean waterfall.

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North to Alaska…Family Fun at Wisconsin Dells

One of the great joys of RVing in North America is the opportunity to reconnect with friends and family, and the past few days have been no exception. My son-in-law just got a great new job in northern Illinois, and basically had three weeks to move his family down from Alaska. Since we were in Wisconsin Dells just north of the Illinois state line, we timed things so as to spend a couple of days together, giving me the opportunity to see not only my daughter and son-in-law, but also three of my five grandchildren, whom I haven’t seen since last October.

And, when in Wisconsin Dells, you visit water parks. Supposedly there are more water parks in this small Wisconsin town than in any other community in the country. Among these is Noah’s Ark, billed as “America’s largest water park.” So we loaded up and headed for Noah’s Ark. Water parks are also important stress relievers for kids who have just experienced an all-night flight from Alaska and a flood-inspired, detour-riddled drive down from Minneapolis in a rental van.

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North to Alaska…Washing Away in Wisconsin

For the past couple of months you could tell everywhere I have been. Just check the daily map on the weather channel and I was generally under the severe weather bulls-eye. Stopping to visit my sister and her family north of Madison, Wisconsin, this past week was no exception. I got here just in time for tornadoes to blast past to the north and south of me and to stare in awe for hours at torrential rains. I have never seen anything like this before, not even during the monsoons in Vietnam I experienced nearly 40 years ago.

This picture is of Lake Delton or, more correctly, what was once Lake Delton, a few miles from where I am camped near Wisconsin Dells. Twenty-four hours before I took this picture, this was actually a lake, a reservoir to be more specific. It was overwhelmed by the rain. The dam itself did not fail, I’m told, but the ground to the side of the dam became so saturated that it just washed away and the water roared around the dam into the Wisconsin River. This is where the houses you may have seen on TV the last couple of days were being washed into the river.

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Best Alaska Trip Journals

I love living travel vicariously through others’ footsteps. Definitely the next best thing to being there.

Alaska rivals any place on earth for its sheer beauty. Here are my favourites of the best Alaska Trip Journals over the past 12 months. A huge thank-you to these incredible authors/photographers:

Most beautiful sunset, from ‘Wiseman9′:

Most territory covered, from ‘AlaskaExpedition2007′:

Cutest bird, from ‘Tschumper’s Alaskan Journey 2007′:

Most colourful photo, from ‘Holladays in Alaska’:

Trip farthest afield, from ‘BinkleyAlaska2007′:

Best glacier shot, from ‘Holladays in Alaska’:

Dan Parlow

Personal Travel Websites by RV.Net ; Online Travel Journals by MyTripJournal.com ; Explore Good Sam Club Trip Journals ; Woodalls Trip Journals ; Travel Journals by Trailer Life Directory ; Traveling USA Travel Blogs

The Grand Canyon, Frank Sinatra, & RVs

Airstream RV Blog - The Grand Canyon from Sean Michael on Vimeo.

I was once trying to talk a friend into taking a road trip with me. My friend was skeptical about the idea. “Suppose we go,” he said, “what will we actually do once we arrive?”

“Learn,” was my one-word reply. And I was serious.

The ultimate goal of our journeys is to learn — to learn about other places and peoples, as well as ourselves. You can’t really appreciate your own world until you have the benefit of seeing others.

Visiting other places provides context. It’s among the best learning opportunities you’ll ever have. It’s also a lot of fun.

“Alright Mr. Smarty Pants,” you may ask, “what have you learned during your crazy long, long honeymoon journey?”

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Blog vs Trip Journal: Part 3 - Guests and Messaging

Blogs commonly allow guests to post comments related to a single posting. Most commonly, the comment is posted, an email is dispatched to the blogger, and the blogger can then decide to delete. In this way, RV.net authors - myself included - have received quality info from the public on the subject of our informative blogs. Different blogging platforms allow for different levels of control over these comments.

Since Trip Journals are primarily a personal record of your own trip, guest comments are treated differently. Rather than including factual comments on each posting, visitors to your Trip Journal can elect to leave you a personal message through a ‘Leave a Message’ link. Often these messages have nothing whatsoever to do with your individual postings:

Messaging the Trip Journaler

This is like sending a personal email to someone, but with the added advantages that: (a) other visitors may see it; and (b) the message retains the connection to your trip.

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Use Descriptive Trip Journal Titles to entice the World

So you are really into the trip journaling thing…all your friends and family are on your update list, but you are hungry for more…a larger audience to share your adventures with.

If you are in fact trying to drive traffic to your Trip Journal, keywords in titles are actually very important. It helps the search engine spiders index your site and lets the Google-searching world find you more easily.

Alaska-Yukon travel journal

Phoenix, Arizona. An accurate description of where you have been? Yes. A catchy title? Not really. I must admit I have fallen into this myself. Too lazy or not feeling imaginative enough to wow my readers with an eye-catching title. However, it can make a huge difference to bringing people to your site and making people actually want to read your content. How about “Taking in the Arts in Phoenix”? Now with search engines, this tiny step will transform your article from one of thousands about Phoenix to one of perhaps a few dozen about the arts in Phoenix.

Not only will adding descriptive titles help folks find you, but it will entice them to look further and click to read your stories. Ask yourself if you were searching, which of these two articles would you be most likely to click on?

June 2/07 Spying the Florida Panther

or June 2/07 The Everglades

Likely the first one: the first is evocative and enticing; the second you could have seen a million times.

Dan Parlow
Personal Travel Websites by RV.Net ; Online Travel Journals by MyTripJournal.com ; Explore Good Sam Club Trip Journals ; Woodalls Trip Journals ; Travel Journals by Trailer Life Directory ; Traveling USA Travel Blogs

“Alaska: RV Adventure of a Lifetime” - Newsletter

Every month we write a newsletter to friends and family about our life on the road. We’ll be including it in the blog and get back to travel in Alaska next week. Please email me any questions you have about RV travel in Alaska. TALES FROM THE OPEN ROAD - MARCH 2008 RV Adventure Videos Schedule:

April: 2nd Glendora CA - 19th Fairfield Glade TN (Jodie) - 19th Huntsville AL (Jodie ) - 19th Burlington NC (Jodie) - 19th North Bay ONT(John) - 2nd Dun das ONT - 23rd Rockville ONT - 19th Missisuga ONT - 19th Chatham ONT

Check out John’s new Blog on RV.Net Don’t forget there is still time to sign you for John & Jodie’s Born Free Caravan to Alaska this summer! Check it out on our home page.

Hall of Fame The Churches

Hall of Shame Downtown Denver Ramada Inn

March 1st & 2nd found us doing presentations at the Phoenix RV Show. Right after the show ended Jodie headed to the airport for a flight to Kansas City. She then had to rent a car and drive 160 miles south to Miami OK to do a Travelogue dinner show the next night. It was a long way to go for just one show but that’s how the schedule worked out. It’s hard to plan shows a year in advance!

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TripJournal Feeds follow Destination-Specific Content

RSS feeds for some 2,900 destinations were recently released in the MyTripJournal system, allowing you to subscribe to real travelers’ Trip Journal entries specific to say, Grand Canyon National Park, Las Vegas or Atlantic Canada. Subscribing is easy and free, and can be done from Good Sam Club’s ‘Explore’ pages or similar pages on MyTripJournal.com or its partner sites.

What do the feeds consist of?

These feeds are a simple way for people to follow frequently updated content. In this case, we aggregate the Trip Journal entries of many different travelers keeping Trip Journals for a common destination. Journal entries must meet specified rules to be included: for instance, entries must be on public journals, contain content of a certain length and include a map point within the relevant RSS area.

Each feed begins with the title and a snippet of the relevant entry article. Entries are then sorted with the most recent at the top . Here is the most current content from the Grand Canyon feed. Click on the title of any Entry that is enticing, to see the full article and associated photos, videos and a link back to the traveler’s Trip Journal homepage:

• Grand Canyon!
  We made it to the Grand Canyon around 5pm. Amazing! We hiked around for an hour, shopped for chatzkes and hit the road again. Trying to make it to Gallup NM tonight. Weather throughout the California and Arizona Deserts was a dry, warm 85. It cooled off to 55 up at 6,000 feet when we hit the Grand Canyon. Sunny skies everywhere!…

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