RV Navigator

The shoulder surgery recovery is going slow, so we were correct in not planning any travels for the summer. Even after 8 weeks of in activity, Martha’s shoulder is only slowly healing. So we focus on RV memories and updates to the many RV topics that we love to cover. What’s new with Starlink (actually alot), making smoothies with a new machine, and some luggage tips from our travels. You’ll want to listen to this episode for the many RV topics on the agenda.

Yup, it is shoulder season for us as Martha recovers from shoulder replacement surgery. The operation was successful, but it limits our travels to staying home for at least 6 weeks including all of July. We expect a 100% recovery within a year. But now, we take the time to reflect on many RV topics that have been percolating in the RV Navigator inbox hopper for some time. The latest from Starlink, new AC units, towing capacities, and selected disasters make up this month itinerary. Join us for a summer RV romp in the digital domain.

Who eats gold? It is a thing, and your RV navigators had the opportunity to give gold a try during their trip to Japan. This plus the return back to Chicago via a repositioning cruise is on this months agenda.

Yes, we’ve learned alot while on tour in Japan. As a tourist, It is unlike any other country we’ve visited. Tokyo, our first stop, is one of the largest cities in the world and you’d think that one city is like another, but Tokyo is very different. Of course the language with over 2500 characters is impossible for us to use thus we have to rely on a few English signs and our phones with navigation. You’ll hear our extended impressions of this world class city as we share the our trials and tribulations while touring the city.

We’re celebrating 50 years of RVing and 20 years of podcasting in the 56 years of marriage in 2026. Yes, we started young and are going tn to old age with just as much gusto for RVing as when we started. We’ve RVed in 49 states (and I don’t mean we just drove through), most of Mexico and Canada. This in addition to extended RVing adventures in South Africa and New Zealand. With this experience, we thought that we’d share 10 essential things that we’ve learned about RVing that we hope will help others with less experience. We are not full timers, bu...

A month in FL at our new seasonal home with an RV garage. However, the RV spent much of the month in the paint shop getting some body work after an incident on the Alaska trip last fall. She has been restored and it ready to travel once again. As heppens when moving into new living quarters, outfitting them is a time consuming task. Home automation is coming of age, so new home gear needs to be automation compatible and Matter makes it happen. What? Well take a listen to get a better understanding of what this is about. TAir...

A busy month for your RV Navigators as make our FL home ours and take a vacation from our vacation. Yes, we are traveling without the RV this month as we make our way South to Mexico. We are checking off another couple of bucket list items off the list. We travel to Mexico City to start the trip to view the Monarch butterfly migration. Every year millions of butterflies make their way south to the mountains outside of Mexico city for no apparent reason. After six days of this adventure, we headed to the Baja Sur to board an...

A very happy New Year 2026 to all of our loyal listeners. We hope that you have a very prosperous New Year. Our new year begins in at our new house in FL as we traveled (via car) back south at Christmas. This month mostly was spent enjoying family and friends in the holiday season. Our travels consisted of heading North and then back South where we’ll spend most of the winter.
This episode is our annual NYE episode that includes some champaign and noise makers - so beware of unexpected frivolity and loud sounds as we ring in...

Your RV Navigators want to wish all of our listeners a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year. For your favorite RVer, we’ve included some gift suggestions in case your still shopping.

This month has been a busy one for us, as we travel to Churchill, Manitoba to see the polar bears in their nature environment. This was not an RV trip as we traveled by plane 1300 miles North to Hudson Bay, home to the Polar bears. Viewing is done in tundra rovers. These are large bus like vehicle that are designed for rough terrain wi...

We’ve been on the road 85 days for the round trip to Alaska, but finally we returned home without incident. The final leg of the trip allowed us to visit Jasper and Banff for 6 days before making the final push to Chicago.
This month we had a final exit interview with Chris and Jean from an earlier episode as they share their impressions of the trip.

We’ve ended up back in Dawson Creek where we started the RV caravan 63 days ago. After a brief introduction by your RV Navigators, we invite fellow caravaners to join in the debriefing. This is the same group that shared their hopes for the trip 2 months ago. See what they think about this buck list destination in this months episode.
**The episode webpage will be slow in appearing this month due to some technical issues with the web site, sorry.

At this midpoint in our Alaska caravan, we draw on the experiences of our fellow travelers to broaden the Alaska perspective. We are joined in interviews with Chris & Jean and Kevin and Jennifer to gain their insights into Alaska caravanning. As one of our guest commented, we’ve all ODed on beauty. Alaska is lived up to expectations with many stunning experiences for all in our group.

Alaska 25 is this months adventure. We begin our 2 month long caravan to the 50th state. After driving over 2000 miles we are at the beginning of the Alaska highway that is the gateway to Alaska. The podcast will change a bit for the next couple of months as we try to give listeners a picture of the Alaska experience. This is a bucket list trip for many so we are encompassing as many viewpoints as we can to give a accurate picture of the sight and sounds of Alaska. Joins us and our companions as we describe this travel adventure

As we plan for our upcoming 3 month long motorhome trip to Alaska and back, we thought that it might be helpful to share some of our planning ideas. We have done several extended trips over the years, so the planning has become second nature, but many listeners may be contemplating such a trip, so here are some of our tips and tricks for making the trip go smoothly.
We will be taking you with us as we travel the 10,000 miles r/t to Alaska. Martha will be blogging daily as we make the journey. Her blog can be...

Ending our April cruise in Maui (Hawaii), we headed home to Chicago for the duration of the spring. We did take a short flight to Orlando to close on our new (to us) house at the Great Outdoors (TGO) that will be our winter home starting in 2026. This house has a nice RV port which will give our aging MH a covered parking space during the off months. We chat about many RVing topics as our attention turns to RVing in the summer. Cooling your RV and fridge topics as well as the latest tech issues are discussed in this...

This month finds us sail the warm waters of the South Pacific around Tahiti. We share our many impressions of this area and compare it to our next destination, Hawaii. Many assume that Tahiti and Hawaii are similar destinations but in fact they are significantly different. Hear our impressions and suggestions for Polynesian travel. Of course RVing is always on our minds, so we share new websites, articles and topic of interest from the RVing world.. Project Kuiper (Amazon) is about to launch a competitor to Starlink thus offering world wide internet via portable satellite receivers. Tune in for our...

We never intended to buy a house in FL, but this month we ended up with a new home for the motorhome at our RV resort in Titusville, FL. We explain the decision and details in this month’s episode as move ahead on buying this new abode in FL. The sale is not final until mid-May, so we headed North to Chicago just in time to leave on our next adventure, a cruise in Tahiti and Hawaii. The weather being what it is, the MH needed to be winterized while it sits in the cold in Chicago., We’ll not...

Just another month stuck in FL -LOL. Your RV Navigators have had several interesting RV projects in the works from getting new RV insurance to looking a new hot skin devices for RVs to speculating about the staff cuts at National Parks. What does the new T-Mobile Starlink direct to cell service mean for the average cell user? These an many other topics are covered in this months episode. Join us and then make a comment.

Lots of RV activity for us this month. As with many of you, we had to hunker down early in the month due to extensive cold and snow in many parts of the country - including FL. Titusville was spared frozen precipitation, but it was cold. Our nearly annual trip to the Tampa RV Super show was a management disaster, but a display success. We explain this in full on the podcast. We managed to buy a few things at the vendor area, including a new Starlink Gen3 antenna (is it a dish, antenna or table?). I waited 3 days for...

After a busy fall, we spent the month at our home base near Chicago. As you know we don't enjoy the cold, so after the Christmas holidays we once again headed south for most of the winter. We rang in the New Year in our motorhome in FL with a NYE ball drop party from 7-9 pm - it is after all midnight somewhere!

January will find us at the Tampa RV Supershow. If you have a chance to attend, it is one of the best RV shows in the country. However this year has brought some...

This month finds us at sea for the entire month. Sail the med and ending in Fort Lauderdale, we skip the long transatlantic flight for 9 days of sailing the open ocean. If have the time, it is very relaxing trip. We want to wish al our listeners a great holiday season as we look forward to the new year. We’ve attached some RV gift lists for your consideration. We wonder if the almost total band on new MH sales in CA will take effect in 2025. CA pllus 5 other states have put strick pollution standards in place that will prohibit mo...

We left shortly after the last podcast for a land adventure in Eastern Europe. After 3 weeks of travel, we are ready to share our experiences on the podcast. We’ve been traveling with 13 fellow travelers to the Czech Republic and other close by countries formerly part of the eastern block. The adventure has been eye openning, but we also chat about some interesint RV topics and the latest technology. Have you used whispers(?), do you have plans for snowbirding in the South. These plus many other topics are on our agenda this month.

Finally back on the road in the RV, we travel to FL on a round about itinerary that included stops in Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina and Georgia before our final stop in Titusville, FL. September is a great weather month in these northerly states so we took advantage of fall (before the colors) to slowly drive south. A major stop along the way was in Gaffney. Not a tourist stop but an important MH stop for this is the home of Freightliner - the maker of our chassis. We found the important of letting the pros work on the...

“According to Nielsen's recent podcast analysis, the number of Americans listening to podcasts has increased by 45% in the last five years alone - more than doubling in the past decade to reach 183m people.”

https://content.nielsen.com/PodcastingToday

Your RV Navigators are waiting for the money to come knocking, but even though we have been podcasting for 18 continuous years, alas we have not been offered the big bucks mentioned in the article above. We continue because we love our listeners and enjoy the feedback, but we make no money. We remain non-commercial and ad free...

This month's big project was upgrading our battery bank to lithium batteries. We added about 1000 amps of battery power to our rig in the conversion process. After a couple of days for the install, we headed to annual Indiana Dunes mid summer trip. New this month is the Starlink mini as a standalone unit.

As most of our listeners know, we’ve traveled most of the US (and Canada) in our RV. We have been to New England, NE Canada on several RV trips. Always enjoyable. Our current adventure is via cruise ship with an itinerary from NYC north through the St. Lawrence to Quebec. Approaching this itinerary from the water side proved to be a different experience.

After this topic, we discuss several RV issues including new happenings with Starlink, and a follow up on the Tesla pickup for RV towing.

It is officially summer and the camping season has begun - but we'll let the family RVers have first dibs on the campgrounds. We'll be home for most of the summer. On our way home at the beginning of the month, we stopped to get our sofa recovered. The original factory fabric had peeled over the past few months, so we had it replaced - now it looks like new. But of course the real question is why did it peel. Cheap fabric from the factory. We learned that the key word is Ultra Leather when looking for quality...

On the road this month on a 2400 mile trip north over 2 weeks. We visited some bucket list and out of the way destinations such as Crater of Diamonds State Park and Crystal Bridges Art Museum in Arkansas. These plus a couple of old favorite camping spots kept us busy for the month.

Of course, the month started with a 5 night family cruise (with 22 participants) cruise aboard the Independence of the Seas sailing from Miami. We had a great time even though the ship was at capacity (4500) and packed with under 1440 under 18 year olds. This reminded us that...

Another month of cruising. This time we are sailing up the coast of Brasil to do a full transit of the Amazon. This river is huge and worth the week we spent traveling to Manaus and back out to the Caribbean. The Amazon is a complete eco system unto itself with Manaus as the hub. A city of 2.5 million at the end of 1500 miles of river made viable by tax incentives for businesses to manufacture in the city. Our 27 day cruise started in Rio and ended in Miami after a few additional stops in the Caribbean.

This...

As February ended, we headed to Rio in Brazil to begin a cruise that will take us in and out of the Amazon before ending in Miami. Early in February we headed to one of our favorite boondocking spots, Jetty Park near Cocoa Beach in FL. This park offers a nice Atlantic ocean beach, a prime spot to watch rocket launches and the cruise ships enter the port.
Our new towed was taken on it maiden voyage with great success during the month. We review how it was altered to become a towed vehicle as well as our...

Back to RVing! We spent the entire month in our RV doing what the podcast is about - RVing! The highlight was the Tampa RV Super Show held each January at the Florida State Fairgrounds. In our opinion this is the best RV show in the country with hundreds of rigs on display along with hundreds of vendors for specialized RV products. The weather in FL has been variable with lots of cool interspersed with warm. While the rest of the country is berried in snow or rain, we have avoided the storms. This episode brings an interview with a...

The year ends with 123123 and our annual New Years Eve podcast with bubbly. Having just returned home from an extended trip to Southeast Asia, we are still struggling with a 12 hour jet lag. The year in review shows that we did alot of travel outside the US so the RV travel was limited. We will be heading to FL for our annual snowbird experience in a week or so. Join us at the Tampa RV Supershow starting on January 17th.

Greetings from Southeast Asia. After an unusual beginning of our trip, we landed in Singapore after 26 hrs of travel and 12 time zones. We began the land portion of the trip by adding two new countries to our growing list of visited countries. After traveling to Thailand, we made our way to Laos and Cambodia ending in Vietnam after almost 3 weeks. Returning to Singapore we picked up our 4 week cruise to Indonesia and Malaysia. We'll be sailing until December 23 when we return home just in time for the next podcast. We want to wish everyone a happy holiday season as holidays...

Wd did enjoy the good weather of the Southlands as the temps headed down at home. Flying home was a shock to the system as the weather was quite cold for the season.

We do share lots of RV topics this month including the possibility of an EV RV pulled by a Tesla tracker. Also what’s new with Starlink and T-Mobile for RVers, new AI features of Bing, the new iPhone 15 as a camera and much more are on our agenda this month.

On the road once again as we make our way to our winter home in Florida. But why drive directly for 3 days? Rather make it a leisurely trip of 3 weeks, do a bit of family visiting, sight seeing, and enjoy the camping. The eastern US is known for trees, so our campsites didn’t offer much of a view for our satellite TV, so we had to rely on streaming. Hear about our experiences and what option we had as well as many other topics of interest to RVers.

Greetings from the open seas of the North Atlantic as we cruise from Bergen, Norway to NYC over 28 days. Wildlife is always unpredictable, but during the recording of the podcast we spotted a whale outside of our cabin window. It was a WOW moment and indicative of our travels this month. All three countries that we visited had an abundance of fjords with picturesque little towns at the end. Of the three countries, Norway provided the best photo opportunities. And it was the warmest. Otherwise the trip to the north was a cold and rainy experience however interesting it was.

No camping this month, but we’ll be “on the road” for the next 9 months as begin our adventures with a cruise from Bergen, Norway to NYC for 28 days. July was fairly quiet as we celebrated the 4th at home enjoying great summer weather for most of July. The Chicago area has not been plagued with the weather extremes experienced by much of the country. We took the opportunity to get out doors but just not camping or RVing. With the knee given the final OK by the doc, we are set to travel once again as the adventure continue. After...

Our brief camping trip to the Indiana Dunes was a big success. Perfect weather, nice campground, RV working perfectly all came together to make a great experience this year. The beach in this park is very nice plus of course the water is fresh - and fairly warm at this time of year. We stayed for 3 nights. Even though I made the reservation on January 3, this was the longest midweek reservation available. What is your experience with campground reservations lately? We are working on reservations for our fall trip south to FL and are finding reservations at public campgrounds...

Another episode from the home base in Chicago as the copilot recovers from knee replacement surgery. Todays episode is based around an interview with the founder of CarGenerator.com. This product produces 110 volt power from your car for use in home or RV. It is an easy hookup, light weight, and powerful enough to keep either your house or RV operational in case of power failure or you're boondocking. This could easily replace that bulky generator that you have to lug around.We also have our fact or fiction question, an update on the CatSafe from last month, and...

Due to Marthas ongoing knee problems, we scheduled an operation to replace her knee months ago. Finally on April 11 the surgery was completed very successfully. Successful does not mean pain free or nothing to do after the surgery. We have spent time in pain mitigation and PT as she works to make the new knee strong and ready for the many adventures to follow. It will take a couple of months, but after her complete recovery, we can hit the road in the RV to once again due justice to the RV Navigator podcast, but for now we are at...