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Fodor's Essential USA Road Trips Travel GuideThe fine folks at Fodor’s have sent us a few copies of their new Essential USA road trip travel guide. And you might just get one of them!

Simply complete our blog survey below to help us make LiveWorkDream better for you. Random winners will be chosen from all who reply to receive a free copy of this great guide to the most spectacular cities, natural wonders, and road trips in the USA.

We’ve been meaning to do this survey since our first state of the blog address. But so many questions … what a pain, for us and you! This new Essential USA travel guide from Fodor’s is the perfect incentive. We have a few copies we need to get rid of – and not that many readers – so your chances of winning are pretty good!

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I am no nature photographer.

bald eagle taking flightRene used my better shot of America’s national bird for her Obama shout out. But this one of it taking flight over the Hoh River will suffice. It means I can check one more item off my “things to do before I die” list.

Call me silly, but I’ve always wanted to see a bald eagle close enough to take a photograph. And yes, it did take this long. But I never said it had to be a good picture.

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It’s all about the people.

NuRVersWhen you live somewhere long enough you develop a circle of friends and a sense of community.

The same can be said for fulltime RVing, at least among the cool online RVers.

Recently we’ve hooked up with various road trip bloggers who we’ve grown to know via the internet.

After getting to know these folks through their travel blogs, twitter tweets, and forums, it’s been great to put some faces to the names.

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Lessons Learned (Vol. 42)

digital trailer brake controller installationIf you’re going to spend just a couple thousand dollars – or the rest of your life – in a travel trailer, do yourself a favor and invest the extra money on a decent electronic brake controller. You might just save yourself from a complete brake system overhaul.

We discovered the hard way that a good digital controller can make all the difference in the world, compared to the cheap pendulum based controllers most RV dealers will install upon purchase of a trailer and hitch. Why they don’t try to upsell unsuspecting fulltimers – like they do with the special toilet paper, levels, wheel chocks, fridge fans and all the other “necessities” – is simply beyond me. But buyer beware, a good brake controller is well worth the money!

After we replaced the brakes on our truck, and discovered we had cooked them, I adjusted our trailer brakes tighter thinking they might be worn out. The opposite was true … we hadn’t been using them!

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Spacesaving Hobbies for the RV Lifestyle

Baking bread in my RV magic chef ovenBack in the day when we lived the conventional life, I had some pretty conventional hobbies. Sewing, baking, scrapbooking, you name it.

Out of all the stuff we’ve put in storage, about the only things I miss are ny scrapbooking and stamp stuff, my gardening tools, and my cookware, like my bread machine.

I wish our RV was bigger so I could’ve brought some of these things along. Even if I could, where would I draw the line? You bring one stamp, you bring ’em all!

To satisfy my urge creative urges, I’ve managed to find ways to do some of these things in our RV.

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Crossing Towns Off The List: Missoula, Montana

Sixteen months into our road trip journey, we feel comfortable making some conclusions about our future.

  1. We like our vagabondish lifestyle far too much to give it up anytime soon.
  2. Continuing to pay rent on our storage unit is a waste of money.
  3. We want a home base. Even a small cabin on some acreage will do. Somewhere we don’t have to pay rent. A spot of land that we can go back to in-between our seasonal workamper jobs.
  4. Our goal is to close escrow on something, somewhere, before March, 2009.

With this in mind, our travels are taking on more of a sense of urgency these days.

Missoula Montana RV Park Jim and Mary'sWe’ve been wandering around the Northwest, taking serious looks at places we’ve been curious about. Based on what I’ve heard about Missoula, Montana, it always sounded like a great fit for us, and consistently makes “Best Small Towns” lists. Recently, we visited to learn more for ourselves.

We stayed at this RV park just outside of town. A great park, with a great name; Jim’s parents were also “Jim and Mary.” The days were getting cold, so we only spent a few days there, looking around, talking to economic development people, and getting a feel for the area. We were so busy I hardly took any photos. Here’s what we learned.

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Lake City Fishing Report

lake fork of the gunnison river fishing catch and release flies onlyOK. Life must go on I suppose, as lonely as it is without Jerry

But enough about my hay stories. By now, I’m sure you’re as tired of the hayin’ as I was when we finished. How ’bout some fishing?

This isn’t exactly timely anymore, but consider it my summer fishing report for Lake City, Colorado – from the Vickers Ranch fish ponds, to their upper ranch mountain lakes, to the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River.

A fun time was had. No gear was broken. And a few fish were caught. But not too many.

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