Well, there was an inevitable first post and what better topic to get us rolling than to tell you a bit about ourselves. All Things RVing was started by me, Jim Tome, and my wife, Debbie, who will tell you she had very little to do with it, but is incredibly supportive, great at bouncing ideas off of, and just my travel and life partner. She doesn’t “get” what I do here online, but she realizes we’ve seen and experienced a lot and, well, she tells me I’m a pretty good writer. We shall see!
That’s Trey and Fiona, our two collies. Sorry about the sharp barks if you’re a neighbor, but they love to go for walks and meet new people.
I’ve been camping almost all of my adult life, even quite a bit with the Boy Scouts when I was a wee, young lad. Most of those memories have faded at this point, but I do remember hiking around New Mexican mountains, camping in freezing temperatures and deep snow, and annual trips to a rustic Boy Scout camp in Wisconsin. As an adult, my camping life renewed in my mid- to late-twenties when I found myself recently divorced, with an active dog (Ginger, my first Collie) that loved to go for walks and “guard” campsites, and plenty of time on my hands. During my twenties and thirties, I was out camping most weekends locally in Illinois but also taking some pretty fantastic road trips throughout the Midwest. I’d say I was a pretty “expert” camper by my late thirties.
I met my wife, Debbie, and she valiantly tried camping with me twice (I think). She wasn’t too much of an outdoors gal at that point so after nights of deflated air mattresses, a ton of mosquitos, and trips to rustic outhouses, that was about enough of the camping life. Once we were married, the discussion turned to RVing. Okay, I totally brought it up and pushed the idea on her, but it wasn’t too much of an effort and she quickly took to the lifestyle. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
We bought an Airstream back in 2005 because, well, who doesn’t like Airstreams for one thing, and I’ve always wanted one. I’ll admit my experience with shopping and buying it was very much like your worst experience purchasing a car — hey, maybe that would make a good blog article someday!
Yes, that’s a huge bottle of ketchup! In fact, it’s the world’s biggest “bottle,” being a water tower in Collinsville, Illinois.
For the first few years, we used our new Airstream pretty much exclusively for annual trips out to visit Deb’s family in Vermont as well as a few local state park long weekends. There was one get-there-real-quick trip out to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming that is well worth a future blog article as we visited places such as the future (!) birthplace of Star Trek Captain James T. Kirk, the birthplace of John Wayne on his 100th birthday, and a very cool town named Valentine, Nebraska. Stay tuned for that article very soon!
I was laid off from my advertising agency job soon thereafter and started working from home, mostly freelancing but also trying out my own agency (that one failed, but I do now have a small one that keeps me fairly busy). Without an office to go to every day, our RV traveling life exploded. Soon, we were going south for weeks on end in the dead of winter, zipping from one state to another, and spending extended amounts of time in RV parks and state parks. Ah, the life!
Along the way, we’ve started a few businesses. One, Kleen Tank, is actually part of a nationwide cooperative of dealers who service RVer’s holding tanks. As they say, it’s a crappy job, but someone has to do it! It’s lead us all over the U.S. and we’ve become steady attendees at many RV rallies, especially in the Midwest. Check out Kleen Tank’s rally schedule page to see where we’ll be next! Maybe we can service your RV for you or, at least, answer some questions.
Yeah, you’re going to have to get use to our humor. And pictures of food. And beer. Lots of beer.
Since we’ve visited tons and tons of RV parks, we’ve come up with some great ideas for marketing them. Hence, one of our newest ventures is a mini-agency that specializes in RV park marketing. That project is still under wraps (as of this blog writing), but will be launched soon. And since we LOVE food and drink, we have a marketing consulting business named Refresh for restaurants, bars, and taverns, and small inns and B&Bs. Yep, a lot to keep us busy!
Now, we’ve started All Things RVing. Why? Well, it just seemed like we’ve had a lot of experiences and generated some great ideas and needed an outlet to share with our friends (and those we hope will soon be our friends). We’ve seen the successes of somewhat similar (though, maybe a little narrower in scope) RVers and bloggers and have decided to give this a try as a (fairly) full-time obsession.
So, you’ll see us out and about quite a bit in the coming months and years. Much more than in the past. We travel with our two Collies, Trey and Fiona, and sometimes our naughty, orange cat, Cat King Cole. We’re in the classic Airstream travel trailer, named Ginger (after my first, beloved Collie), towed by our massive TV, Big John, a full-size Ford F-350 long bed, man-of-a-truck. Our campfire is always going (even the cool gas one — another upcoming blog article!), we’ve got cocktails in the pitcher (oh, the recipes we’ll be sharing), and there are plenty of chairs to pull up and sit and stay for a while. Keep an eye out for us and feel free to introduce yourselves!
NOTE: That main image? Any idea? Yep, it’s the monolith from the classic movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, at the very beginning of the film where it appears in front of the apes. It seemed appropriate to use the image for our very first blog post since this is where everything starts.