ORGANIZATION IS THE NAME OF THE GAME

Planning a six-month trip with two dogs takes some major organizational skills. Luckily for me, for the dogs and for the travelling public in general my husband, Erik, is the epitome of organization. He loves flow charts, spread sheets, lists, investigating and searching and enquiring and plotting and discussing and rediscussing his findings.

His major find is Good Sam Club, an on-line organization that assists you with planning a road trip; their slogan being We Cover EVERYTHING That Moves You.  Maneuvering around their website www.goodsamclub.com is an amazing trip in itself with a huge amount of information to absorb. I got to absorb second-hand what had already been absorbed by Erik. If you ever contemplate taking such a trip then do yourselves a favour and check out their site. I am happy and proud(ish) to report we are now Good Sam Club clubbers. No badge arrived in the mail, there was no swearing in ceremony, no fanfare, no cannons being fired in our honour and no one has yet congratulated us on this milestone in our lives. Perhaps they are behind in sending out congrats to newbies due to the fact they have over 1.5 million RV owners who save money every day .


What Good Sam does give you is a run down of pretty much every single RV Park that exists in the world. You also get discounts at various gas stations, not too shabby now that we're the owners of a honking great truck and will be towing a Fifth wheel. There is oodles of information about every park and a link to individual websites. I tell you, RVing is big business down there in the States and the further south you get the more decadent they become. You'll find enormous parks, huge amenities that often include onsite shopping (yes!!), swimming pools, sports, laundry facilities that would rival the most up-to-date laundromat anywhere, washrooms that high-end condo owners would  covet and fenced in dog parks. I was quite amazed at what is available. And so, we clicked our way through the maze of information to find out where we should stay our first night ON THE ROAD!!

Pennsylvania for sure. First click and up pops about 200,000 RV parks in that state alone. Click again and we narrow it down to central Pa. which only leaves about 100,000. Another click and we've narrowed it down by half to pet friendly. Click, click, click to get rid of those without a 9+ rating in all categories, and we end up with a manageable amount of RV parks that will suit our needs to a tee. Now we can click click click to find the one that most appeals. We check out the oodles of great pictures of people having loads of fun at the RV parks.  Geriatrics doing face painting? Thirty gazillion children screaming in the enormous playground? Community apple bobbing? Probably not.

We clicked our way to Twin Grove RV Resort & Cottages in a little town called Pine Grove, PA. Off the beaten track in central Pa. with tons of things to do we hit the Make a Reservation button. Yahoo. We are in. At our disposal we'll have an amusement park (which we won't use), two pools (yikes!! not this time of the year in central Pa), crafts centre (anyone who knows me will smirk at that). However, it is pet friendly, and the description of 104 acres on a gorgeous rural setting is very appealing. More importantly they offer HUGE LEVEL SITES. How important is that? Pretty important when you consider it will be our first time actually parking and unhitching in a real park.

We are within weeks now of our first-day of driving and our first night as true blue honest to gosh RVers. In no time we will be 'On The Road Again'.