By Chuck Woodbury
editor, RVtravel.com
I decided to earn my living as a writer only a few hours after my first day in my college newspaper class. I knew nothing about journalism at the time, and did not consider myself a writer. I was a business major.
But it took me only a few hours in the school newsroom to realize that I wanted to spend my future working on newspapers and magazines. I observed the student reporters writing their stories and then editors placing them on the pages that only hours later would appear in print on newsstands. The next morning I watched other students read those newspapers. I marveled at how quickly and effectively the reporters’ words were communicated to the masses. I wanted to be part of that world.
In the years that followed, I published a number of mostly short-lived and ill-fated specialty newspapers and magazines. Later, I decided to try writing for national newspapers and magazines. For the next decade that’s what I did, making just enough to live. But I loved sharing my words and pictures with thousands, sometimes millions of people.
I have been writing professionally now for more than 30 years. I am still addicted to writing stories and sharing them publicly. I love communicating with you in this newsletter.
But it’s a confusing time to be a professional writer. It’s no longer necessary to write for a newspaper or magazine to express yourself to a wide audience. Free blogging sites like Blogger.com along with Facebook allow anyone to circulate their writing and photos far and wide. If you are active on Facebook, you know the thrill of posting something and then reading the responses from friends, family and even strangers. The process is addictive.
I SNUCK AWAY LAST WEEKEND for two nights of camping. My campsite at the La Conner, Wash., Thousand Trails park was right along the shore of an inlet on Puget Sound. I awoke to a beautiful scene — calm waters, Whidbey Island in the distance, a bald eagle perched atop a tall tree, and puffy clouds colored orange by the early morning sun. I snapped a quick photo from outside my motorhome’s front door, and then, without the slightest hesitation, I knew I MUST post it to Facebook. Moments later, people from far away were commenting on it. Wow! In the old days, what I wrote for publication may not have been read for months. Now, it takes a few minutes for a message to circle the Earth.
Even though I still earn my living as a writer, I wonder if one day when I no longer need to write for my livelihood if I could get the same satisfaction from posting to Facebook and on free blogs. I have a feeling I could.
It’s an exciting time to be an observer of media and mass communication. I love watching it all evolve. I bet 20 years from now we will view how we communicate today as primitive. Printed daily newspapers, I suspect, will be history. Who could have imagined Facebook at the turn of the 21st century? Some kid in a dorm room is probably already dreaming up something even more remarkable.
Photo: the early morning scene from my RV’s front door that I posted on Facebook (using my Verizon MiFi card to get Internet access).
I once traveled with a cat. His name was Rocky.
There was a terrible traffic accident last week. A rented motorhome with 13 people on board blew a tire and then veered off the highway into a tree. Two people were killed and nine injured. Two of the passengers were thrown from the vehicle.
The photo is of me in my first motorhome printing black and white photos in my portable darkroom. I snapped the photo in the late ’80s with a self-timer, back when I was roaming the rural West as a freelance writer.
With it, I could send my stories, complete with photos, from just about anywhere. I was too impatient to wait until I returned home, and, truth be told, I needed to get paid fast because I was usually on the brink of financial collapse. Besides, printing photos was good entertainment in those days without a TV, and before the Internet was invented. At first, I wrote with a manual typewriter (torture!).
Last week I told you about the 
I am always looking for strange looking animals — most often fake ones — like the photo above of a T-Rex that appears to be intent on terrorizing a town. Actually, it was a statue in Vernal, Utah. A small sign in front said, “Welcome to Vernal.” To snap my photo, I walked down the street a few hundred yards and used a telephoto lens to make the dinosaur appear large and menacing. It remains one of my very favorite roadside shots!
I will drive out of my way to photograph anything that’s the “World’s Largest.” I have stopped several times in Winlock, Wash., for example, to photograph the “World’s Largest Egg.” In Brunswick, Missouri I proudly photographed the “World’s Largest Pecan.”
Occasionally, a photo simply presents itself, like the friendly chipmunk that showed up at my campsite in the Lassen (Calif.) National Forest. The little fellow demanded Cheez-Its. This was back when I fed wild animals (naughty me). Looking at the photo of this cute little guy peeking over my coffee mug always makes me smile.
Many years ago, I wrote about how the terms RVing and camping differ.
Camping, on the other hand, is practiced with smaller RVs that are meant for weekend outings and family vacations. RVs are typically small travel trailers, pop ups (like in the photo), truck campers and modest-sized motorhomes, say, 25 feet or less. Of course, camping doesn’t require an RV — a tent or a sleeping bag will do. Some tent campers would argue that anyone who travels with an RV is not camping.
You want a peaceful night’s rest? Then don’t camp by railroad tracks.
DO YOU KNOW when you are half-asleep how sounds can startle you, and how your imagination can play tricks? Well, when the trains rolled by that night — about every half hour — I would panic. I would think, “That train is going to derail right into my RV and I will be dead!” I would hear a train approach in the far distance, and then it would be closer, and then it would be RIGHT UPON ME, roaring — shaking the earth and my puny motorhome. I waited for the impact — the terrible instant when I would be crushed like an ant. Death! If I were a little boy I would have put my blanket over my head, but alas, I learned at about age 35 that blankets are no help keeping away monsters, or in this case, derailed trains.
Do California campgrounds cause cancer or birth defects? Well, maybe so. No kidding!
Camco’s outside water faucet solves that dilemma with a lightweight plastic faucet that attaches between your water supply and your RV, and also allows your water hose to hang straight down without kinking where it enters your RV.
You return from just a brief trip to the store, or a short hike, only to find that the sudden williwaw that blew through your campground while you were gone wrapped your awning over your RV’s roof and bent the arms beyond repair.
Before the digital age of photography, we used film. Oh, how things have changed! If you’re like me, you have countless photos, negatives and slides that are sitting in drawers or albums. Here’s a way to turn those old images almost instantly into digital files, which you can then store on disks or print on your computer or an instant photo machine at a store.
One option to convert those negatives and slides into digital images is to use a commercial service. Costco does it cheap. But you have to wait days or even weeks to get the images back.
Even if you don’t feel that you need any help, a hand support can help prevent slips or falls as well as providing more stability.