The May/June 2015 issue of Escapees Magazine is featuring our article on the basics of RV solar power.

Installing a solar power system is an awesome upgrade for any RV, whether you are using it for weekend and vacation travel or are living in it full-time as we do. Yet there is a mystique about solar power that sometimes makes it seem like a much bigger deal than it really is.

Escapees Magazine May/June 2015
Article and photos by Emily & Mark Fagan

In this article I wanted to make the whole theory behind getting electrical power into an RV without electrical hookups as straight forward and easy to understand as possible.

It just isn’t as complicated as it seems!

So, if you aren’t a techie, I hope this article gives you some visuals and explanations that make sense!

The editors at Escapees Magazine have kindly allowed me share the article with you here:

RV Solar Power – System Components and Design

A future article will go into the details of selecting components and installing them. In the meantime, we have lots of pages on this website dedicated to solar power if you wish to learn more. Links for all the solar power pages on this site can all be found here:

Solar power for RVs and Boats

As for the magazine this article is appearing in, it is the club magazine for Escapees RV Club, an incredibly diverse club that caters to the widely varying needs of all RVers — whether young, old, rich, poor, single, family, traveling or parked!

Two months ago we stayed at their huge headquarters campus in Livingston, Texas. If you aren’t familiar with the club, the following link is a fun way to learn about some of the unusual ways that Escapees takes care of us all in our lives on the road:

Escapees RV Club Headquarters in Livingston, Texas – Rainbow’s End

If you are an Escapees member and you haven’t checked out their website recently, it is worth a look. The links are here:

• <Join Escapees RV Club – Official website
• Xscapers – The cool new Escapees portal for young RVers

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“Sunny Side of Oregon” by Emily & Mark Fagan
Trailer Life Magazine — May, 2015

The May, 2015, issue of Trailer Life Magazine is featuring our article, The Sunny Side of Oregon about the fun and pretty sights we saw on our RV travels in central Oregon.

Central Oregon is a fabulous area for RVing. The hip and trendy city of Bend is at the heart, and there are lots of things to see and do heading in every direction from town.

From the absolutely stunning royal blue vistas at Crater Lake National Park to hiking and rock climbing at Smith Rock State Park to seeing gorgeous waterfalls along the McKenzie River to riverside camping on the banks of the Lower Crooked River, the whole area is an outdoor lover’s paradise that is ideal for an RV roadtrip.

The article can be read here:

The Sunny Side of Oregon

Our blog posts from our RV travels in central Oregon are here:

• Crater Lake National Park – Bluer than Blue
• From Lakes to Rivers in Bend, Oregon
• A Scenic Drive in Central Oregon
• Smoked out by a Wildfire

The May issue of Trailer Life can be found on the magazine racks of big bookstores like Barnes & Noble and at camping and RV supply stores like Camping World. We are subscribers to Trailer Life, and a 12 month subscription can be purchased at this link.

Trailer Life Magazine is published by the Good Sam Club and offers not only travel destination stories like this one but lots of RVing tips and product reviews as well. We’ve been subscribers for many years!

Find more of our published magazine articles and cover photos in our Press Room page.

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There are a few small changes coming up for subscribers to Roads Less Traveled…

If you subscribed to receive email updates from this blog, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll probably notice that the emails you receive will have a slightly different format, and at the bottom of each email there will be links for changing your subscription email address and for unsubscribing.

If you subscribed to this blog via an app or reader service, the RSS feed will have a new address which is:

feed://roadslesstraveled.us/feed/

This new RSS feed address will become live on Sunday, March 15, 2015, as soon as I wake up and flip the switch. You will need to update your app or reader with the new feed address to receive future updates after that.

This announcement is the last post that is going out on our old Feedburner RSS feed.

As always, if you have any problems or questions, you can email me directly at emilyfagan1 {at} gmail {dot} com.

To all our subscribers:

We just want you to know that being able to share our pics and stories with you and pass on whatever tips we’ve learned via this website is immensely satisfying.

Thank you, most profoundly, for the encouragement you have given us over the years and for the warm appreciation you have expressed for our photos and stories. Thank you especially for the pat on the back you have given us by signing up to see more!

We truly value the insightful and thoughtful questions you have posed to us, and we hope that this corner of the web lights a trail of inspiration and ideas for you.

Thank you for joining us in our travels and thanks for reading!

— Emily & Mark

Happiness Is… Crater Lake!

Our most recent posts:

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Escapees Magazine March/April 2015
“Making Weight” by Emily Fagan

GVWR, GAWR, Pin Weight and GCWR — oof, what is all that stuff?

The March/April issue of Escapees Magazine features our article “Making Weight” which explains what to look for when you set out to weigh your RV.

It’s easy enough to pull onto a truck scale to get an approximation of what your rig weighs, but it turns out that not all scales and weighing methods are the same.

Also, for those who tow their rolling home behind them, deducing the pin weight of a trailer after getting the rig weighed can be very confusing.

To address those RV weighing subtleties, Escapees RV Club offers a special program called Smart Weigh at several locations around the country.

We had our buggy weighed at the Escapees North Ranch RV Park in Congress Arizona, and besides learning a lot about why weighing an RV is important, we were a little dismayed to discover that we needed to put our fiver on a diet!

The editors at Escapees Magazine have been kind enough to allow me to share the article here:

Maintain Personal Safety and RV Logevity by Making Weight

Join Escapees RV Club is a multi-faceted club that offers a huge range of services for RVers, from discount RV parks to rallies and gatherings of like-minded people (their big rally, Escapade, is taking place in Tucson right now!), to their wonderful bi-monthly magazine, to domicile and mail forwarding services, to the SmartWeigh RV weighing program.

Luckily for newcomers, the annual membership to Escapees has been reduced to $29.95 from nearly $60 in the past. We consider this a bargain to a part of an organization that supports our hobby and lifestyle and that publishes one of the finest RV magazines in the business.

Our most recent posts:

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See more of our published work in the RV and sailing industry in our Press Room page.

Cruising World – February, 2015

The February 2015 issue of Cruising World Magazine features our article on how to install a big engine-driven watermaker.

How big? 60 gallons per hour big!

Unlike boondocking in our RV, where we run from water spigot to water spigot to fill our fresh water holding tanks and jerry jugs in our truck, our watermaker was our sole water supply for the nearly four years we lived aboard and cruised in Mexico.

During that time, this system happily desalinated about 20,000 gallons of ocean water surrounding our sailboat Groovy. It created truly delicious drinking water while pumping raw water from the ocean through a massive filtration system into our fresh water holding tanks.

Talk about long showers! We had virtually unlimited water and could even wash our decks at anchor or underway after a tough, salty passage.

Article: Water Water Everywhere!
By: Emily & Mark Fagan

However, I have to say that showering on a boat while rolling around on the Pacific ocean is a hilarious caper that has to be experienced to be believed!

This sprawling piece of watermaking equipment was spread out across compartments throughout our bilge and under our salon settees.

It included a sea strainer, two large pumps, three big water filters, two 4′ long desalination membranes, countless feet of high pressure and low pressure hoses, a mountain of stainless steel hose clamps, and two holes with valves drilled through the hull of our boat.

To put it mildly, installing our engine-driven watermaker was a mammoth undertaking. Mark did the entire job while bobbing around at anchor in San Diego bay, without electric power other than from our house batteries, despite having to do things like saw through bulkheads to run the high pressure hose. All I can say is: he’s amazing!

Groovy (right) anchored with sistership Bella Marina (left) in Glorietta Bay, San Diego

Preparing to drill a 1″ hole in Groovy’s hull for the discharge brine water

We also did it without a landing dock for the dinghy, except for the few days here and there that we stayed at the Police Dock near the entrance to the bay.

When Mark needed parts, I tied the dink to a boulder and scrambled up some rocks on the end of Harbor Island to get to our truck. I got to know San Diego’s industrial areas and back streets surprisingly well!

Most cruising boats have watermakers, and most run on 12 volt DC power and produce 6 to 13 gallons per hour.

We knew from our years of RVing off the grid that we would want a lot more water than those small systems could produce easily, but we did not want to install a large generator to run a big watermaker either.

The manual had some major errors (sigh).

So, we invested in an engine-driven model that required having a special aluminum mounting bracket designed and constructed so we could hang the main high pressure water pump off the engine to allow it to move with the engine’s vibrations.

In the end, after a lot of cursing (the installation manual was very vague and often outright wrong), and some failures (the first two sets of watermaker membranes both failed: the first pair failed upon installation and the second pair failed after we’d been cruising in Mexico for 3 months), we got it all squared away and it worked like a charm.

The Cruising World Article can be read here: Water, Water Everywhere!

As the years went by, this miraculous piece of equipment became our absolute favorite piece of gear on our boat. To this day, when we think of Groovy, memories of our awesome watermaker and its grueling installation are among our fondest memories of the boat itself!

Cruising World is the premier American sailing magazine for cruisers (available in print and digital subscriptions), and it is with enormous pride that we are among the contributors this month.

The February 2015 edition of Cruising World Magazine is on newsstands now. Most chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble carry it in their magazine section, and it can be found at boating supply stores like West Marine as well.

Landing a feature article in Cruising World is not easy, as there are many cruisers who write brilliantly about their unique and truly inspiring sailing experiences. Famous cruising author Beth Leonard has said that the biggest sailing magazines receive 1,500 submissions per month! So, it was a wonderful surprise when I received an email from the editor saying:

“this is the absolutely clearest and best-organized technical/installation article I’ve ever read in CW. also very interesting. kudos to the author”

In September 2012, our first feature article appeared in their pages about our maiden voyage from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas when we began our cruise of Mexico.

Sailboats anchored by the Coronado bridge in San Diego

I have been a Cruising World reader for several decades and recommend it highly for all sailors and future cruisers that are planning their own great escapes. When I first began contemplating seeing some of the world by boat nearly thirty years ago, teenager Tania Aebi was recounting her stories of her solo circumnavigation issue by issue.  The publication of Cruising World Magazine not only predates her cruise by a few decades but has presented the tales of many other impressive voyages since then as well.

I am extremely honored to be counted among their contributors this month, and I feel very fortunate that Mark’s incredible hands-on mechanical and electrical expertise made for an article they were eager to publish.

Our portfolio of other published work can be seen here which is also linked to the Press Room menu item above.

New to this site? Visit our Home Page to learn more about us, and see our Intro for Cruisers to find out where we keep all the good stuff, including tips for planning your cruise to Mexico, our Solar Power pages, and our ideas for outfitting your boat.

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We are very excited to have our photo on the cover of the 2015 edition of the Escapees RV Club Travel Guide. This photo was taken at Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction, Arizona, where the beautiful Superstition Mountains make a stunning backdrop to every scene.

Photo by Mark & Emily Fagan

We were camped there for a few days when an adorable little trailer pulled in alongside us. After the owner got set up, we went over to chat with him and found out his cute retro rig is actually just two years old!

We kept admiring the little buggy out our window as the sun played on the mountains in the distance, and one afternoon Mark went outside and took this absolutely gorgeous photo. I never would have thought of cutting off the trailer on the right side, but it balances the vivid cliffs beautifully and draws you into the photo.

Escapees loved the image too and wanted to use it for their cover, but unfortunately it didn’t fit their size format. Argh! We were bound and determined to make it work, so the next afternoon we both dashed out and snapped away for half an hour as the light faded, duplicating his idea but playing with the composition.

In the end, my finger hit the shutter on this particular version of his vision, so, like many of our magazine cover photos, this image is the result of a combined effort by the two of us — the best kind of shot!

Escapees RV Club publishes this travel guide each year for their members. It is a thick little book chock full of RV parks that give Escapees members discounts of up to 50%. They also list kindly Escapees members who offer their property to other members for overnight RV parking.

We enjoyed this unique kind of hospitality last year when we were traveling in Oregon. A wildfire had smoked us out of the area we had been staying in, and it was very comforting to find safe haven and companionship in the back yard of a couple who were fellow RVers and Escapees members.

The Escapees Travel Guide is just one of the many unique benefits that come with an Escapees membership.

I often mention Escapees on this website, and you may roll your eyes every time I do. And I understand that! The first time we heard about Escapees was when we were boondocked in Death Valley. We camped with a couple from Calgary for a few days, and they raved about the benefits of being Escapees members.

They showed us the Day’s End Directory and told us it was awesome. To us, it seemed hopelessly cryptic and weird, which is why I give a mini translation on our boondocking page. They were super nice, but they were so enthusiastic that we came away convinced that they were getting some kind of kickback from the club! We were completely turned off to the idea of becoming “joiners” in a club that sent out evangelists like that!

So we waved off the whole idea and went on our merry way.

But we kept meeting Escapees members in our travels, and someone showed us their wonderful magazine, and we realized that this is a club that the membership really values. Eventually we decided to give them a try — and now we’re very glad we did.

This nomadic life can become a little rootless after a while, and it is heartwarming to know not only that there is a huge group of people living this odd lifestyle too, but that we all have a link to one another through a large club that is geared towards our needs. Escapees was founded by one of the first couples to travel full-time in an RV, back in 1978, and their club now looks out for the best interests of all full-time (and long-term) RV travelers in a huge variety of ways.

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Related Post: How Big an RV do you Need?

To see more of our published work, visit our Press Room (also on the menu bar above)

New to this site? Visit our Home page to read more about our full-time traveling lifestyle and our Intro for RVers to find out where we keep all the good stuff. If you like what you see, we'd love for you to subscribe to receive our latest posts!

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Trailer Life Magazine – December, 2014
“Arizona’s Red Rock Country” by Emily & Mark Fagan

The December, 2014, issue of Trailer Life magazine is featuring our article about the stunning red rock country of Sedona Arizona.

We spent a delightful few weeks there last spring, hiking, biking and soaking up the stunning views that fill the small northern Arizona town.

It is an enchanting area that you can’t help but fall in love with when you go, and there’s a little something for everyone, from cute boutique shops to elegant dining to glorious hikes to mysterious spiritual vortexes.

If you get bored in town (hard to imagine!), there are ancient Indian ruins and a true wild west town nearby too!

These are our blog posts from this gorgeous spot:

• Oh, Sedona – Scenic drives in the red rocks!!
• Mountain biking in the Red Rocks
• Reflections on the West Fork Trail
• Sedona Heights – Montezuma’s Castle & Schnebly Hill

Trailer Life is a terrific magazine for all RV enthusiasts, offering tips and tricks about towing and towables and showcasing special places around the country that are worthy of an RV road trip. Right now, if you join Good Sam Club, you get four issues for free too! We’ve been subscribers for years and really enjoy each issue.

The December issue is on newsstands now, in either the travel section or the automotive section (I’ve seen it in both places). It can also be found at Camping World and other RV and camping supply stores.

Update December 12, 2014 – Trailer Life has published this article online on their website! Check it out at: Arizona’s Red Rock Country

New to this site? Visit our Home page to read more about our full-time traveling lifestyle and our Intro for RVers to find out where we keep all the good stuff. If you like what you see, we'd love for you to subscribe to receive our latest posts!

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Advertising is everywhere these days as we all frantically get into the Christmas spirit, and many RV and sailing blogs are posting wonderful Christmas shopping lists of fun goodies to buy for a beloved RVer or sailor. (See the bottom of this post for a few terrific shopping ideas from fellow bloggers).

In the spirit of giving, if you discover your favorite blogger has turned you on to the perfect gift for that hard-to-buy-for person, a wonderful way to give them a nod and say “thanks” for all the entertainment and info they have provided during the year is to buy the item right then and there online rather than running out to a store to get it later.

Why? Let me explain…

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What is Affiliate Marketing? It is a method for websites and blogs to review or suggest products the authors find useful and to make a commission from selling them. The most popular program is with Amazon. You can sign up to be an Amazon Affiliate here. Once Amazon approves your site, they’ll give you tools for creating things like the Amazon search box below to put on your site.

Amazon Search Box

The way affiliate marketing works is that when someone clicks on an affiliate link on a blog, they enter the affiliate website with a “cookie” from that blog. If the reader buys something, then the blog is credited with that purchase, and depending on the affiliate, the blogger may receive a commission. Amazon explains the details of their fee schedule here. There are strict guidelines that bloggers must follow, and each affiliate marketer has a different contract.

Amazon’s Operations Agreement for Affiliates is here.

Of course, the reports the blogger sees from various affiliates vary, and for privacy purposes, the information about the person making the purchase is never revealed. Only the products and services purchased go into the reports.  With that in mind, whenever I discover a cool product on a blog and buy it through their site, I drop the blogger a line to let them know I love their blog and that they inspired me to make a purchase.

As a blogger, it is a true thrill to find out that someone actually bought something, even if it is a 99 cent item! 

The first time we made a purchase through a website’s affilate links was in 2007 when we dropped some money on our Nikon D40 cameras before we started traveling (today’s equivalent camera, although far superior, is the Nikon D3300). Ken Rockwell had the best photography gear website at the time, and it helped us immensely in choosing what to buy. We were thrilled to correspond with Ken and, of course, he was very receptive to our many questions about how to operate the darn things when he knew we’d followed his product recommendations and bought our cameras through his site.

Is an RV or sailing blog a good way to make money? Heavens no! You can make FAR more money per hour by picking up any kind of minimum wage part-time job on the road or by work camping. Even if you volunteer your time in exchange for a free site at an RV park or campground, you will make more per hour of effort than by blogging.

So why do bloggers do this? Most bloggers become Amazon affiliates to help defray their blogging costs and hopefully earn a beer or two every now and then.

Everyone creates their blog for different reasons and with a different audience in mind. Rather than setting out to make money, most bloggers do what they do because they are excited to teach people what they’ve learned and to share their experiences. From offering tips about RV parks and campgrounds, to giving pointers for how to tackle certain repairs or upgrades, to venting and laughing about mishaps on the road, to simply sharing photos and travel guides for beautiful places, most bloggers do it out of a passion for their subject and to keep family and friends abreast of their travels.

For years, I was stuck in a windowless cubicle in an office. I sat in miserable rush hour traffic, and I dreamed of a different life. The stories written by other travelers helped me keep my travel dreams alive. When I was finally within striking distance of running away, the handful of websites that shared details of how to do it (there weren’t very many back in 2005-06) were invaluable.

I blog now to pass on that gift. It also helps me process and crystallize my precious memories of all the incredible experiences we’ve had in this wonderful lifestyle.

How do you start a blog? The easiest way is to use either WordPress.com or Blogger, as they are designed for beginners and there is technical help available. Many of the most popular RV and sailing blogs were started on these platforms and had huge followings before they migrated to a self-hosted site using WordPress.org, which is technically more challenging but is much more flexible.

So where are those cool Christmas shopping lists I mentioned? Here you go:

• Roads Less Traveled – RV Gear Store and Gift Ideas too!
• Sailing Totem – Gifts for Cruisers
• Wheeling It – 3 Easy Christmas Ideas for RVers
• Do It Yourself RV – RV Christmas Ornaments
• Love Your RV – Top 10 On My Christmas List

Happy Christmas shopping, everyone, and enjoy these upcoming weeks of holiday preparations!

New to this site? Visit our Home page to read more about our full-time traveling lifestyle and our Intro for RVers to find out where we keep all the good stuff. If you like what you see, we'd love for you to subscribe to receive our latest posts!

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