bigdogger
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Joined Feb 03, 2009
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Re: Pulling 5th wheel through Yellowstone
jab764 wrote: US 212 is Bear Tooth Pass. It is a top ten scenic route for motorcyclists and consists of 82 full turns and 19 switchbacks. Top of the pass is at 10947 feet. Weather conditions can be extreme, it was closed on 7/28/15 due to icy conditions. I rode it last year on my motorcyle at the end of June and there was still 2 feet of snow at the top. Not sure if I would take my 35 foot 5th wheel over it. You might want to Google Bear Tooth Highway. Enjoy Yellowstone, it is beautiful. The section of 212 they would be driving is NOT the Beartooth Highway. It is a lonely section of almost straight and flat road from Belle Fourche South Dakota to Garryowen Montana. It travels mostly through Crow and Cheyenne Indian reservation lands. The section known as the Beartooth Highway runs between Cooke City Montana and Red Lodge Montana. That section of Highway 212 is further west than the section they are considering.715Views0likes0CommentsRe: Pulling 5th wheel through Yellowstone
The fastest route from Rapid city to Yellowstone is take 212 from Belle Fourche to Garryowen and then pick up I-90. Going the route you are considering is more scenic, but you will have a climb over the Bighorn mountains and then another climb over Sylvan pass into Yellowstone Proper, then a pretty good descent from Mammoth into Gardiner. Taking I-90 to either Buffalo or Sheridan and then over the Bighorns into Cody and then into Gardiner is going to take 4 or 5 hours more than the route I mentioned.672Views0likes0CommentsRe: Rude forum members
coolbreeze01 wrote: westernrvparkowner wrote: I suppose I am the opposite. I love the banter and a bit of conflict. Different opinions, philosophies and positions are what make conversations interesting. Personally, if they had a mirrored forum to this one where there was NO editing or moderating(save profanity and personal information), I would pay to have it displayed instead of this sanitized version. To each his own. Yes, I've seen your wit concerning tragedies: I wrote: Sneaker waves grab dogs. Owner's jump in to save their dogs, and often drown. Sometimes multiple family members drown. Usually the dog ends up back on shore, non the worse for the experience, but now ownerless. westernrvparkowner wrote the following about a family dieing trying to save their dog: Park employee warns dog owner of danger, dog owner takes offense and an argument ensues. Eventually, the dog's owner pulls a gun and shoots the employee in the arm and takes him hostage. Swat team engages in hostage negotiations. Negotiations fail Swat team employs tear gas and Flash Bang grenades. Five sites away an elderly widow is startled by the noise and knocks over her goldfish bowl. Her cat immediately eats the goldfish. The widow has a heart attack and drops dead. Five days later the police do a welfare check on the widow and the cat escapes. The cat, now feral, must survive eating the local songbirds. As the songbird population declines, the rats and snakes that normally feed on the songbirds and their eggs die of starvation. Without the snakes and rats to eat, the few remaining wild California Condors die. Enforcing leash laws causes species extinction. And yes, this makes just as much sense as saying a swimming dog causes entire families to drown. What was that all about? ??? What does this have to do with anything?380Views0likes0CommentsRe: Money making on the road
You need to have an in demand, portable skill or be willing to work for near minimum wages at those type of jobs. The portable job skills are things like I.T. professionals, traveling nurses and other health care professionals. No one is going to pay you to travel, they are going to pay you for what you can do when you get to wherever you are going.421Views0likes0CommentsRe: RV Park for musicians, artist, and lovers of the arts?
You would have a chicken and the egg dilemma. Artists would want some kind of assurances that buyers will be there. Buyers generally don't flock from long distances to art fairs and festivals that are not well known. Musicians that have followings and are well known want to be paid. Can't very well afford to pay for very many well known acts unless you are reasonably sure there will be a payback. Most people who do art shows and music festivals don't travel in RVs. The RV parks benefit from those events, but the event is the draw and the RV park just gets a little extra wind in it's sails. For the venue to be a success, probably 90% of your business will have to come from non RVers. Music festivals and art shows also require the co-operation and assistance from the local government and police force. Finally, do RV parks and art fairs really have a lot in common? How are kids riding bikes and throwing Frisbees going to go over with the sculptors and painters? I am with another poster, going to be hard to make a good business case unless you have some very unusual contacts ( say Paul McCartney as a backer).570Views0likes0CommentsRe: Truck salesmen are idiots
And if they had known the towing capacity and the payload rating, would you have immediately wrote a check or either vehicle, without at least checking to see if they were correct? You already have said the Toyota would be inadequate and that a 2500 Ram was too big, so even if both had been a Wikipedia of information, you still wouldn't have bought. Almost all people do their own research, decide what they want to buy and then go and buy it. The salesman's real job is to find the truck or car with the right options, in the right color and hopefully absorb the abuse that naturally occurs during the negotiation of price, trade values and financing. Maybe a good salesperson could point out something you haven't considered, but if the buyer has researched well, the salesperson is really just a face for the contact point between the buyer and the seller, not someone who actually is involved in determining what make and model vehicle you will actually buy.127Views0likes0CommentsRe: Do not use Good Sam Insurance
There is more to this story. No insurance company will send an account to a collection agency unless there is a really strange set of circumstances, like they paid for a false claim, overpaid a claim, uncovered some egregious false application data, got paid by a bad check or had a payment by credit card reversed, resulting in them providing insurance without proper payment. Another possibility is the insurance premium was underwritten for a certain term and you either did not make the monthly installment payments or cancelled the policy before the term expired resulting in them re-calculating the premium based on the term used. This would be no different than getting the monthly rate at an RV park and then leaving after 6 days. You would be charged the higher, daily rate and if the park had made some kind of payment arrangement and you hadn't paid enough that month to cover the 6 daily rate fees you might owe them money. When you don't renew an insurance policy after the term has expired, your insurance is cancelled, plain and simple and that would be the end of it. So what is the rest of the story?7Views0likes0CommentsRe: "so called big rig friendly rv parks"
kakampers wrote: We're in a "Big Rig" park in TN for the night...sites are plenty big enough, but they have trees planted at the very end of the site where we need to make a left out of the site, and the site directly across from us has vehicles all the way to the road, which itself is not very wide... Can't see us getting out of here without backing onto the road behind us...we're 41 feet and then the truck...turning radius ain't too great!! Oh well...sure isn't the first time...LOL! And if those trees were not there, people would be complaining how the entire park is a barren parking lot. A park that resembled the parking lot at Cowboy's Stadium isn't very attractive, even to the people with the big rigs. I expect it to be a bit of a challenge to manuever my rig into and out of sites, since I prefer parks with a bit of visual charm. But others obviously feel differently. It sure is hard to please everyone.682Views0likes0CommentsRe: Donating RV...
wanderingbob wrote: I R S laws have changed , you no longer get to value the donation at average retail . The value will be what amount that the non-profit receives , of which you will get a tax value based on your tax percentage . Understand that in most states your charity CAN NOT take title and pass it to the buyer as these non-profits are not auto dealers . There is a middleman who tows it , transfers the title , sells the auto and gets MOST of the money ! Your non-profit can not take title because they can not issue a title or collect sales tax and are not insured . I only know of one non-profit in Florida who is a licensed dealer , most will go thru a company licensed as a auto dealer . The non-profit gets very little of the money . Much better to sell it yourself and then decide what to do with the money .I worked for over thirty years for a company that provided this service and I was always surprised at how little the non-profit got . Bob is right on with his analysis. The "Donate your vehicle" world occupies that gray area between "this is a very bad deal for everyone but the middleman company" and "outright Scam". Lots of things can go wrong, and even if everything goes right both you and the charity get very little in return. I doubt you live too far from a dealer that would be willing to buy the thing at a price that is very fair to them and very bad for you, but at least you would have cash in hand. Then you can decide to donate those funds directly to a good charity, if that is your ultimate goal and still get some tax benefit without risking the problems others have mentioned or stirring that hornet's nest that is the IRS.547Views0likes0CommentsRe: Tornados for Dummies
bsinmich wrote: I don't think tornadoes are any more common these days but they get a lot more coverage on national media. We didn't get much but a few black & white pictures during WWII. Today we see the fighting in real time in Afghanistan. News isn't any different, only quicker to report. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! It reminds of when a few years back we had a potential tornado pass our rural home north of Dallas. The TV crews came out in force and filmed my neighbor's demolished out-buildings. It was the lead story on the evening news. Good thing he had decided to get rid of those buildings a few weeks earlier, otherwise the demolition crew he hired wouldn't have knocked then to the ground earlier that week. Pictures of buildings not damaged at all by a storm don't draw big ratings.292Views0likes0Comments
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