Member Spotlight

Norm and Linda Payne
Full-timers from Louisville, Ky.

FMCA membership number:  F265732 (We joined FMCA in 1999.)

Our current motorhome:
A 2005 Newmar Dutch Star. Prior to that, we owned a 2000 Newmar Dutch Star.

We decided to buy a motorhome because:
The best way to tour the USA, Canada and Mexico is sitting in a motorhome and getting a panoramic view much like sitting in an IMAX theater.

Three words that best describe our current motorhome:
Luxury on wheels

The best thing about our motorhome is:
We think of our motorhome as a home and not a vehicle with wheels. It is like a luxury condo with everything we want and nothing we don’t need.

Occupations:
Norm: retired computer engineer with IBM for 32 years (retired at age 54). Linda: retired registered nurse (retired at age 49).

The best thing about motorhoming is:
Freedom, complete freedom. We go where we want and usually never have a schedule. We can park by streams, rivers, lakes and oceans or by mountains or deserts. Our backyard view is never the same and if we don’t like it we can move.

Children, grandchildren: We have five children and six grandchildren.

Our all-time favorite motorhome trip was:
The have been two memorable trips. The first was traveling eight weeks in the Canadian Maritimes in 2003 including 22 days in Newfoundland. The scenery was breathtaking and the people were very friendly.

The other memorable trip was following the Lewis and Clark Trail in 2004. We took 99 days to travel from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and never drove on an interstate highway. During the trip we learned more about the history of this country than we learned in school.

Other favorite motorhoming destination:
We love the wide-open spaces of the West and the deserts in springtime bloom. We also love the Columbia River Gorge and highway 101 down the Pacific Coast of Oregon and northern California.

Two of our fondest motorhoming memories:
1. Meeting our oldest son and grandchildren at Walt Disney World and in Yellowstone National Park. We tell them to vacation anywhere they want and we’ll meet them there.

2. Boondocking by a river in Montana and catching trout just feet from the motorhome, then quickly cleaning the fish and throwing them on a grill — from river to stomach in 30 minutes — can’t get any fresher than that.

Our “dream” motorhome trip would be:
The ultimate trip would be to fly to Australia, rent a motorhome and spend three months touring the backcountry.

Our worst motorhoming experience was:
Near Rapid City, S.D., we were caught in a nighttime hailstorm with hail the size of tennis balls. There was nothing we could do but huddle in the middle of the motorhome and listen to the damage while dodging hail balls crashing through a broken vent. The hail did $3,000 in damage to a new motorhome and $5,000 damage to a new Honda CR-V.

The best addition we’ve made to our motorhome:
We added four solar panels to the motorhome so we can boondock for days without running the generator. Solar gives us complete freedom to camp anywhere and have all the electric we need.

Other notable features or special equipment on board our motorhome:
Our motorhome is well equipped electronically with solar panels, a large inverter and large battery bank, voltage and current meters, a GPS system, a SilverLeaf engine monitor, two computers, two printers, an automatic satellite dish and high-speed Internet by cell phone. In the basement we carry an inflatable boat with an outboard motor, two 27-inch mountain bikes and the usual assortment of items.

If we could change one thing about our motorhome, it would be:
We ordered our motorhome so we could chose the exact features and options we wanted. A motorhome off a dealer’s lot would never be right for us because we would need to make many changes.

Something about motorhoming that we know now but didn’t know when we started is:
When we started traveling full-time six years ago we talked about the places we would visit and the sights we would see. But after two months on the road we discovered the people we met and friends we made were the most important thing. Now, every time we pull into a campground we find old friends we have met on the road and also make new friends.

When driving the motorhome, the most important thing to remember is:
If the driver makes a mistake, don’t blame the navigator.

What we like best about FMCA:
Family Motor Coaching magazine is so informative it is worth the entire membership fee. We anxiously await each issue and read it cover to cover. The FMCA rallies are informative and we keep busy absorbing all the available seminars and meeting friendly people.

"Fantasy" dinner guests we'd most like to invite to dinner in our motorhome:
President George W. and Laura Bush

A motorhoming tip we’d like to share with other motorhomers:
Travel slowly and don’t skip small towns. Every town has something interesting to see and do and a unique restaurant. We recommend when registering in a campground to ask where to eat. We have eaten some of the best food in America in small towns.

Our hobbies:
Norm — computers and a Web site. I maintain a Web site, See Ya' Down The Road (www.seeya-downtheroad.com), which chronicles our travels and provides information for RVers. Linda — any type of crafts, including sewing and knitting. Last year she knitted 30 pairs of socks to give away as gifts. She also makes rugs, handbags and hats from Wal-Mart plastic bags and has become know at “the Bag Lady of Wal-Mart.”

Favorite book:
Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose. This book gives an interesting and informative view of our country’s early history, plus the travels of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery on the expedition to the Pacific Ocean and back.

Favorite song:
Lee Greenwood’s "God Bless the USA" (sometimes called “I’m proud to be an American")

Favorite restaurants:
We often eat at Cracker Barrel or Golden Coral, but our favorite restaurants are unique, one-of a-kind restaurants in small town America.

Favorite store:
We do most of our shopping at Wal-Mart because they are RV friendly and even give us cash back when we shop there.

When motorhomers visit our state or hometown, they should be sure to see:
The Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky., is so interesting that people who know nothing about horses still enjoy it. Louisville has the Louisville Slugger Museum and the Kentucky Derby Museum. In Bowling Green visit the Corvette Museum, and next door tour the Corvette plant and walk just feet away from gorgeous Corvettes being assembled. And don’t forget to tour some Kentucky Bourbon distilleries where the best bourbon in the world is produced.

Our advice to new motorhomers:
Do a lot of research before buying a motorhome or you will buy the wrong one. Surf the Internet, attend rallies, take seminars and talk to motorhome owners before making a decision on which motorhome to buy.

Behind our motorhome, we tow:
A 1999 Honda CR-V with a Blue Ox tow bar. In the Honda we have a BrakeBuddy auxiliary braking system.

Our favorite activity to do inside the motorhome is:
When by ourselves I (Norm) work on the computer and Linda does crafts. When we are with friends we play games — Boggle, Phase 10, Dominoes and Hand and Foot.

Other comments:
During our working days we took every opportunity to hit the road and always hated to return home. We decided we would save every penny we could and retire young so we could travel full-time before getting too old.

In 2000 I started the See Ya' Down The Road (www.seeya-downtheroad.com) Web site so our family and friends could follow our travels. The first month our Web site had twelve visitors. Then I started writing articles to help other RVers and those wanting information about traveling fulltime. The Web site started getting more hits every month and USA Today did a feature article on us and that drastically increased our visitors. Now the site gets over 18,000 visitors each month and over 180,000 hits. Many people have told us after following our Web site they decided to retire early, sell their house and hit the road full-time.

Other FMCA members may contact us via e-mail at:
normlindapayne@earthlink.net

 

More info links:

See Ya' Down The Road
www.seeya-downtheroad.com