Jean and I took a two-day trip to Hershey, PA, to visit their RV show. While we were there, we obviously took the Chocolate World tour, which ends with a visit to their incredible candy store, where anybody with a taste bud cannot resist buying at least some of it! The motel had a really nice indoor pool which we were the only ones using both days we were there.

We spent most of Wednesday at the RV show where we saw several interesting campers. Some of them are light enough to pull with Jean’s Saturn Vue, which has been pulling our Starcraft the past 15 years with no problem, and can handle any load less than 3,500 pounds. The A-liner Expedition—their largest model--has most of the interior items we like, and it becomes very compact for travel, but one bed must be converted into the dinette each day. There is a small amount of assembly each time you stay at a campsite, but we’ve seen their video which shows it can be done in less than 5 minutes (a vast improvement from the 45 minutes required for our current Starcraft popup, which is too inconvenient for taking cross-country trips requiring nightly setups and subsequent takedown every morning). Rpod are also interesting with their curved tops and relatively light weights as well.

We also really liked some intermediate-sized models, especially the Jaycraft, but it is bigger and heavier, so would require our buying a new van to pull its weight. That would be a much larger financial investment than we are looking to make at this time though.

Currently reading: I have decided to reread Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, starting with Red Mars, which I selected as my Book-of-the-Year when I first read it in the 1990s. After 60 pages, it is living up to that memory so far.

Currently listening: The Strawbs are one of my favorite bands, whose music runs the gamut from folk-rock to prog-rock to mainstream rock. They just released a two-cd Live at the BBC which runs from 1971 through 1974, possibly their best years. Great stuff.