About Us

We are two happily retired professionals in our early seventies.

Bari Stone is a former marketing executive. Kemp Howland is a former data processing consultant. 

We own and operate two businesses: paymentbooks.com and 3DtoursRus.com from our home in Ocala, Florida.

Since 1992 we have been fortunate to include extensive travel as part of our lifestyle. In fact, we were married in a tiny village on a hillside near Lugano, Switzerland. 

Although international travel has been an integral part of our lives, we never took the time to explore our own country... the United States of America.

Upon Bari's retirement, we are seeing the USA in our RV... places we've only seen on TV or in magazines.

We love camping in state parks, but we are not averse to an occasional stay at a luxury RV resort. It's a big country and we want to view it from as many angles as we can.

Our goal is to visit as many National Parks as possible. We'd like to drive down Route 66. The badlands of the Dakotas and the deserts of the Southwest beckon.

We thought our adventures might be interesting to people in similar circumstances. So if you have worked hard all your life, and are contemplating extended vacations in your own RV, come along with us on our journey. 

We'll try to include as much helpful information as we can here in this blog.

And be sure to let us know about your own adventures! 

Happy travels!

Popular posts from this blog

To Tow or Not to Tow: Part One

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  It seems like those of us who enjoy the RV lifestyle all have a different opinion of how to get around once arrived and hooked up at a destination campground. Of course, if you’re pulling a trailer or a fifth wheel, you have the option of unhooking and using the tow vehicle to go wherever you like. When we had our travel trailer we towed it with a very comfortable Ford pickup truck, and the truck served as our local transportation wherever we went. And if you are in a Class B or B+, your RV is likely small enough to be both your home while camping and your local transportation. That leaves the rest of us who are driving either Class A or Class C motorhomes. We have choices, but none of them are great. We can flat-tow a vehicle behind our rig, which requires a vehicle designed for flat towing; a tow bar system; a braking system in the towed vehicle, and a modification to the towed vehicle called a “base plate”. The extra weight added to the towing vehicle is minimal, usually less than
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There is nothing quite so constant as change.”

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Whoever said “There is nothing quite so constant as change..” must have had us in mind.  After getting our   2021 Coachmen RV Freedom Express Ultra Lite 248RBS set up just the way we wanted it, the urge to change came over us once again. There are many reasons an RV owner might want to get a different vehicle. Their RV might be too big or too small. It might not have a feature that the owner really wants. It might just be getting older and costing too much to maintain. In fact, none of this applied to us. This time the urge was driven by economics!   When we sold our Winnebago Intent and bought the 2021 Coachmen RV Freedom Express Ultra Lite 248RBS, we paid a little over $26,000 for the trailer Then we had to find a tow vehicle, which cost an additional $37,000. We already had all of the necessary towing equipment, so we were able to just hook up and go.    In October we enjoyed a three-week trip to the national parks in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, by car. We didn’t take t
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In The Beginning

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Our DIY Square Drop Camper In the past, I loved camping in a tent. My tent, cooking apparatus, and bedroll would all fit into my kayak. I enjoyed adventures exploring Florida rivers.    My wife, however, had no camping experience whatsoever. To add to her comfort, I built this little 'square drop’ camper in our garage. All I wanted to do was get sleeping bags off the ground.  However, the idea of sleeping in a box did not appeal to Bari. It became clear we would need to find something more comfortable.   We started visiting RV dealers in the Orlando area. We looked at a variety of camping options, from  @TAB travel trailers  to  Tiffin Class A  coaches. At that time, we did not have a budget or any specific plan in mind… just an idea that maybe this would be something fun and different.    We decided to attend the  Tampa RV show  (one of the nation’s largest) to get a better idea of available options. The variety of RVs and the obvious differences in manufacturing quality became ap
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