RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy [Paperback]

Sharlene Minshall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

Description: This book has 220 pages and thirty photographs of RVing Adventures in Canada, Mexico, and the lower 48 United States. It is not necessarily written in chronological order, but the author takes you right along with her wherever and whenever she is traveling. She lets you in on her thoughts as she winds through the countryside, hikes along mountain trails, or balances on a log crossing a ravine. Her stories are not just about RVing but propelling through space while paragliding off a 10,000 foot mountain or jumping off a boulder into a major river.

Minshall leads you through the ice corridor between Newfoundland and Labrador and along the Trans-Labrador Highway into Quebec. Throughout her books, she tells about trips into Mexico. In this book, she describes shorter forays beyond the border where anyone can get a taste of life beyond the border. If this silver gypsy is not caravanning and motorcycling with friends through our national parks, she is kayaking with the dolphins or whitewater rafting.

Maintaining family relationships is paramount to anyone with a love of family. Her treasuring of these connections comes through in this book. With many miles between their immediate families and an extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and old friends left behind in Michigan, it takes effort to keep the ties tied. If she loses a family member, you cry with her. You find yourself developing an interest in her family. Making new friendships and acquaintances is an important part of her roving story as well.

It is a well rounded read where you definitely get a feeling of flying high on life with nothing more assisting you than the joy of living and the excitement of traveling our land. While she enlarges your world through the pages of the book, Minshall proves over and over what she has discovered in fifteen years of full-time RVing, it is a small, small world.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy is not just about RVing or adventures. Many readers have called Sharlene Minshall an inspiration for getting on with life after a divorce or death. She not only made the decision to do something drastic like selling her home and moving into a motorhome after the death of her husband, she made a major job change from secretary to something she had always wanted to do, writing, and made it pay off. The message of this sixty-something traveler is very much one of living every moment you are granted in this life.

Although this is not a how-to book, she speaks to everybody’s question about safety traveling alone plus introducing you to some of the unique people she becomes acquainted with along the way. The experiences are very personal, but Minshall sprinkles enough facts and history into a story that you can learn something about an area without realizing it, and you will probably remember it. Very personally and humorously she leads you along the backcountry gravel roads and two-lane blue highways of her world. From ancient ruins to the magic of a Kentucky Christmas to Canadian lobstering, the book will entertain and amuse both real-time travelers and armchair travelers.

From the Author

These stories are not in any of the other five books although I have used portions of published columns where appropriate. This book travels through New England, the Canadian Maritimes, the NW, SW, and dips briefly into Mexico. I feel each day is a special gift, but if every day were as exciting as some, it would wear me out. The Daily Life Vignettes and Various and Sundry chapters tell about average days or delights I’ve experienced while meandering America.

The Sprinter occasionally rests while I’m off visiting family or enjoying a different adventure like visiting the Hudson Bay shores with an Elderhostel group. Romanticized as the perfect lifestyle, full timing has its headaches, especially mechanical problems, and my expertise would fit on the head of a pin with room leftover for an unabridged dictionary. In all of my books, I tell the straight scoop about the helplessness I feel when something breaks down; but then I rejoice when disguised angels appear to rectify those situations.

Because I have met such interesting people, my adventures sometimes include companions with whom I kayak, motorcycle, or explore. I have visited nearly all our National Parks; many of them are included in this book. Perhaps it will encourage you to visit or bring back memories of your own trip. Whatever the case, I hope you’ll enjoy sharing my full-time solo RVing lifestyle.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Gypsy Press (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964397064
• ISBN-13: 978-0964397064
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,494,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Me, too!, February 9, 2002

By 

Dianne Harlan (Livingston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy (Paperback)

Caution! Reading this book could be detrimental to your sedate lifestyle. When you realize these adventures, so eloquently recorded, were experienced by a 60-ish grandmother, who pilots her motorhome to the far corners and borders of this great country, you begin to ask yourself, Why not me? And that's a fair question.

Widowed at 45 and not sure what to do next, "Charlie" Minshall discovered she had a serious wanderlust to satisfy. So she became a full-time RVer, logging well over 200,000 miles onto her personal odometer. And, oh yes, along the way, she just happens to have written six books, this being the latest.

As you digest the chapters, Charlie takes you on guided tours that include some of the most beautiful and scenic treasures of this country--from the Grand Canyon to Yosemite National Park to Hell's Canyon in Idaho and then on to New England and the Maritime provinces in Canada. And for some real contrast, she provides a peek at the Hearst Castle in California and later explores another great house, the Chaco pueblos in New Mexico. She also gears up for some major excitement when she describes paragliding in Aspen and more recently as she goes searching for polar bears from a tundra buggy near the Hudson Bay in Canada.

RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy is the kind of book that makes you want to reconsider where you are going, especially if slowly wandering along paths less taken and exploring the far reaches fits your style of travel. Minshall's books can be quite compelling--in fact, you may just take the question, Why not me? and turn in into the statement, Me, too!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adventures with Charlie, August 30, 2003

By 

Robert Difley (West Linn, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy (Paperback)

On first glimpse of Sharlene "Charlie" Minshall she does not strike you as an adventurer. It's hard to imagine this five foot three inch lady maneuvering a 27-foot box-on-wheels down a narrow winding dirt road in Hell's Canyon in July or sloshing through the slushy snow of backroads in Nova Scotia. Except for her flowing silver mane, she looks quite ordinary. But ordinary is not a word you would choose to describe Charlie's RV adventures. Charlie's been to every US state and Canadian province and seventeen of Mexico's states. This feat is made all the more remarkable when you learn that she has traveled to these far corners of North America alone, just she and her motorhome, which has now accumulated over 250,000 miles.
She writes in the Introduction, "My travels have included romance, intrigue, sorrow, general happiness, and a great many terrific `Moments in time.' I've stayed healthy and made a lot of friends along the way. This `second life' as a fulltime RVer has taken this average housewife and mother beyond her wildest imagination."
One of the more appealing aspects of Charlie's book is the relaxed conversational writing style. She makes you feel right from page one that you are sitting around the campfire or sharing an early morning cup of coffee with a friend. If you want to get a good idea about the RV lifestyle beyond the ordinary hook-up campgrounds, Charlie's book is the one to read.