Ever since we sold our house in November 2003, our only phones have been our cell phones. It took a little getting used to, but now I think it's great. We got Verizon and most RVers agree that they have the best coverage in the country. We have found the holes tho ... believe me they're out there. Having the Wilson Trucker antenna mounted on the outside of the motorhome helps a lot. It can't give us cell service when there is NO Service, but it will take one bar and turn it into 4 bars no problem. We use it a lot.



Both Jim and I have our own phone and they have different rings. I love that. You see, I really don't like the phone much. When we were living in the house, it was always Jim's job to answer the phone. Now, I only have to answer it when I hear 'my' phone ring. Calls between our two phones are free, so when we're driving our vehicles separately, we each have our phone. We plug in the hands-free and can talk to each other just as freely as if we were in the same car. The only problem with the cell phones, other than the occasional lack of service/low signal/dropped calls, is the cost. Whew! Our bill last month was $250. ouch And, if anything we're talking even more this month.

Here at Palm Creek, they have a park-wide telephone system. They have their own PBX. Kind of like a big hotel where there's a phone in every room and you can call the rooms just by dialing the room number. Here you can dial any site by dialing the site number. Well there's a little trick - to make sure it's 4 digits you add 6000 to the site number. So, someone in site 52, you'd dial 6052, site 1500 would be 7500.

When we checked into the park we were asked if we'd be using the phone system and we said no, because we don't have a phone to plug into it and we're accustomed to using our cell phones for everything anyway. After being here for a while, we learned that, if all you want to do is call within the park - there's no charge. Just plug a phone into the jack and you instantly have service for all the 4 digit numbers - a 'house' phone. We decided that would save us some cell phone minutes, and maybe more people would be encouraged to call for help with their Wi-Fi. So, Jim went to the local Walmart and picked up an inexpensive phone along with a long telephone cord that would reach from the utility pole in the back of our site to the phone inside.



What a strange looking thing on my desk! note: for being into wireless technologies, there sure are a lot of wires around my computer desk!!

So, last night while I was up in our 'loft' watching a movie and Jim was sitting at his computer, we heard this shrill little ring. I thought it was part of the movie and expected to see one of the characters reach for their phone. After the third ring, when no one in the movie seemed to notice the ringing, Jim and I looked at each other to say 'what's that?' We thought maybe it was an alarm in the motorhome so we tried to locate the sound. It was coming from the direction of my computer. We thought maybe it was a Skype phone call. Skype is a system for making phone calls over the Internet. But, no, the Skype icon was not flashing.

By the time we figured it out ... the caller had given up. Sorry caller ... I guess you have to say we're technology challenged!

It reminded us of a favorite old joke about people and technology:

A lumberjack hears about how many more trees you can cut down if you use one of these newfangled chainsaws instead of a handsaw, so he goes to his local hardware store and buys one. After trying it for a few days and getting totally worn out trying to saw down trees with this heavy chainsaw, he takes it back. He says "this doesn't work, I want my money back." The sales clerk takes the chainsaw and starts it up to see what's wrong.

The lumberjack says,
"WHAT'S THAT NOISE!?!?"