Archive for the ‘RV Lifestyle’ Category

This is the time of year when RVers start planning for the upcoming RV travel season. With that in mind, RVBasics Yahoo group member Dick offers these tips:

• Take the Inter Island Ferry to get to Prince of Wales Island, AK. You ride free, your motorhome is charged $7 per foot and any passengers are charged a small fee. About a 3 hour ferry trip.
• A must book is the The Milepost 2009: Alaska Travel Planner available from Amazon.com. Gives you mile by mile locations of campgrounds, rest stops, fuel, attractions, you name it of all major and some minor roads of Canada and Alaska. When on last years 81 day 12,806 mile summer trip through the US, Canada and Alaska it was used every day as a guide of where to go and what to do.
• I assume you will have Passports. For the pets you will need current Health Certificates and current rabbis documentation. Also make sure you have a current list of any medications for anyone including the pets. Besides a current drivers license, you will also need proof of insurance in Canada which is a card you can get from your current stateside insurance company at no charge.
• Most all credit card companies are now charging a 3% foreign transaction fee for any charges made outside the US or its territories. So any charges you make in Canada may be subject to that fee when you go to pay your monthly credit card bill. You will not see that charge at the point of sale. Only when you get your statement will you see the charge. Call your credit card company and ask.
• Cell phone calls originating from Canada can also bring further fees. Check with your wireless provider to see what their policies are. There are also some limited food restrictions as to what you can or can not bring into Canada or into Alaska or back into the south 48. And of course California also has some strict food regulations and inspects most every MH entering California.

Thanks Dick… we appreciate your contribution to the site.

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RVers often look for and use public WiFi hotspots at RV parks, travel plazas and rest areas. But public hotspots are open and unencrypted so by nature are insecure. Information you transmit via your laptop or smartphone, may very well fall into the wrong hands. There are ways to stay safe, however. They are:

1. Set your Wi-Fi device to disallow automatic connection to opens networks. By doing so, will always know when you’re connecting to an open Wi-Fi hotspot. Auto-configuration is most popular on smart phones but many laptops are configured that way by default.
2. When using a public hotspot make sure you disable sharing. If there’s a storage device or other computers on your home network, you may have sharing enabled on your laptop.
3. If you’re conducting business or sharing sensitive information, it’s best to use a virtual private network (VPN), which creates an encrypted, private link across a public network.
4. Use a personal firewall, either the one that came with your Mac or Windows PC, or a third-party app from a reputable security vendor. Firewalls come with a range of configurations. At a minimum, you will want to know when another computer is attempting to gain access to your system.
5. When paying bills and shopping online using a hotspot, it’s best if the hotspot has WPA2 security. At the least make sure the website has a secure connection. A site is securer if there is an ‘https’ in your browser’s web address bar.

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