The Better Business Bureau is warning about an Anchorage RV rental business.
According to the BBB, B&B RV Rental on the Old Seward Highway near Midtown has racked up numerous complaints over the past few years, all pointing to a troubling pattern of leaving customers with nothing to show for their money.
“Since July 2008, the Better Business Bureau has received over 300 inquiries and 12 complaints about B&B RV Rental,” said BBB spokesperson Tara Sims.
But it’s not the number of complaints that has the Bureau sounding the alarm.
“The key is that the complaints show a pattern of the same type of issues occurring over and over again,” Sims said.
Sims says the problems start when customers first arrive at B&B to pick up an RV.
See the KTUU video for more information and/or read the KTUU article: Anchorage RV rental firm doesn’t make the grade with BBB.
On May 19, 2010, the Ozark Folk Center is pleased to present some Guest Performers on the evening show. The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra will be providing three of their Quartets who will be “Fiddlin’ with the Classics”. The Rockefeller, Sturgis and Quapaw Quartets will join three of the regular Folk Center groups to create a very exciting evening of music. The concert will have a combination of Down-Home Classics and some Classic Down-Home tunes. In addition to the Orchestral Quartets, the show will feature Roger Fountain, Herbin’ League and Smith and Son.
The show will start at 7:00 p.m. with the doors opening at 6:00 p.m.
Ozark Folk Center State Park, Mountain View, Arkansas
Last week we took a short trip to eastern Arkansas and, after that, over to northeast Kentucky.
Our first campground was at Village Creek State Park. The park is located on Crowley’s Ridge, a geologic anomaly of rolling hills in eastern Arkansas’s Mississippi Alluvial Plain.
With five trails totaling 7 miles, we had hoped to spend one day in the park doing some hiking.
Unfortunately, there was some kind of gnats hatching out. After taking one walk the first evening where we couldn’t get away from them, we decided to alter our plans and check out some of the other parks in the area.
The first day, we went to Parkin State Archeological Park and Jacksonport State Park. The next day, we drove over to Memphis and spent a few hours at Mud Island. I’ll be posting more on these as I get the photo gallery set up for each one.
The last evening that we were there and the next morning before we left, we didn’t have much problem with insects at all.
Our next destination was Paducah, Kentucky, so that Karen could go to the annual Paducah Quilt Show. Karen has several posts on her blog from the quilt show:
Click on photo to see larger version
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, September 13, 2009
On the Cliff Palace loop you may visit one of two cliff dwellings by guided tour, Cliff Palace or Balcony House. These sites can only be reached by a one-hour ranger-guided tour. Tickets for tours are purchased only at the Far View Visitor Center. Rangers begin the Cliff Palace tour from the overlook at the end of the entrance trail. To enter Cliff Palace on a guided tour, one must descend approximately 100 feet into the canyon on a steep trail that includes 120 uneven stone steps. Throughout the tour one will climb five eight foot ladders.
The photo is from the newest of my photo galleries and the second from Mesa Verde. The gallery includes images from Cliff Palace — a Puebloan culture cliff dwelling —, the Knife Edge Trail and more.
Gallery: Cliff Palace and More — September 13, 2009, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
See more of our
Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
A RV manufacturing industry executive says that, as a result of the recent recession, the move to lightweight RVs is probably going to be permanent.
The ”Great Recession” probably has made permanent the RV industry’s move toward lighter weight, ”greener” units, Wilbur Bontrager, Jayco Inc. chairman and CEO, told a northern Indiana television audience this weekend (April 10-11).
“I’ve been through a couple of these downturns,” Bontrager said. ”We’re seeing a lot of the same dynamics where we, along with all the other manufacturers, have gone into building lighter weight products. This time around, I believe it will stick.
”This time around, we have technology, we have materials and suppliers who can produce components that can be lighter weight and greener. In the past, this has been more difficult.”
Read the full RVBusiness article – Bontrager: Lightweight Movement Will Stick
Other RV, Camping and Outdoors News and Information:
A California Assemblyman, Bill Monning, Democrat from Santa Cruz, has introduced legislation that, if enacted, would ban the use of 6 chemicals that can damage various types of septic systems and pose threats to groundwater sources.
The legislation, AB 1824, would ban the use of holding tank products containing bronopol, dowicil, formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, paraformaldehyde and para-dichlorobenzene, according to a news release.
“We fully support this legislation and think it will encourage businesses to step up their marketing and distribution of environmentally friendly holding tank products in California,” said Debbie Sipe, executive director of the California Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds (CalARVC), which has spent the past five years trying to find ways to protect its members’ septic systems and nearby groundwater supplies without forcing private park operators to become “potty police.”
Read the more in the RVBuisness article: Law Would Ban RV Holding Tank Chemicals .
Other RV, Camping and Outdoors News:
I’m continuing to process photos from last year’s travels into photo galleries.
The most recent is from the day that we arrived at Mesa Verde National Park during our 2009 trip to Colorado.
Because it was actually a fairly short drive from Ouray to Mesa Verde, by the time we got set up at the campground, we still had plenty of time to go exploring, including a hike down to one of the cliff dwelling ruins, Spruce Treehouse.
The gallery includes images from the ruins as well as other views in the park, including several images of the beautiful Colorado sky that we had that day.
Gallery: Spruce Treehouse and More – September 12, 2009, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
See more of our
Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
Image Gallery:
Around the Upper Loop, September 13, 2007
(click on image for larger version)
We were camped at West Yellowstone KOA several miles west of town for nearly a week in September 2007. Our camper was a Big Horn fifth wheel by Heartland. We were set up with satellite TV and satellite internet and had almost all of the conveniences of home.
For all of the conveniences, though, we found that we were not doing the kind of camping that we really preferred. We prefer national and state park and forest campgrounds, but found in some of those kind of campgrounds that maneuvering into sites that could accommodate the size of our 5th wheel was often difficult and, in some instances, there just were not any sites that we felt comfortable with trying to get into.
We now have a small motor home and are able to get into just about any campground that we want to with little or no difficulty. The only ones we can’t get into are those restricted to tent camping and those that we can’t get to with the camper. We’ve visited a couple of places where the curves were so tight that our 25 foot motor home was over the length limit. We’re also not quite yet prepared to go too many miles down an unpaved road.
In 2009, we camped in 4 national park* campgrounds, 4 nights in each one. We didn’t have satellite TV or internet and we were doing the kind of camping we really prefer.
See more of our
Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
* Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Shenandoah National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Mesa Verde National Park
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