Gary and Barbara Pouliot utilized to be happy campers.
Today, the Springfield natives are wildly enthusiastic RVers.
Our paths crossed in January at a Florida accumulating of tourists signing up for caravans sponsored by Yankee RV Tours. The organization and its founder, onetime Somers resident Rod Coe, had been featured in a Lollygagger@huge column revealed by The Republican in June.
“We have hardly ever completed a caravan, so we are pretty thrilled to tour with Yankee,” Barb Pouliot reported.
They weren’t on your own. Coe reported 135 journey-hungry RVers – masked and respectfully distanced, of course – turned out for the tour company’s annual reunion and orientation at Southern Palms RV Vacation resort in Eustis, about 40 miles northwest of Orlando.
“We signed on for three caravans,” Gary Pouliot stated. The very first journey, scheduled July and August, will just take them through the American Northwest, what he named “our aspiration destination.” The itinerary spans 35 days, setting up at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and adhering to sections of the Mormon and Oregon trails to the Pacific Coast.
The couple also signed up for two situations in 2022: a six-day RV rally in January at Cape Canaveral, Florida, which will involve excursions of Kennedy Place Middle and in September, they’ll embark on a 20-day caravan by way of the American Southwest, touring countrywide parks and scenic wonders in Arizona, Utah and Colorado.
Gary Pouliot is 65, a brawny male with a gentle spirit. His wife, a 12 months youthful, possesses a completely ready and ready perception of humor.
Barb was Barbara Stevenson when her spouse and children lived in East Springfield. She attended Pottenger Elementary, Van Sickle Junior Superior and Complex Substantial colleges.
Gary grew up in the Liberty Heights neighborhood of Springfield, off Carew Street. He attended Liberty Elementary, Van Sickle Junior Significant and Trade Higher universities.
“We grew up together,” Barb Pouliot stated. “We fulfilled at Van Sickle Junior Large wherever we became childhood sweethearts.” They were being married in 1975 at Our Woman of Hope Church, wherever their families ended up communicants.
After marriage, Barb was a stay-at-residence mother and presented treatment for many other children. Later, she labored for Filene’s at Eastfield Mall and Louis & Clark Pharmacy.
Gary was employed by Ferrara Spring Will work in Springfield, then joined the Carpenters Union Local 108. He labored on construction assignments in the Springfield region, then invested 23 many years with Unwinn Overhead Doors in Chicopee. He retired in 2012, and he and Barb took up home in Alva, Florida, 18 miles northeast of Fort Myers.
The Pouliots’ enthusiasm for RVing displays on their faces and in their speech as they remember much more than 40 a long time of tenting adventures.
“We started out camping in 1980,” Barb stated, when the young Pouliots have been ages 5, 3 and 2. “We tent-camped and also slept in the back again of pickup truck.” Gary, she recalled, experienced “made a plywood bed that he set up on leading rails of the truck in which the youngsters slept. We slept on ground of truck bed with the puppy. It was a wonderful and inexpensive way to go and have a lot of pleasurable.”
The following generations of Pouliot campers contain daughter Jeannine Pouliot Duquette and her partner, Ben, who dwell in Springfield with daughters Anissa and Mikayla, and son Gary Pouliot, his spouse, Stephanie, and their son, Jordan, who dwell in Ludlow. Daughter Kathryn Pouliot and her daughters Chloe and Kelsy stay in the A few Rivers section of Palmer.
By means of 4 many years of camping, the Pouliots have been as a result of a half-dozen RVs, including a converted van, two travel trailers, a modest motorhome, significant motorhome, and a 60-foot-lengthy park model on Cape Cod, the place they “spent plenty time with grandchildren,” Barb claimed.
The Pouliots now journey in a 23-foot-long MPG vacation trailer the company states that the identify is derived from earning much more “Memories For every Gallon.” Gary Pouliot emphasizes that the MPG “will probably not be our last” RV.
Barb said she prefers to travel in an RV “because it is the greatest way to just unwind.” Gary reported he enjoys the life-style for the reason that “it’s the very best and only way to see anything and you satisfy the best persons. … We prepare on RVing ‘til we just can’t generate any more.”
Norm Roy, a retired copy editor for The Republican, life and travels in a motorhome. He is eager to listen to from readers about their possess travel adventures. His e-mail deal with is: [email protected]
About the Author
