Recently, my Old Lady (she still likes to be called that), Celeste, and I decided to buy an RV and take the grandkids on a month-long journey through Alaska. We knew times had changed, and that Flower Power and her cutting edge stereo setup were ancient history, but we had no idea how far car electronics had come until the grandkids began telling us what the RV needed to keep them occupied.

It started with the five year-old twins, Gracie and Avis, insisting they needed a DVD player so they could watch their Disney, Sponge Bob and Barney DVDs. Celeste and I knew that for the sake of our sanity, the girls also needed headphones! We checked out car electronics at our favorite online store amamax.com, and found a sweet deal on a Flip down 9 Inch DVD Player Car Monitor that came with two sets of wireless headphones.

I was really surprised at the quality of the LCD display! The picture was crisp, and the colors were fantastic! It looked more like something you’d see on your home PC monitor rather than what you might expect from car electronics! The sound quality was pretty cool, too, and the girls would be able to listen to their music CDs too!

Our grandsons, Seth and Elijah are both 14, and are best friends as well as cousins. They love to play video games so they needed a monitor with gaming capability. One of the guys in the car electronics department set us up with just what the boys wanted! Their monitor had AV ports so they could plug in a console and wreck cars, kill monsters and blast each other to Kingdom Come …with headphones, of course!

Now that we had the grandkids taken care of, it was Gram’s and Gramp’s turn to explore the fascinating world of car electronics!!

As a loving tribute to Flower Power, our top priority was a kickass sound system! Man! Have car electronics come a long way! We thought Flower Power’s in-dash 8-track, AM/FM setup was the ultimate in car electronics, but our RV sound system is more than I’d ever hoped for! Not only can we play CDs, but we can listen to satellite radio, MP3s, iTunes, and even plug in our Bluetooth enabled cell phones! How cool is that?! Celeste thinks I went overboard with the car speakers, but when we’re toolin’ along to and through Alaska and back, and she decides to take a nap, she’ll thank me for the sweet sounds coming from the extra speakers installed in our “bedroom!” Instead of hearing just a staticky, speaker-cracking bass line, she’ll be able to drift off to perfectly equalized, virtually distortion-free music that comes across with the clarity of our home computer stereo speakers. Thank goodness for new technologies in car electronics!

While shopping for our car electronics systems at Amamax.com, we ran across a GPS system. Believe me when I say that our onboard GPS saved us hours of time from not having to backtrack because we missed our exit, or took the wrong exit as we did with our old CNS (Celeste Navigation System). Celeste loves that she can watch DVDs, and even catch her favorite TV shows, instead of having to wrestle paper maps and peer at them through a magnifying glass to get a fix on where we are and where we should be going. I like that part of it too: knowing we’re always on track keeps my blood pressure down! In fact, on such a long journey into territory totally alien to us, such car electronics probably saved my life. I’m certain it saved my marriage!

Last, but by far not least, we decided to buy a rear view back up camera. This proved to be another life/marriage saver because I didn’t have to worry about Celeste backing over a car or running over something in her blind spot while she drove. Don’t get me wrong, Celeste is an excellent driver, but the RV isn’t her minivan! Our car electronics guru at Amamax.com set us up with a car camera with wide angle view and night vision, which made driving at night much easier for both Celeste and me!

We all had a great time on our trip through Alaska, and we have the videos and photos to prove it! Once we were back home, Celeste immediately went to visit our guru to get the minivan set up with the auto sound system and other car electronics she most enjoyed.

And as for me? I still have a full head of hair that I’m letting grow down to my butt, I sport a full, but nicely trimmed beard and mustache, and I’ve got my eye on a vintage VW van. My guy at Amamax.com says he can have it fixed up with all the car electronics gadgets I want in no time at all! You can visit them too and check out all the great things yourself.

http://www.amamax.com