Hi Everyone. Well, after 15 years the RV-Dreams Community Forum is coming to an end. Since it began in August 2005, we've had 58 Million page views, 124,000 posts, and we've spent about $15,000 to keep this valuable resource for RVers free and open. But since we are now off the road and have settled down for the next chapter of our lives, we are taking the Forum down effective June 30, 2021. It has been a tough decision, but it is now time.
We want to thank all of our members for their participation and input over the years, and we want to especially thank those that have acted as Moderators for us during our amazing journey living and traveling in our RV and growing the RV-Dreams Family. We will be forever proud to have been founders of this Forum and to have been supported by such a wonderful community. Thank you all!!
My wife and I are hoping to start hitting the road 6 to 8 months per year when I retire at the end of the year, one of our main concerns is campground fees, 40+ dollars a night can really add up. Can any of the full-timers suggest the best way to address this issue, are there good clubs to join or memberships to buy? Hope to meet many of you on our travels, this has been a dream of ours for almost 30 years.
Congratulations. I am with Mike, Passport America is worth the price. It pays for itself over and over. We joined almost all of the clubs when we first started a year ago and find that we use PA and Good Sam, for their Camping World discounts, more than any other cards. Hope to meet up with you somewhere down the road.
We're also finding that county parks, in some areas, can be a real bargain. We seldom have FHUs, but usually W/E with access to a dump station. Our average for county parks over the past 10 weeks (4 weeks in county parks in various locations) has been $19/night. Next week we'll be in a county park in California, between Sacramento and the Bay Area for $25/night, believe me, for California, that is a REAL bargain. One advantage we're finding is that they are usually quieter, usually a little more room between the sites and unlike state parks, they are seldom full.
Note: we've only been FT for 11 weeks, but we've already paid for Passport America and we've only used it a total of 6 nights. Definitely worth it, and was really nice to have for a couple of enroute stops when we could have "Wally docked" but decided that for $15/night we'd rather have electricity. Both of those times it was either hot (90's) or cold (40's) and it was nice to be able to have electric to turn on the AC or heater.
Also, in one of Howard's August blogs he reminded us of freecampsites.net. We've only used a couple of the recommendations but one was for a city park in the middle of WY, donations accepted. Given that it was in the 90's, we were happy to have 50 amp electric hookups (no water, no dump station, but a very quiet location 2 miles from the Interstate) and stuck a $10 in the donation box and felt like it was a great bargain and a very easy one night stopover as we were enroute to Colorado.