We’ve stayed at a lot of campgrounds in our eleven years of fulltime RV travel, some really nice places, and some not so nice. There are campgrounds that we return to on a regular basis, and others where one stop was more than enough.

RVers often ask us what our personal favorite campgrounds are. Sometimes I feel like that would be akin to telling you where my favorite fishing hole is. What if the word gets out and pretty soon the place is so full that they don’t have room for me?

But what the heck, there’s always Wal-Mart if my favorite campsite is not available, so here are my Top Ten favorites, and why. Please be aware that the reasons I like a campground may not be important to you, just as the things you look for may not meet my needs.

Elkhart Campground, Elkhart, Indiana – No question about it, this is our favorite campground in the entire country. It is centrally located to a lot of places we regularly frequent, Elkhart is the capital of the RV industry, the campground is clean and well maintained, the RV sites are wide, the interior roads are all good, and owners Bob and Gita Patel treat us like family. 

Escapees Rainbow Plantation, Summerdale, Alabama – I don’t think we’ve ever been to an RV park with roomier sites than this Escapees Club RV park. We like the Alabama Gulf Coast area, the small towns in the area are all friendly and clean, and the park itself has a lot of great amenities and activities.

Tra-Tel RV Park, Tucson, Arizona – There is nothing fancy about this small RV park, the spaces are tight, and you get noise from nearby Interstate 10 and the railroad tracks on the other side of the highway. However, it’s clean, the staff is very friendly, they have a nice pool, and for us, location is everything. Tra-Tel is a comfortable, convenient place to stay when we visit our family in Tucson.

Escapees Sumter Oaks RV Park, Bushnell, Florida -  I would say that this is our favorite campground in the state of Florida. We love the giant live oak trees that shade the park, they have a great indoor pool, a fine rec room, and because it’s an Escapees park, it’s always friendly. Miss Terry loves wandering through the nearby huge Webster Flea Market looking for bargains.

Escapees Raccoon Valley, Heiskell, Tennessee -  This is a regular stop for us, and another favorite Escapees Club RV park, because we love the area. The campground is just a mile or so from Interstate 75, and close to Knoxville, but has a rural feel to it. Twice a week local bluegrass musicians come to the park and hold free jam sessions. We haven’t been to Raccoon Valley since the recent remodel, and we’re looking forward to seeing the improvements.

Thousand Trails Verde Valley Preserve, Camp Verde, Arizona – Again, location means a lot. We stay at this large Thousand Trails campground often when it’s too hot to be in Phoenix or Tucson, but still too cold to go to our old hometown in Arizona’s White Mountains. There is a lot to see and do in the Verde Valley, from exploring historic ghost towns and ancient Indian ruins, to riding a vintage steam train.

Country Roads RV Park, Lake Delton, Wisconsin – Our friends Terry and Terri Michael, owners of Country Roads, bill this campground as a place for adults, and if you want a super clean, quiet location that is just minutes from all of the hustle and bustle in Wisconsin Dells, you’ll like it too. Amenities include a pool, very nice RV sites, and a welcome that will make you feel like you just came back home after a long absence.

Escapees Turkey Creek Village, Hollister, Missouri – Located on the shore of Lake Taneycomo, just minutes from all of the shows and attractions in Branson, we have stopped at Turkey Creek many times, and look forward to getting back again. The RV sites are nice, the area has more to see and do than you could get done in an entire season, and the local folks are all very friendly.

Hershey Thousand Trails, Lebanon, Pennsylvania – We’ve only stayed here once, and we’re looking forward to going back for two weeks in September after our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally. The campground is a short drive from Hershey if you need a chocolate fix, it has a lot of great amenities, and this is another part of the county that we really enjoy spending time in. The love the green, rolling countryside around the campground.

 Fisherman’s Landing, Muskegon, Michigan – I have to admit that I have a love/hate relationship with this city owned campground. The sites are fine, and it is a great place to stay when we visit my cousin Berni and her husband Rocky, not to mention that there is a lot to see and do in the area, and we can launch our kayaks right from the campground. However, the downside is that on summer weekends there always seems to be at least one large group of rowdy campers who disturb everybody else, and management never seems to be aware of it.  Still, we go back every year, so I guess the good outweighs the bad.

Okay, now I’ve told you mine, so don’t hold back on the rest of us. What are some of your favorite campgrounds, and why?

Thought For The Day – One man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We have a lot of friends here in Alabama that we wanted to touch base with, and yesterday we got to spend time with several of them, both here at the Escapees Rainbow Plantation and at a couple of other nearby RV parks.

I met Tom Wiegman at an Escapade RV rally in Van Wert, Ohio several years ago, when he and his wife Karen were researching the fulltime RV lifestyle. Tom had some concerns that we talked about, and I assured him that if they really wanted to become fulltimers, they could make it happen. These days they are living their dream, workamping at a neat little RV park called Wales West, in Silverheel, Alabama.

Yesterday we dropped in for a visit, and while we missed Karen, Tom was there helping decorate for Christmas. Here is a picture of the two of us, note Tom’s headgear. Tom gave us a tour of Wales West, which is a neat place. The campground has its own railroad, with over a mile of tracks, and is popular with children from all around the region.

The campground’s owners love railroads and they love the country of Wales. The buildings at the campground are all modeled after buildings in a town they visited in Wales, and railroad enthusiasts love coming here to ride the train. If you’re looking for a quiet, off the beaten track campground with friendly people and great amenities, check out the Wales West website.

Our next stop was at Coastal Haven RV Park in Fairhope, where our friends Paul and Sally Wagner are spending the winter. Paul and Sally are regulars at Elkhart Campground, where we spend a lot of time, and two of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. We timed our visit just right, because another dear friend from Elkhart Campground, Myrl Gautsche, was spending a few days there, so we got to see him too. Here are Sally, Myrl, and Paul enjoying the sunshine.

Back at Rainbow Plantation, Terry happened to look out our window and spotted Di Irrgang walking by. Di and her husband Dutch have been vendors at our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rallies, and we did not realize that they are parked just two spaces down from us!

Norm and Linda Payne have a home here at Rainbow Plantation, and they had invited a few people over for snacks and a visit, so about 4:30 we walked over to their place and had a wonderful evening visiting with Norm and Linda, Darrell and Judy Patterson, and Howard and Linda Payne, from RVDreams.com. In this photo, from left to right, you can see me, Judy Patterson, Linda Payne (of RVDreams.com) Howard Payne, our hosts Linda and Norm Payne, and Darrell Patterson. Miss Terry was behind the camera, so she isn’t included in our party picture.

It was fun to sit around and tell war stories from our lives on the road, compare notes on places we have visited and people we have met, and share some of the goofy mistakes we all make from time to time. Darrell told us about how he did $1,000 worth of damage to his truck and almost as much to his fifth wheel when he tried to use cement blocks to stabilize it.

I admitted that in our first month on the road, as we were leaving a campground I commented to Miss Terry about how friendly everybody was, because they were all pointing and waving their arms at us as we drove by. It wasn’t until I got to the exit and glanced into my side view mirrors did I realize that all of our window awnings were still out. By then there was no way I was going to stop and have all of those people staring at me as I got out and put the awnings up, so I just kept on going, while poor Miss Terry had to open the windows, reach outside and remove the awning catch straps from their hooks, and let the awnings roll up! It took me a long time to live that one down!

Bad Nick isn’t quite the social butterfly that I am, so while I was out visiting folks, he was home writing a new Bad Nick Blog post titled Media Whores. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize that you’re wrong.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

We met a very nice couple at the Escapees Rainbow’s End campground in Livingston, Texas during our first year on the road and really hit it off with them. They were about our age, had retired early, and were ready to see America. They lasted about a year on the road, because they found the fulltime RV lifestyle too stressful.

Stressful? Isn’t one of the great things about fulltime RVing the lack of stress? Not for these folks.

Early in our friendship, I noticed a trait in the husband that made me wonder just how well he would be able to make the transition from the working world to RVing; he was just too regimented. He needed a schedule for every day of his life, and whenever something happened to mess up that schedule, he went into a mental tizzy.

One day they were going to have dinner at a restaurant in Livingston, and asked us to join them. We agreed they’d pick us up at about 5 p.m., as I recall. He called me a couple of hours before the appointed time to tell me that we were going to have to reschedule, because they were getting an oil change in town, and the shop was running late. I said we could wait until they got back to Rainbow’s End and then go to dinner, but he said no, their whole schedule was shot for the day. As it turned out, they were back in the campground by 4:30, but they could not go to dinner with only 30 minutes to prepare, so they cancelled.

Another time, we ran into them at the Escapees Rainbow Plantation campground in Alabama, and a couple of days later they left because they had reservations in a campground in the Florida Panhandle. Two days later, the husband called me to say that their new “campground” was actually a redneck trailer park, with long term units up on blocks, Rebel flags in the windows, and pit bulls chained to the porches. They hated the place.

I suggested that they leave and come back to Alabama, or go on down the road to some other place in Florida. “We can’t,” my friend replied, “we have a schedule to keep. If we leave here now, it throws it all out of kilter.” So they stayed in a place they didn’t like, with neighbors they didn’t like, just to maintain their “schedule.” As it turns out, as I learned in later conversations, at any give time, they had one year’s reservations made and paid for in advance. Their schedule called for them to drive no more than 300 miles in a day, and then stay put in an RV park where they had a reservation in place. When the week was up, they went to the next place on their schedule, and stayed there a week.

Any experienced RVer will tell you that sometimes things happen we don’t plan for. RVs break down and need to go into a shop for repairs. Bad weather can keep us off the road. Maybe we get sick and are not well enough to travel. If we do have plans, we change those plans to fit the new situation. Not our friends! If they had a breakdown and were stuck someplace for two days waiting for parts or repairs, they could not just go to the next RV park on their list and stay five days instead of seven. No, he had to cancel all of his future reservations, and then remake them again, one week at a time!

I tried to tell him that he needed to relax and just take life as it comes, but his mind was not programmed that way, and he just couldn’t do it. It didn’t take long for the stress of his self-imposed schedule to get to our friend; he started having stomach terrible pains, he couldn’t sleep, and he was miserable. His poor wife was just as miserable because she was witness to his stress and could not change him. They decided that the fulltime RV lifestyle was not for them. It’s probably for the best, because otherwise I think he’d have had a massive coronary.

We learned early on in this lifestyle that anything can happen, and often will, so we roll with the punches. It’s a lot easier that way. We seldom make reservations, and we try not to have a tight schedule. We may have a breakdown. We may find an interesting small town festival to take part in, or a historical site to explore. We may run into friends unexpectedly and want to spend time with them. So we take life not just one day at a time, but one mile at a time.

For example, we know that we’ll be in Florida sometime in the next few weeks, but we have no idea just when we’ll get there, where we’ll go when we get there, or which route we’ll take to get there! We may drive straight through, stopping only to sleep and eat along the way, but more likely, we may take a meandering route, and discover interesting places to distract for an hour or a day along whichever route we decide to take. It’s a lot more fun and a lot less stressful that way!

Thought For The Day – Can an atheist get insurance against acts of  God?