I always enjoy talking to new RVers or wannabes about the fulltime lifestyle, and hopefully, I can help them avoid some of the mistakes we made as greenhorns by sharing our experiences with them. But sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall, and I want to ask them “Do you want me to tell you what I know, or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?”

A couple of weeks ago, at a fuel island, I had a conversation with the fellow next to us, who was driving a fancy new diesel pusher. He told me that he and his wife have been fulltiming for several months now, and that they are about to throw in the towel because it’s just too expensive. “How can anybody afford to pay $1,000 to $1,500 a month on campgrounds and still put fuel in the tank?” he asked me.

I told him that I don’t know anybody who spends even half that much on campgrounds, and he asked me how we do it. I told him about all of the ways we save money on camping fees, from free campgrounds, to discount programs like Passport America, camping at Elks and Moose lodges, fairgrounds camping, and boondocking.

“My wife would never do any of that,” he said. “We joined Passport America, but we pulled into one campground and she said “No way” and we drove right back out. We have never boondocked, she wouldn’t stand for it. We only stay at four star rated RV parks, because she doesn’t like the looks of the people at other places. It’s costing us a fortune, but what else can we do?”

I felt like telling him that his wife needed a lesson in reality, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. It was obvious that she wanted nothing to do with the RV lifestyle, and that she fully intended to have a miserable time of it until she finally made him miserable enough to give in and go do whatever she wanted to do instead.

This can be a very affordable lifestyle, if one takes the time to learn about the many ways you can keep camping costs low. But, one has to be willing to settle for less than upscale RV “resorts” (and there are a lot of excellent campgrounds that don’t get a four star rating), and flexibility is also a major asset to have. But some people, like this lady, just will not be happy living the gypsy lifestyle, and that’s fine too. It leaves more opportunities for the rest of us.

I also had an interesting conversation with a couple while I was doing some genealogy research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City a while back, but I really had to bite my tongue to keep from bursting their bubble. They noticed my Gypsy Journal t-shirt, struck up a conversation, and told me they had just purchased a new diesel pusher, and would be taking delivery in three days.

I congratulated them, and the husband told me that they looked at a lot of RVs, both new and used, and decided to go with a new motorhome because, while they don’t plan to become fulltime RVers, they will be traveling six to eight months a year. “We just don’t want to mess with repairs and stuff,” he told me. “With a new motorhome, all we’ll have to do is turn the key and go the day we pick it up, and not have to worry about anything being broken.”

I told him that he might want to be prepared to spend some time going back to the dealer once they take delivery, because every new RV that hits the street seems to need a certain amount of time to get the bugs worked out of it. I told him that many experienced RVers seem to feel that once you buy a new rig, it takes at least six months just to get all of the stuff fixed that should have been handled before it left the factory.

“No way,” he told me, “That’s why we bought a new diesel pusher. With the money we’re spending, I guarantee you that it will be ready to roll the day we take delivery.”

What could I do, except nod, wish them well, and also secretly wish I that could be a fly on the wall of that new motorhome about a month or two down the road, to see how their thinking would have changed.

Thought For The Day – A father is a guy who has snapshots in his wallet where his money used to be.

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In the eleven years that Terry and I have been on the road as fulltime RVers, I can probably count the number of times we have made reservations at an RV park on my fingers. We usually prefer to travel at our leisure, and stop wherever we find ourselves at the end of a day, without the pressure of having to get someplace.

However, we currently have not one, not two, but three reservations awaiting us! That’s quite a difference from our usual style of traveling. But each reservation has a specific purpose; I booked a week at the Pony Express RV Park in Salt Lake City, Utah starting Thursday so I can do some genealogy research; then we have a five night reservation at the River Dance RV Resort in Gypsum, Colorado, which was the closest place we could find to Vail, where we will be attending a family wedding on the 18th; and then, in September, we have a fourteen day reservation at the Hershey, Pennsylvania Thousand Trails, where we will be staying while we work the Pennsylvania RV and Camping Show.

We’ve stayed at the Hershey Thousand Trails before and know what to expect, but with the other two RV parks, location swayed our decision. There really were not many options in Colorado, and in Salt Lake City, there wasn’t a lot to choose from either.

Even with all of our time on the road, we’re still pretty green when it comes to selecting an RV park. Given a choice, we prefer Passport America campgrounds, Escapees RV parks, Elks and Moose lodges, fairgrounds, casinos, and the many free campgrounds around the country, but those are not always an option. Then we have to find a place.

We learned a long time ago that the ratings in most campground guides seem to be based more upon the size of the ad than the quality of the facilities.

Sometimes we get recommendations from friends, and if not, I start looking around online for reviews. I find it interesting reading reviews of RV parks online at Yahoo and the RV Park Reviews website. Some people will give a campground the highest rating, while others will slam it bad. How can two RVers stay at the same place, have two very different experiences, and come away with such different opinions?

Sometimes it’s pretty obvious, when you read comments like “Nothing for kids to do here” or “No planned activities.” I ignore those types of complaints, because we don’t travel with kids, and we don’t need to be entertained. I’m more concerned about comments about things like dogs running around unleashed, permanent residents with seedy looking trailers, or rowdy neighbors.

How about you? How to you choose an RV park to stay at, in an unfamiliar area? What’s your protocol for finding a place to stay for a few days?

Thought For The Day – Calling an illegal alien an ‘undocumented immigrant’ is like calling a drug dealer an ‘unlicensed pharmacist.’

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I got an e-mail from a couple who have been bitten by the fulltiming bug and would love to sell their home and hit the road. However, they are afraid that they cannot afford the lifestyle. Their concerns are expressed in the following paragraph, cut and pasted from their e-mail:

“We have been looking at RV park websites here in our area of Ohio, and near our son’s home in Pennsylvania. With daily rates of anywhere from $35 to $40 for a full hookup site at  Surf Campground in Marblehead, Ohio; to $31 for a water and electric site at Huron River Valley Resort in Huron, Ohio; to $40 a night at the Kinzua Pennsylvania KOA near our son’s home, we just don’t see how we can afford it. That comes out to about $36 a night, or $1100 a month, or over $13,000 a year. That is about half of our retirement income.  Are most fulltime RVers really paying that much every night? If not, what is the secret to making it affordable?”

My first reaction to their e-mail was that they are looking for camping in all the wrong places. I looked at the websites of the three campgrounds they mentioned, and all three seemed more like weekend or vacation spots than the kind of places most fulltimers frequent.

Most fulltime RVers we know are paying a lot less than $36 a night. In fact, for most of our years on the road, we have averaged less than $5 a night, and we know many fulltimers who average $5 to $10 a night. Sometimes we do pay more per night, on rare occasions much more. But, the savings we get most of the time offset these costs and keep our nightly average low.

How do we do it? Through a combination of free campgrounds, weekly or monthly rates at commercial RV parks, discount campground programs, a Thousand Trails campground membership, camping at Elks and Moose lodges, camping at fairgrounds which have RV hookups, occasional nights dry camping at places like WalMart and truck stops, and occasional nights parked in the driveways of friends and relatives’ homes when we are visiting them. I think most experienced fulltimers would tell you they do things about the same way, with some combination of some or all of these options.

There are many, many free or very low cost campgrounds nationwide, usually located in small town city parks and county parks. We publish a guide to over 1,000 such places, and the Escapees Days End listing is also a good way to find many of them. You can find info on our guide in our RV Bookstore.

Most fairgrounds nationwide have RV hookups, and many of them make these sites available to the general public, usually at rates much lower than area RV parks. We also publish a guide to fairgrounds camping, which is available in our RV Bookstore.

We have belonged to Passport America ever since we hit the road, and it has saved us a lot of money. Members get a 50% discount at more than 1,600 campgrounds nationwide. Most are Mom and Pop type RV parks, and many of them have restrictions during their peak times, but if you read the campground guide and work within the system, it can be a real money saver.

Membership campgrounds can also save you money, if you use them enough to get your annual dues worth. The secret here is to know you’ll spend all of the days in the system that you can, under your membership, and not to buy a new membership, but rather to do your homework and buy a low cost resale membership directly from the previous owner.

I belong to the Elk and Moose, and many lodges nationwide either have an actual campground, or at least allow traveling members to dry camp in their parking lots overnight, usually for free or for a small donation. I’m also a VFW member, and we have found many VFW posts that allow us to park overnight, usually for free.

When we are on the road from Point A to Point B, we seldom pay for a campground, since all we plan to do is get some sleep and go on down the road. Our motorhome is fully self-contained, and all we need is a safe, level place to park overnight. We have spent many nights at RV friendly businesses like WalMart, at truck stops, in highway rest areas, all for free, and all of which helps us keep our nightly camping costs down.

We also save money by parking in the driveways of friends and relatives. Sometimes we don’t have hookups, but usually we can at least plug into a 20 amp outlet in a garage to keep our batteries charged up, and we can find a water outlet to fill our fresh water tank. It’s nice to visit people and enjoy their company, then be able to retire to our own home on wheels, giving them and us both our own privacy.

How about some of you other experienced RVers? What do your nightly camping costs average, and how do you keep your costs low?

While I was taking a nap yesterday afternoon, Bad Nick took over the computer and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled BP = BS. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – The five most essential words for a healthy, vital relationship are “I apologize” and “You are right.”

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We publish several guides to help make the RV lifestyle less expensive and easier, including our Guide To Free Campgrounds & Overnight Parking Places, our Casino Camping guide, and the Guide To Public RV Dump Stations, to name just a few. They can all be found on our online bookstore, along with a lot of other great RV reading.

Another of our top selling publications is our Guide To RV Good Guys, which lists honest and reliable repair shops from coast to coast. I developed this guide because I know how hard it can be to find somebody to work on our RV or van when we’re in some strange town where we don’t know anybody to ask for suggestions.

Businesses cannot buy an advertisement in our Good Guys guide. The only way a business gets listed is if we have dealt with them ourselves and had a good experience, or if they are recommended by somebody we know and whose opinion we trust. I have a new business that I am going to add to this guide.

We want to replace the tires on our Winnebago motorhome. They have a lot of tread left, but they are seven years old, and that means it’s time to get some new rubber on the RV. Most RVers never drive enough to wear out their tires, but over time the sidewalls can weaken and crack, which can lead to a blowout. Having survived a front tire blowout on our bus at 65 miles per hour a few years ago, it’s not an experience we want to repeat.

The other day, I spent some time calling tire dealers in the Mesa and Apache Junction area, getting quotes for six new Michelin tires. One of the places I called was Fletcher Tire on Crismon Road in Mesa. The gentleman I spoke to there said they could not help us, because they don’t carry the big 22.5 tires we need, and our RV is too big for their equipment.

But, the salesman asked for my cell phone number and offered to make some calls for me and try to locate a couple of shops who handle big rigs. True to his word, he called me back a short time later with the phone numbers and contact information for two tire shops that stocked our size tires and can handle a big RV.

Now that’s service! He isn’t going to make a penny from me on my tires, he knows that I’m an RVer, not a local who might come in sometime for something else, but he still took the time to go the extra mile for me! You can bet that Fletcher Tire gets added to our Good Guys guide, and that if I ever do need tires or any service on my van, if we’re in this area, that’s who I’ll go to. 

I’m still tire shopping, and I quickly learned that prices are all over the place. Big O Tires was almost exactly $1,000 higher for the six tires than a place called Copperstate Tire in Phoenix. When I told the guy from Big O that his quote was way out of line, he asked me incredulously if I was really willing to drive 35 miles just to save $1,000. Uh…. yeah, I am!    

I’d like to get the new tires on before we go to Yuma for our Gypsy Gathering rally next month, unless somebody reading this has any leads to a good tire shop in Yuma I should call to get a quote from.

If the guy at Big O thinks traveling 35 miles is a big journey, he needs to talk to my pal Al Hesselbart, historian for the RV Hall of Fame Museum in Elkhart, Indiana.

While he was at the National RV Show in Louisville, Kentucky in December, Al was approached by representatives of the Chinese RV industry who invited him to come to a large outdoor lifestyle show in Hangzhou, China next month as their guest. They explained that they were inviting representatives of different parts of the American RV industry to discuss our system at their show.

Al told me Hangzhou is about 100 kilometers southeast of Shanghai, and he is scheduled to leave March 2^nd, and he will arrive in China on March 3^rd. He will give his 20 to 30 minute presentation on the growth of the RV lifestyle and its effect on the American culture to a group of government officials on the 4^th, and to RV industry officials and show goers on the 5^th, then the group will get an officially escorted tour of the Hanzhou area on the 6^th, and will return home on the 7^th.

Al said they are flying them business class, putting them up in first class hotels, and he will have an interpreter to help him present his program. Gee, and I thought my buddy had a swelled head before! Can you imagine what he’s going to demand if I want him to come to our Eastern rally in Elkhart this year to present a seminar? I may need to sell a kidney or something, just to cover his tab!

Thought For The Day – Never take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

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Yesterday started out as a frustrating day.

In Sunday’s blog I wrote that when we bought fuel at the Paso Junction Sinclair truck stop in Pratt, Kansas they triple charged my debit card for over $472 in false charges. I called my bank and they reversed the charges, but Monday night they were back and the money was out of my account. After repeated calls to the bank and the truck stop, which acknowledges that the problem is on their end, now they tell me it could be up to 35 days before it is resolved!

I wanted to get an early start on the road yesterday morning, but instead had to run around finding a place to send out faxes of my receipts and the false charges on my account to both the truck stop’s manager and to my bank.

$21 in fax charges later, we finally got out of town only to get held up in a massive traffic jam caused by an accident just before the junction of Interstate 470 and Interstate 70. Why are drivers so dumb?  We were sitting still as emergency vehicles tried to squeeze past to get to the accident scene, and the cars would not move over to let them pass. Finally we got past the accident scene and got onto Interstate 70 for the short drive to the fairgrounds in Higginsville. We were greeted by George and Starr Sharrer, who have been parked here for a week in their fifth wheel. Soon afterward, Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour pulled in.

This is typical of the many fairgrounds around the country that RVers can take advantage of for low cost parking. For $10 a night we are getting 30 amp electric, water, and a dump station. What a deal! Here is a picture of the Geek’s motorhome at the fairgrounds, and another of our bus. If you have not checked out the many low cost camping opportunities in this country, order our Special 7 in 1 CD, which includes over 1,000 free campgrounds, fairgrounds with RV parking, casinos that welcome RVers with free camping, public RV dump stations, RV Good Guys, and more. It will save you a bundle.

Once Jim and Chris were parked, it was time to eat. We had dinner at Zybisco’s Bar and Grill, where it was Taco Tuesday, with three for $1.50. Terry said they were great. I had a huge one pound double bacon cheeseburger that even I could not finish! Terry pointed out the weight to me on the menu, but I was busy talking and didn’t hear her. Big mistake! It was yummy, but way too much for one guy to eat alone.

Of course, I had to save room for dessert. We walked a couple of blocks down Higginsville’s Main Street to Sweetz, where owner Jeni Bayens fixed us up with ice cream and other goodies. Before seeing the error of her ways, Jeni was a nutritionist. Now she’s hustling ice cream and chocolate covered strawberries. Personally, I think it was a great career choice.

Jeni’s 10 year old son Casey was a cool kid that I enjoyed visiting with. I didn’t know I could have loaner kids all over the country like I do loaner dogs. Why didn’t anybody ever tell me that? I could have saved a ton of money on child support!

Casey may look shy with his eyes downcast, but he’s just keeping his eye on the showcase full of goodies like chocolates covered strawberries, chocolates covered licorice, and even chocolates covered jalapenos (jalapenos?) to make sure I didn’t sneak one out!

Thought For The Day – Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.

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