HOW LONG AT EACH RV PARK ?

[JH Sechelt]

I have been wondering, for you longtimers that go out for 2 to 6 months, how long do you plan at each park? Days, weeks or Months?
My DW & I will start traveling more this fall and we like to see places. I would think paying for a RV park by the night would get pretty expensive. Weeks are cheaper, and best prices are by the month. Do many find a month or more at one spot too long?
Just looking for some ideas.

Thanks J&D

[ols1932]

I don't think it makes any difference whether you are a "longtimer" or "fulltimer." You park where and when you want to. You're right, if you stay at an RV park for a week/month, you will pay less per day than you would if you just stayed a couple days at the daily rate. For us, we seldom stay at any RV park for extended periods unless it happens to be one of our membership parks. In order to see all the sights in a specific place, you should plan on staying for an extended period. Does this make sense?

Orv

[boylanag]

We are new to the Longtiming life style and are on our first long trip, not counting several "snowbird" winters. Like Orv, we stay at our membership parks whenever we can. That saves us a bundle. We did this when we traveled shorter and are doing it now. We were fortunate to join them when I was working and earning and now are enjoying the benefits. The advice that others on this forum have given us is to just relax, slow down and enjoy.

[sreigle]

J&D, I can only speak for what works for us. When we first started fulltiming, three days was a fairly long time in one place and a week was a very long time. We were in that excited stage where we tried to see everything as quickly as possible. I call that "vacation mode."

Then we stayed one place for a month. And found we like it. We had time to see all the usual tourist sites. We had time to see a lot of places in the area most tourist didn't know exist. We had time to relax and be retired as well as to do laundry, cleaning, maintenance, etc. We had time to just point the truck in a direction and go explore. We had time to truly experience an area, not just see it. And we found we love this way of getting to know this country.

However, there are places where a month would be too long. We try to plan the length of our stay according to what we find out about an area. Sometimes we'll decide to extend our stay. In Gatlinburg, TN, next to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we stayed a month, then extended for two weeks. The rv park owner was willing to give us two weeks for half the monthly rate since we'd already been there for a month. And you know what, we want to go back there for more.

And, to top it off, the monthly rate is generally a major cost savings. It varies from park to park but I think for us the monthly rate averages out to about 2 1/2 weeks of the weekly rate. Sometiems less, sometimes more.

This is just what works for us. No guarantees it would work for anyone else. If you had told me four years ago we'd be staying a month in many places I would have laughed at you.

[adelmoll]

We do the same thing as Steve and Vicki except that we fly by the seat of our pants. We just take off and go and stop when we get tired. Many times that is only about 50 miles and other times it is 300 miles (looooong day) but we find a place and book for a couple of nights and sometimes change it to a month or more.

We are in Fredericksburg, TX now and only planned on staying here for two weeks but we like it so much that we will extend it until we get ready to leave. Where we are right now is $10.00 less for a month than we paid for two weeks but electricitiy is extra. The owner told us that we should read out meter when we came in and if we stayed longer they would give us the monthly rate. We will stay longer.

Helen

[tom41]

J&D , we usually stay anywhere from 3 days to as long as 14 days, mostly at state parks, and in their seasons, the COE parks. We do stay a month at certain times of the yr. like at Christmas time we stay in nashville a month to spend Christmas with our familys, then to florida for a month in jan. from there we travel 3 to 14 day stays, then in april a month in chattanooga to do a craft festival, then on the road again, till Oct, then to chattanooga for another month and 2 country fairs. this way we dont get bored just sitting. This works for us, every one will find what works for them just as you will. just take your time and enjoy what you like to do. You will make so many new friends, learn some new games to play, new foods to enjoy, interesting places you never knew existed. We travel very few interstate hwys. mostly good US hwys and many back roads. thats where the "real" America is. Also if you decide to travel the byways of America, get a "truckers atlas" this tells all the over passes, sure dont wantta get caught with no place to turn around! lol!

[Garin1]

J&D, I have been "long timing" for quite a while now. Usually several months in the same park. I have found that if you are planning to stay for a couple of weeks get the space for a month. Most places I have stayed at the two week rent is the same as one month. It gives the option to stay two more weeks at no additional cost if there is something come up that we just have to do,see,play,ride,etc,

[virgil47]

It took us about 3 months to get out of the "vaction mode". After that, we really enjoyed staying in one place a month at a time...assuming we made a good choice to start with. I really like Steve's quote "to experience a place rather than just to see it". Made a big positive difference to us.

[Montana Sky]

I stay in the same park for six months. Usually throughout that period I throw in a few trips here and there. I hate making plans, more of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of fella.

[simonsrf]

As new fulltimers, we have 2 cents to add here.

We’ve been fulltiming just over 6 months, so this hardly makes us experts, but we have been able to adjust our desires to make our new flexible living affordable and interesting.

In the beginning, we were on vacation mode, like Steve, and we found that our schedule was not ours, but rather when we could make it to our relative’s towns on their schedule. Things have changed.

Today, our outlook on plans is our own. Yes, it took us some time to figure out that this is our life and we want to have everything our way. That being said, we prefer to boondock (dry camp) whenever we can.

We spend lots of time researching our camping spots, and as time has gone by, we have found so many spots that we can camp for free!....and with a view that is uncompromised!

We supplement our boondocking time with our camping memberships. This seems to work well for us. We use these memberships for time to “restock” and get ready for what we love. We try to keep our camping fees low, and we can usually make it for less than $50 a month.

Staying in one place does have benefits (no packing/unpacking, new friends, and cost). We have stayed twice for more than 3 weeks (family requests) in one place….but, the hitch-itch had us pretty strong. Our internet research just keeps us ready to go see a new campsite! We are always excited to unhook and “go-see” what the area has to offer, we’ve have been so pleasantly surprised so many times that we look forward to the next experience.

Also, I might add that boondocking keeps our costs low. So, to answer your question, we rarely unhitch for less than 3 days. We do not normally pay monthly rentals. Spending a week in a commercial RV Park is very beneficial to us sometimes, but more than a week is tough……….IMHO.

BTW, we never travel on weekends!

[sreigle]

Robbie's comments reminded me of what we consider another benefit of staying in one place awhile when we are somewhere with lots we want to see or do. That is that we avoid tourist locations on the weekends. We let the other tourists do that. We do our sightseeing during the week, when places are not so crowded. Weekends we do our shopping, laundry, cleaning, planning. This works well for us.

[simonsrf]

Gee Steve and Vicki,

You sound like you have some experience!!

Yep, we do exactly the same. Weekends are for shopping, laundry, and bills, maintenance, and on Saturday we take a bath ()whether we need it or not.

We know very few longtimers that go see the "sights" on the weekend. Fulltiming gives us the ability to do what we want when we want to do it. This concept is very simple, but hard to manage sometimes.

[rrheik]

We like to stay 2 or 3 months at a time at one place. We just finished 3 1/2 months at a park in Gulf Shores, Alabama and kept busy the whole time enjoying new friends and old friends alike. We found plenty to do in the Pensacola/Mobile area. In fact, we are going back to the same park the first of Dec. until the first of April, camping with three other couples from the Midwest who we met during our last stay. In the middle of May we are off to Helena, Mt. for 3 1/2 months to camp with various Canadian friends. We also like to go for a week at a time around home in Texas. Next summer our Canadian friends and us plan to go to So. Dakota and Wy. for three months. Just discovered a pretty little rv park on a lake in Onalaska, Tx, which is fairly new, with lots of wide concrete spaces. No shade as of yet though, but the fishing is excellent and owners are friendly, so that is definitely on our list of short trips. Discovered it when we stopped by Escapee Hq. to set up our mail service for the year.
Enjoy what ever you do, anytime on the road is always great.
PS: Helen and Bill, glad you are enjoying our favorite spot in Texas, Fredericksburg, hope you are going to Lucken. on Friday or Saturday nights.

bob

[vabluebird]

Bob, Where in Gulf Shores did you stay. We are hoping to go full time next year, if not sooner. We can not affort the nightly rate but would be interested in staying a month. We are 6 months in FL and need to find affordable parks in the north from April 1st to Oct 1st.

[rrheik]

Salle, we stayed at Island Retreat RV park and really enjoyed it. It is close to town, has a great bicycle trail, and the people that run it are great.. We boooked back in for Dec through March. The sites go very fast because many people are returnees. We had to book by Feb 14th to get our same site, and about 70% of our neighbors did the same thing. Rates in wwinter are about $425, including electricity. We found another new park that we really liked called Anchors Away, which has nice concrete pads, and is close to town. It is managed by a very nice young couple. It does not have any shade as yet, being relatively new. Steve and Vicki stayed at a nice park as well. Gulf Shores is great because it is close to Mobile and Pensacola, and has a lot of great dining. There is a really good Montana dealer just up the road from Gulf Shores called Emerald Coast Rv, who has a good service department. Hope this helps.

bob

[vabluebird]

Thanks Bob,
We'll keep them in mind. Right now we are looking for parks with reasonable monthly rates in the north country. Anyone got any favorites in South Dakota?

[clutch]

Last winter was our first long time experience and we spent four months in a park in Arizona in our 24' travel trailer. When we came back home we started shopping for a bigger trailer and bought our Mountaineer 5th wheel. Next winter will be a lot more comfortable and we will be returning to the same park.

[dandt]

Going full-time in November but our winter plans will not change. We will stay form Nov 1st till April 1st at Fountain of Youth RV Resort south of palm springs. Great park, lots to do and close enough to a lot to be comfortable with long stay. Only 1740$ for 4 months and that includes utilities ! Summer stays will probably be shorter as ther is just more to see when the weather is nice.