RV Clubs: Are They Worth It?

With so many RV Clubs out there, how do you know which ones are worth it and which ones aren’t? Depending on your travel style, the clubs that work for us, may not be best for you and vice versa. Here’s a rundown of the clubs we’re members of and the value we see in each of them. If you’d rather watch in video format, I filmed a video for Campers Inn about RV Clubs last year that I’m embedding below.

Good Sam
Good Sam is what I consider the “catch all” of RV clubs. While not every park offers a Good Sam discount, a good majority of them do. The club is cheap to join and it gets you a discount on merchandise at Camping World which, truthfully, probably provides us more value than the discounts we receive at campgrounds for being Good Sam members. The campground discounts are almost like an extra perk of receiving the club member discounts at Camping World stores. The campgrounds that offer Good Sam discounts are normally only about 10% off and while that’s better than nothing, a $50/night only goes down to $45 with your discount which isn’t really that great of a deal. We don’t actively seek out Good Sam parks like we do some of our other memberships, but we will stay at a Good Sam park over another park if the rate is decent.

Thousand Trails
Thousand Trails is the most expensive camping club to join, but if you use the club right, you can really save a ton of money. You can’t join this club for less than $500, but if you take advantage of some of their specials, you can get extra months added on, extra regions, and a variety of other things based on their deals that typically fall around holidays or new seasons (fall special, President’s Day special, etc.). If you’re attending an RV show, that’s always the best time to buy into Thousand Trails because you’ll get the best deals there. If you’re looking at buying into the club and there’s an RV show happening soon that you can attend to buy in, it is well worth the drive to the show and the cost of admission for the extra benefits and discounts you can get.

We don’t use our Thousand Trails membership as much as we probably could, but when we do, we take full advantage of it. In 2018, we stayed at the Hershey Thousand Trails park during the Hershey RV Show. The cost to stay at any parks in the area were inflated because of the popular show; however, we stayed our maximum amount of 14 nights there and that more than paid for our cost of membership which we bought for 3 years. Now, for the next 3 years, anytime we stay at a Thousand Trails campground with our membership, we’re staying for free and in the positive based on how much we paid for our membership.

Thousand Trails does come with a few cons though that you should be aware of before joining. If you’ve never stayed at a Thousand Trails campground before, you don’t know what it’s like to get to your site. It’s something like being a Gladiator. Fight to the death. Fight for your site. Do everything you can to get the site you want or need. Drive in circles trying to find the right site. Lay down on the ground in a site so someone else doesn’t take it. Ok, kidding. That’s a little dramatic. We do love our Thousand Trails membership, but I would go as far as saying – IT IS STRESSFUL to pull in and not know if there’s going to be a site long enough to fit your RV, to not know if there will be a full hook up site available, and everything that comes with finding your site at their campgrounds. Read everyone’s reviews online before buying in. Take everything into consideration. Test out checking in at one of their campgrounds before buying into the membership. Make sure the stress is worth the savings for you.

The other negative aspect of a Thousand Trails membership is their 14 (or 21) night policy based on your membership level. When we stay at a Thousand Trails campground over a certain amount of nights and up to 14 nights, we have to be out of the Thousand Trails system for a certain number of days. Ultimately, this just keeps people from living off the Thousand Trails system and never paying fees, but it does make it challenging to travel solely using their memebership. It’s still valuable, but sometimes you have to wait a few extra days before you can check in using their system.

Honestly, I think Thousand Trails is most valuable if you travel on vacations like spring break, winter break, and even weekends away, but only if there are a bunch of different Thousand Trails campgrounds in your close travelling area. Since you don’t have to deal with the “14 Days In” and a certain number of days out issue if you’re only traveling a short period of time.

Passport America
Passport America is another great one we bought into because honestly, one night a year normally covers the cost of membership so everything over that first night each year puts you in the positive financially. Passport America campgrounds typically (from our experience) aren’t necessarily the nicest or newest campgrounds, but they’re great for one night stops during travel stretches. We typically use them for booking pull through sites when we don’t want to unhook the fifth wheel. They’re normally not in the most common of areas either so sometimes we have to drive a little out of the ways to get to our campground, but we’ve had times where we’ve paid only $10 to stay at a full hook up site with our Passport America discount. The discount is normally about 50% off, but it varies from campground to campground.

KOA
Kampgrounds of America mostly referred to as KOA is one of our most used camping clubs – truthfully, because of the convenience and the almost guarantee of a nice campground. We typically will book most of our stays from location to location at KOA Journey campgrounds because they are normally within about 2 miles of the interstate (if not closer). We will pretty much book a KOA without even seeing pictures if we know it is in a good area – simply because we trust the KOA name and brand. While this isn’t always my recommendation to book sight unseen, we’re willing to do that with KOA campgrounds. The discount itself is only 10% off the regular nightly rate, but you can earn rewards with them that can be redeemed for free nights or additional discounts. If you stay enough with KOA, you can become a VIP with them which brings additional benefits like a reduced or eliminated cancellation fee which is normally about $10, but is eliminated most of the time when you become a VIP.

The truth about KOA for us is we simply trust their campgrounds and know each campground goes through rigorous reviews each year to continue meeting quality standards of the brand. We love KOA so much that we’re not only members, but we’ve been workampers with them in several locations and have been for a few seasons. We were KOA loyalists prior to becoming workampers and that’s just fueled our love for their campgrounds even more – say hello to some great amenities – especially in the KOA Holidays and KOA Resorts.

Start Your Campfire with the Pull of a String: Pull Start Fire Review

Have you ever had that moment while camping where you feel like Tom Hanks in Castaway? No, not where you’re starving because there’s no food, but the moment when you make a campfire and you realize, “I have made fire!” “I. HAVE. MADE. FIRE.”

via GIPHY

I feel that way right now because we have found the ultimate of ultimate campfire must-haves. Pull Start Fire is the fool proof, easy way to start fire. Half the battle at the campground is getting the fire started and keeping it going, but Pull Start Fire lets you literally pull a string to start your fire.

Pull Start Fire - pull string to start the fire - full time rv family - freeway gypsy

Here’s how it works.

After you open your package, you start stacking up your logs in the firepit. The Pull Start Fire package shows 3 logs stacked flat in your pit, so that’s what we did. On one of the logs, you wrap the green string around the log, then continue stacking your tower of firewood. Once you’re ready, you yank the red string and BOOM, you’ve made fire. When you’re attaching the green string to a log, make sure you’re stack of logs is pretty solid. The first time we pulled the red string, we pulled the whole Pull Start Fire firestarter off – operator error! – we simply hadn’t secured it well enough. We made sure to lodge the logs in the fire pit a little more so they couldn’t move when we pulled the string.

Once we got our fire started, it lasted for well over an hour – plenty of time to make say 20 marshmallows or so. 😉 Ok, we didn’t make quite that many, but it was pretty close!

And speaking of roasting marshmallows and cooking food over that open flame, Pull Start Fire is made from recyclable material and is non-toxic so it’s totally safe to cook over! Since we love cooking over campfire, we’re so excited to have Pull Start Fire to get our fires started a bit quicker when we’re ready to eat!

Pull Start Fire claims it will last 30 minutes and will start wet logs, withstand rain, and can stay lit in winds of over 200 miles per hour. We haven’t had a chance to test it in rain or wind yet, but we sure plan to! (Keep an eye out on our Instagram for wind and rain tests soon!)

We’re totally loving this product and we became instant fans the moment we pulled the string to light the fire! If you’re interested in purchasing your own, be sure to visit their website. You can purchase online and in some KOA campgrounds and also some REI locations across the country. You can purchase as a pack of 3 so you get a few fires out of each purchase!

*We’d like to extend a huge thanks to Pull Start Fire for sponsoring this blog post and sending us some samples of their Firestarter. You can find 3 packs of Pull Start Fire online here and individual firestarters in store at some KOA campgrounds and some REI stores across the country. While this is a sponsored post, the opinions are 100% our own and are not impacted by the receiving of the product.*

Trip Planning Tips & Tricks for RV Travels

We get so many questions about trip planning and how we go about setting our route for our RV travels. We recently did a video for Campers Inn RV talking about how we plan our trips and you can watch that here or keep reading for even more details.

Whether you’re living in your RV full-time or you’re simply hitting the road for a vacation, trip planning plays a huge role in the success of your trip. With proper planning, your trip can have the upmost success; however, if you don’t plan properly, it’s easy to get overwhelmed on the road while trying to figure out where to go next. We always spend lots of time planning ahead as we’re planners more so than “go out and stop at the next campground” type people – not that there’s anything wrong with. I envy those who have success with that, but my Enneagram type 1 personality comes out and doesn’t let me do that. I’m a natural planner.

And by planner, I mean, we have a giant physical map, a Sharpie, and a bottle of Goo Gone. We start by sketching out places we’d like to go on the map and then we bring in an online trip planning tool called the RV Trip Wizard to help plan out our exact campgrounds based on the route we want to take. This tool is such a gem for us. It costs about $40 a year and it’s the best tool I’ve found for trip planning.

You enter your information such as average distance on a tank of gas for your vehicle, RV height, and how long you like to travel in a day. The RV Trip Wizard takes all of that into account when showing you what campgrounds are in the area that you’ll end up staying based on your driving distance preference.
The app warns you about clearances that are close to your maximum height.
The tool even provides information on gas stations along your route which is particularly helpful for larger rigs like ours. Since we prefer to hit truck stop style gas stations like Love’s, Pilot, Flying J, and Travel America, the tool helps us plan how far we’ll go before we stop for gas and even the exact gas station we’ll stop at during our travels. This helps alleviate any uneasiness that sometimes accompanies travel days – particularly in rural areas where you don’t know where the next gas station might be located.

Because we work from the road, cell phone service is imperative for us to have and is a huge part of our trip planning process. We use an app called Coverage and it displays all the major carriers in 1 map for you. This is great for us because we utilize multiple carriers to cover more land area with cell phone and data hotspot coverage. This app lets us pull up the map for our multiple carriers at one time instead of having to flip back and forth between carrier websites. We pay a yearly fee for the premium version of this app, but you can definitely use the basic version of the app for just the app purchase fee of a few dollars.

We also really like the State Lines app (which was created by the same team that created the Coverage app). It lists each state and the various laws you might want to be aware of.

Examples include, default speed limits, whether you are allowed to right turn on red, emergency phone numbers beyond 911 like highway patrol numbers, maximum tow lengths and speeds, whether or not you’re allowed to triple tow, rest area overnight rules – that’s an important one to know whether or not you’re allowed to sleep at rest areas or not

You can actually purchase those apps as a package deal. You’ll get 3 apps if you purchase the package and it also includes a public lands map which is great if you like to boondock. We personally always need full hookups due to our work so we don’t use this app, but we have it in case we ever need it.

On a more fun note, let’s talk food apps. I love the TV Food Maps app and website. While the app infrastructure is a little slow sometimes, it shows you if there is any food in your area that has been featured on a tv show on channels like Food Network, Travel Channel, or the Cooking Channel. Since we love watching these shows so much, we love this app. It helps us find unique places to eat that we likely wouldn’t have found without the app.

A big thing for us is checking the weather. We mostly utilize Weather.com for that. We check both current temperatures and historical temperatures, rainfall, and anything else we may need to know about an area. This is definitely important for trip planning especially if you plan to be somewhere for a significant amount of time. Do you have the equipment and the rig to stay warm in below freezing temperatures? More importantly, do you want to be in below freezing temperatures? While the weather might not be totally predictable, you can at least see what the average temperature is like before you get to an area.

What else do you use to plan your trips? Be sure to let us know what you use in the comments and tell us what we should be using if you think we’re missing something. We’re always looking for new trip planning tools just like you. We’d love to know if we missed anything that you love to use!

Full-Time RVers – Campground Reviews: Florida Keys Edition feat. Campers Inn RV

Florida-Keys-Campground-Review-Campers-Inn-RV-Park-Full-Time-RV-Blog-Freeway-Gypsy

The Florida Keys boast so many campgrounds, it can be difficult to choose where to stay.We recommend camping in a centrally located area like Grassy Key in Marathon, Fla., so you can easily visit the other islands. Grassy Key is a short drive to popular destinations like Islamorada (30 minutes), Key Largo (1 hour) or Key West (1 hour and 15 minutes).

Since everyone has different campground preferences, we are reviewing two parks that are similar in price and located less than a mile apart from each other: Grassy Key RV Park & Resort and Jolly Roger RV Resort.

>> To view the full post, please visit the Campers Inn RV Blog.

7 Things All RVers Should Have on Board

Road & Home RV Supplies Full-Time RV Blog Family

We’ve been on the road full-time for a little over a year now, so I think it is about time for a must-have list! Whether you’re new to the RV lifestyle or you’ve been living or traveling in your RV for years, there’s just certain items you should always have on board with you. Here’s my list of 7 things every RVer should have on board.

Command Hooks – Let’s be real. Command Hooks were secretly invented for RVs. Ok, maybe they weren’t actually invented for RVs, but there truly is no better way to hang and organize items without drilling holes or damaging walls. With the various types of hooks available now, you can use Command Hooks to organize just about anything in your RV. We use them for everything from key hooks to cord organizers to décor hangers.
Diffuser – While this one might not be a necessity, a diffuser is a great substitute for candles. I love burning candles and the aroma they disperse across a room, but since it really isn’t safe to burn candles in an RV, I’m almost always diffusing scented oils for a clean, fresh environment.
Level – I hate when our RV doors slowly creep closed or the shower doesn’t quite drain all the way because we aren’t precisely level. While we might not always get it just right, we keep a small level right inside the door of the RV, so when we park at a new location, it is always easily accessible.
Tape Measure – While a tape measure is good to have on hand for a variety of uses, you can use it to determine if you have enough space to let your RV slides out. The worst thing is when you get parked and leveled, but you go to put your slides out only to find out you’re an inch too close to something like a tree or the electric box. Open your tape measure to your slides and use a permanent marker to mark your distances. If you have multiple slide depths, be sure to mark the various depths on your tape measure.
Surge Protector – I think it goes without saying that surge protectors are immensely valuable, but I often see people hooked up to electric without them. Don’t use the mentality of “There are no storms here” or “The power never goes out here” when deciding whether or not to use a surge protector. A power outage is always out of your hands, and it only takes one time for an electrical surge to cause damage. Did you know many of the RV surge protectors come with a replacement warranty? Some companies will replace your surge protector for free if it gets fried from a surge.
Tire Pressure Gauge – Never leave for a trip without checking your tire pressure. We travel with an air compressor in our front storage so we can always fill our tires on the go. While you may not have room (or the weight capacity) for an air compressor, a tire pressure gauge weighs next to nothing. Keep one in a handy location and check your tire pressure before traveling in your RV. This will help keep you and your family a little safer on the road. Plus, tire pressure is a huge contributor to gas mileage.
Extra Hookup Supplies – No matter how you travel in your RV, whether it be casual travels or full-time living, you should always have extra supplies for hooking up at campsites. We see so many people purchasing longer water hoses, additional sewer hoses, and even new electrical cords from campground stores. While it is nice that a lot of campgrounds have these items for purchase, they are frequently overpriced and often not exactly what you need. Most people buying in a campground store are purchasing out of necessity rather than by choice. By traveling with an extra set of hookups, you’ll always be prepared, no matter what situation may arise. Road & Home has put together a nifty Ready for the Road Checklist and we travel with extras of almost all the items on their list. You just never know what kind of campground setup or hazard you may run across while traveling!

*We’d like to extend a huge thanks to Road & Home for sponsoring this blog post and sending us a backpack of supplies including their Ready for the Road Checklist which you can find HERE. Road & Home products can be found online via their website and at many Lowe’s stores across the country.*

7 Things All RVers Should Have on Board

Command Hooks – Let’s be real. Command Hooks were secretly invented for RVs. Ok, maybe they weren’t actually invented for RVs, but there truly is no better way to hang and organize items without drilling holes or damaging walls. With the various types of hooks available now, you can use Command Hooks to organize just about anything in your RV. We use them for everything from key hooks to cord organizers to décor hangers.
Diffuser – While this one might not be a necessity, a diffuser is a great substitute for candles. I love burning candles and the aroma they disperse across a room, but since it really isn’t safe to burn candles in an RV, I’m almost always diffusing scented oils for a clean, fresh environment.
Level – I hate when our RV doors slowly creep closed or the shower doesn’t quite drain all the way because we aren’t precisely level. While we might not always get it just right, we keep a small level right inside the door of the RV, so when we park at a new location, it is always easily accessible.
Tape Measure – While a tape measure is good to have on hand for a variety of uses, you can use it to determine if you have enough space to let your RV slides out. The worst thing is when you get parked and leveled, but you go to put your slides out only to find out you’re an inch too close to something like a tree or the electric box. Open your tape measure to your slides and use a permanent marker to mark your distances. If you have multiple slide depths, be sure to mark the various depths on your tape measure.
Surge Protector – I think it goes without saying that surge protectors are immensely valuable, but I often see people hooked up to electric without them. Don’t use the mentality of “There are no storms here” or “The power never goes out here” when deciding whether or not to use a surge protector. A power outage is always out of your hands, and it only takes one time for an electrical surge to cause damage. Did you know many of the RV surge protectors come with a replacement warranty? Some companies will replace your surge protector for free if it gets fried from a surge.
Tire Pressure Gauge – Never leave for a trip without checking your tire pressure. We travel with an air compressor in our front storage so we can always fill our tires on the go. While you may not have room (or the weight capacity) for an air compressor, a tire pressure gauge weighs next to nothing. Keep one in a handy location and check your tire pressure before traveling in your RV. This will help keep you and your family a little safer on the road. Plus, tire pressure is a huge contributor to gas mileage.
Extra Hookup Supplies – No matter how you travel in your RV, whether it be casual travels or full-time living, you should always have extra supplies for hooking up at campsites. We see so many people purchasing longer water hoses, additional sewer hoses, and even new electrical cords from campground stores. While it is nice that a lot of campgrounds have these items for purchase, they are frequently overpriced and often not exactly what you need. Most people buying in a campground store are purchasing out of necessity rather than by choice. By traveling with an extra set of hookups, you’ll always be prepared, no matter what situation may arise. Road & Home has put together a nifty Ready for the Road Checklist and we travel with extras of almost all the items on their list. You just never know what kind of campground setup or hazard you may run across while traveling!

Full-Time RVers – Campground / RV Park Review: Yosemite RV Resort an RVC Destination – Coarsegold, California

This post is way overdue! We stayed at Yosemite RV Resort – an RVC Destination just about a week after bring Cash home in October. It was great for us because it gave him plenty of space to run around with not many people around since we were here during the off season. They were dealing with the dry California weather while we were there so everything was very dusty, but there was nothing they could do about it. We can only imagine how beautiful this place must be when they aren’t in a drought. There are so many beautiful hills that would be green grass if there wasn’t such a water shortage.

This place has the best bath house I’ve ever seen. The stalls are huge with hooks for hanging clothes, towels, and more. They also have fully locking doors instead of just curtains you pull – this is a huge plus in my book! The entire shower area was fully tiled and seemed very new. The water was so hot, it could burn you. I love when I can’t turn the water all the way on high heat!

The laundry room here is decent, but not fantastic. While it was very close to our campsite, it was just your standard laundry room. Nothing about it stood out as above average, but there was nothing wrong with it either.

They do a great job at ensuring activities around for all ages. There was a pool up front near the office and there was a bounce house right near us. Each morning, they would come blow up the bounce house around 10 am and each night, they would come deflate it for the evening. There was also a very large dog park for dogs to run around free reign. If our new pup wasn’t so little, we definitely would have taken advantage of the large fenced in area for him, but he was too young to be in areas where other dogs have been.

This park was pretty convenient to Yosemite, but it was still an hour away. There were a couple of small little towns in between us, but nothing major. We were only here for a weekend so we could visit Yosemite and that was long enough for us. While the park was nice, there wasn’t much else around. There were very few restaurants in the area, but we did find this great whiskey distillery in the area called Oakhurst Spirits Distillery. We love visiting these unique, local distilleries. They’re always so different, but the best part is always listening to the stories of why and how they got started.

If you’re looking for some of our pictures from Yosemite National Park – go to this blog post for those.

Not Just a Dream – Our 1 Year Full-Time RV Living Anniversary

Full Time RV Blog Lifestyle 1 Year Anniversary

Dreamers dream.

Doers do.

But can we be dreamers and doers?

Absolutely.

Will it be easy?

No.

Will it be worth it?

Absolutely.

Nothing worth it is ever easy.

We’ve officially been on the road for 1 year as of June 18, 2018. While we started living in our RV a few months before we started traveling the RV, we’re calling this date our anniversary. This is the date we chose to quit just thinking about doing what we wanted to do and we actually did it. We haven’t had a city to call home in over a year and that’s quite thrilling. We’ve had temporary homes, but no permanent homes. At this point, we barely even consider Jacksonville our “home base.” Sure, it’s still where we go to doctor appointments, receive our mail, and have a storage unit that keeps getting smaller and smaller, but we have no physical presence there anymore.

In the last year, we’ve:

visited 25 different states
upgraded to a new camper
had a puppy join our family
met hundreds of nice fellow RVers
checked about a million things off our bucket list

The number one question we’re asked is: Where is your favorite place you’ve been? And, without any hesitation, all 3 of us will always answer South Dakota. We loved Custer State Park and Badlands National Park so much and those locations were some of our very first stops – only about 2 weeks into our adventure.

This is just a shout out to anyone out there even thinking about taking a risk and doing something crazy. Whether that’s making the decision to go full-time RVing or anything else life may be throwing your way, kudos to you for even thinking about making a move and doing something crazy. And for all of you thinking about starting the full-time RV journey, reach out to us if there’s anything we can do to help ease your nerves. We’re huge advocates of the lifestyle and would love to help give you that push to start the journey like we did. You definitely won’t regret it!

Full-Time RVers Visit Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park Full-Time RV Blog Family

Yosemite was stunning and completely unlike anything else we’ve seen. These gorgeous rock formations are so unique and beautiful to observe. It is no wonder so many people go rock climbing at Yosemite. I must say, we were a bit nervous about visiting as just the week before, a group of rock climbers were injured as some of the rock formations collapsed.

With one road in and the same road out (along with lots of construction at the park), we felt like it was quite busy for the off-season. (We were there in October and I wrote this post back then – I know, call me out for being a slacker and not getting these pictures posted!) It took a long time to get to the parking lot area and the gift shop ran out of ice cream on this record hot day, but we were able to enjoy the gorgeous views with the new pup in hand! He stole the show and there was even a line to pet him at one point. He loved the attention and was so sweet with all the kids asking to pet him. He’s such a trooper!

While we were visiting Yosemite, we saw so many rental RVs around and we couldn’t help but me reminded of our start! Before we were full-time RVers, we used to rent RVs to travel. Ultimately, renting RVs is how we fell in love with the lifestyle. Back when we were renting, options were super limited, but nowadays, there are so many options including RVshare. We seriously would have loved if RVshare was around back when we were renting RVs!

Full-Time RVers Visit Las Vegas – Britney Spears “Piece of Me” Concert at The Axis in Planet Hollywood Hotel & Casino

Britney Spears Piece Of Me Tour Las Vegas RV Travel Blog

Britney. Freaking. Spears.

I’ve only wanted to go to a Britney Spears concert since I was 8 years old.

Actually, when I was 8 years old, I wanted to BE Britney Spears. There’s video to prove that (below) with some less-than-impressive 8-year-old singing and choreography, too. I’ve always been *extremely* graceful. Just kidding. Not graceful. Not even close. Now that I’m thinking about it, why am I putting this video on the internet? Also, green corduroy overalls with matching hat – Britney would have never worn that.

So, I bought tickets and convinced my BFF to fly out to Vegas for the concert. It was everything 8-year-old me dreamed of and more. Not to mention, her Vegas residency ended just a few weeks after the concert we went to which makes this a story about a girl named Lucky (see what I did there ;).

PS. I know there is a lot of controversy about whether Britney Spears sings or not during her concerts. For once in my life, I didn’t care if someone was singing or not because it was Britney Spears – and she’s queen – she can do what she wants. PSS. She says she has a background vocal track playing and she sings along with it. PSSS. I still don’t care. She’s Britney Spears. She can do what she wants.