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.

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!

The Basics Of RV Camping: How To Get Started And Ensure A Safe Trip

I’d like to welcome a guest writer to the blog today! Welcome Aurora James!

Camping via recreational vehicles opens up a world of opportunities and enticing adventures. You can pack up the RV and hit the road for a variety of destinations, but if this type of camping is new to you, there are some tips you should be aware of before you begin. Get to know your vehicle and plan ahead of time so you have a safe and fun trip.

Work With Your RV Before Your Trip Begins

Get to know your RV before heading out on your first trip. An RV can be intimidating to drive if you are not used to them, and you don’t want to ruin a scheduled vacation with troubles on the road due to inexperience.

Your RV will be bigger than what you are accustomed to driving, and you will find blind spots that you need to work around. Find an open spot to do some practice driving and be aware of height clearances and other potential pitfalls.

In addition to driving practice, you should spend time doing a set-up run through. As RV Share points out, you don’t want to be at the campsite setting up for the first time and realize you don’t know what to do or don’t have everything you need. Do a test run in your driveway from start to finish so you build a comfort level for doing it away from home.

Pre-Planning Sets the Stage for a Smooth Trip

Whether this is the first time all year you’ve cranked up the RV or you’ve been using it every other weekend, it is important to prep your RV before each use. Develop a checklist to go through before your trip begins. Do a walk-around inspection to ensure that all of the lights are functioning, that the tire pressure is at the appropriate level, and that all items are properly stowed and secured. In addition, take a few minutes to check antennas, awnings, and other items that could easily break if forgotten.

Another key pre-trip planning component with RV camping is to thoroughly plan your route before your departure. Outdoorsy notes that you will want to avoid rush hour through big cities in a vehicle like this, for example, and look ahead for mountainous roads that would be difficult to navigate in a large RV.

Plan your departure time for early in the day if you can. You want to allow time for unexpected stops or routing changes, and setting everything up in the dark can get complicated. Know the campground’s policies about arrival times so you don’t run into issues, as some have quiet hours in the evening and may even lock the gates.

Survey Campground Specifics as You Get Things in Place

Once you arrive, find your camping spot and look for obstacles on the ground or for tree branches above that could cause issues. Find the water, sewage, and electrical hookups, then level the RV and chock the wheels. Get everything connected to the campsite hookups and prepare to relax and begin to enjoy your vacation.

Campgrounds are typically quite safe, but KOA details that you should lock your RV whenever you leave the area, and keep windows and exterior storage compartments secured. In addition, you may want to ask parks about what security measures they employ. Do they have patrols at night? Can unregistered guests come and go easily?

RV camping is a great way to travel once you learn some basics. Invest time before your first trip getting to know your vehicle and get in the habit of doing a pre-trip inspection for every outing. Plan your route to avoid problematic areas during your drive and then once you are set up and secure you’ll have everything safely in place so you can enjoy the wonders around you.

Aurora James: Aurora believes there are no bad dogs. She created DogEtiquette.info to share her dog training tips and advice to dog owners everywhere.