BEST RV CLUBS AND GROUPS TO JOIN WHEN RETIRING

[Poohper]

Hello,

My husband and I are thinking about retirement and traveling in our Travel trailer. We still have about 6 years but we are starting to do our homework now in finding out what clubs/memberships for travel discounts in RV parks we should join and if we should join any camping groups for more social activities. We live in Southern California and will be traveling around the United States. I love little towns so we will be staying away from the big cities. We have a list going but there are so many to choose from- Thousand Trails, Passport America, Harvest Host, America the beautiful pass, Recreation.gov,The Corp of engineers, Campendium.com, Hipcamp.com, Gov.org,
National park senior pass, NationalParkService.gov, Nevada senior pass, Golden age pass, KOA, boondockerswelcome.com, Coast to coast premier membership, Escapees RV club, Good Sams, BLM Land - bureau of land management. Thanks!

[doxiemom11]

Passport America is the one we ended up with after 10 years. For a quick overnight, there are many PA parks at $30.00 and under. Also rvparky.com has been very helpful in finding parks in different areas where there are few parks, or no discount parks for the area. City and county parks are often a good deal. We also love staying at Corp of Engineer parks with our federal pass. Beautiful campgrounds, sites and half off with the pass.

[Nutinelse2do]

Bill.Satellite wrote:
Things are likely to be very different in 5 years. Post again in about 4 1/2 years for any information that might be useful.

This

[Edd505]

Escapees, Pass Port America, Good Sams covers us coast to coast.

[Bill_Satellite]

Things are likely to be very different in 5 years. Post again in about 4 1/2 years for any information that might be useful.

[Second_Chance]

It all depends on what you want out of a membership. We have not found any membership to be a good dollar value if we are simply expecting discounts on RV parks and campgrounds (with the exception of the National Parks senior pass). We are members of Escapees because they provide our legal domicile and mail forwarding services (there are other ways to get these services, too). It's an added advantage when we happen to stay at Escapees parks across the country. The only value we've found in a Good Sam's membership is the Pilot/Flying J RV Plus fuel card (works like a charge card with a fuel discount for diesel at the truck pumps). We are members of FMCA for their medical repatriation and emergency assistance insurance. A plus for that membership for us is that their only campground in the country is ten minutes from two of our grandkids. We have recently let our Passport America membership expire as we weren't getting our money's worth out of it (too many restrictions). We don't stay at KOA often enough to make that worthwhile, either. The "membership" we use the most is the US military. Being retired Army, we stay at military FamCamps a lot. Save your money and do the rest of your planning. As suggested above, hit the road for a while and then figure out what you need.

Rob

[FULLTIMEWANABE]

Poohper, most comment a year or two or three into their FT travels that they joined too many memberships and never used them, and typically drop more than 50% from their arsenal.

Before you join see how you want to travel and what likely appeals to your mode of travelling. Maybe add 1000 trails after being on the road a bit to see the validity of it being one of the more expensive ones. Also they might not be in the areas you want to travel, and you then start changing your plans to accommodate where those CGs are instead of maybe where you want to really be going. Just saying.

Many can easily be added to your arsenal as you are out and about on the road. We thought we'd like and use several but in reality we've only ended up using Passport America for one year to save us in built up areas when we did California trip in 2018 = San Diego, Santa Barbara, Napa Valley and Oasis Las Vegas (they don't offer it any more!). Any popular parks will start to drop this over time or put too tight restrictions on it being of any benefit.

By all means researching into all available is good, but just a heads up to save some bucks, maybe gingerly join as and when you find you can definitely benefit from them as you go.

Just my 2 cents for which today due to inflation, isn't worth 1 cent LOL.

PS: Also remember that there are more and more RVers on the road today than ever, so maybe even getting into certain places can become a challenge = membership or not!

[Poohper]

A friend just mentioned they belong to Thousand Trails. does anyone else like them?

[Lwiddis]

The federal senior interagency pass isn’t a club or group. It allows no cost entrance to federal lands and a camping discount. Now $80 it’s a great deal for those old enough.