One for Mick and Pat and anyone else who've toured US in an RV

[gulfbluersr]

Hi Mick and Pat,

Had a little look through some of your Canada blog photo's this morning looks like an amazing time you had there!!! we toured Florida in a car using hotels and motels for the last 2 Xmas's we looked in on a couple of RV camp sites just to get a feel for what it was like as we fancy doing a trip in an RV around some of USA, but the one's we looked at looked more like mostly fulltimers and not all the most inviting sort of places, also a bit out of the towns so without a tow car a bit isolated. Were we just looking at the wrong places or is this how it mostly is around US? Is it a case of planning needed to find the nice stops until you get a feel for things? Or find a good place and stay put for a while then take day trips out from there?

Steve

 

[paul&debra]

Hi Steve,

Debra and I did a 3 weeks only tour in an Rv about 20 years ago. We picked up a C Class rv in L.A and went down the Pacific coast highway to San Diego. A quick dip into Mexico, ( not worth the bother then) then across through Arizona and the Grand Canyon, Las Vagas and back to San Francisco. As we were caravaners in those days, we stayed on sites every night. I wouldn't bother so much now, but there were plenty of touring sites. But we never needed a toad, everywhere we wanted to go, we could drive to and park the rv. I will see you at Southport, if it is still there after this wind and have a chat.

 

[larryh]

We have hired RVs three times in the US, the first three week trip starting in San Francisco , taking in the sights of Alcatraz, the Golden gate, etc, then on to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Hoover Dam, Death Valley, Grand canyon Las Vegas , finishing in LA .

The second trip we stayed in Manhattan, and explored NY, picked up RV and headed north through Adirondack to Cape Cod, whale watching trip , Boston Then across into Canada, Toronto, Niagara then south back to New Jersey.

The last trip we did a Cruise America one way delivery trip which when new RVs need taking from Illinois to their hire depots at special rates.
We stayed in Michigan Ave Chicago for a few days, picked up RV and headed south to St Louis, then Memphis staying on the Heartbreak hotel RV park at Graceland, explored Memphis taking a riverboat ride on the Mississippi etc and picked up for evening meal in a pink Cadillac. Graceland was brilliant.
We then headed up to Tulsa to pick up Route 66 across to Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Alberquerque on to north rim Grand Canyon also took in Monument Valley, Zion and finally down to Las Vegas for a Celine Dion show at Caesars.
In all 3000 miles and four weeks

Fabulous trips with convenient RV parks with pools and often hot tubs added to the fun.

We hope to go again soon

 

[Mick and Pat]

Hi Steve, for our stay and tour of the US & Canada we invested in a company called 1,000 Trails http://www.thousandtrails.com/

Very basically this is like buying a time share for RVers, now what I'm going to say is what went on back in 2007/8 so things may have changed?

Thousandtrails as National US membership or West US or East US, East was the cheapest then West and obviously National the most expensive. Membership is for life that is unless you want to sell up and thats where the brokers come in and was from whom we bought a second hand National membership if my memory serves me correct fo around $1,000 which back in 2007 = £500.

Now the membership allows you to say on any of the sites for two weeks with nothing further to pay and most sites had 50 amp EHU ALL were full service and free wifi. After your two week stay you had to wait a week before you next stay........HOWEVER if you didn't mind staying only 4 nights you didn't have to stay off their sites.

I think that this is the broker we used www.membershipresale.com/available-parks/thousand-trails/

but don't quote me on it when we bought ours the broker was in an old shed type building on Highway27 near to where the 192 from Kissimmee joins it but after nearly two years touring when it came time to sell our membership on the broker had moved up Highway 27 to Clermont.

What did we do between the two week stays on a 1000 Trail site I hear you ask? Thats when we signed up again via the broker to a Coast to Coast membership, sounds very complicated but a Coast to Coast site similar to 1,000 Trails worked out at I think £10 pn again that included either 50 or 30 amp EHU

Hope this helps a little?

Mick

 

[sundowner]

sorry to put another slant on this ---but----we bought a Dodge pick-up in Texas-----bought a demountable camper in Oklahoma-----we did 17.000 miles in 5 months on our trip---we spent a month in Alaska and loads of other stuff------most nights were spent in Wallmart car parks (or similar) for free or on Forestry Commission camp-sites (cheap)------IMHO a big RV is a PITA in USA if you want to TRAVEL, and lots of Americans we spoke to (with RVs or 5ers) agreed with us.
If we ever did the same thing again we would not hesitate to use something like the RV's built on Sprinter type chassis, they are plenty big enough for two on a road trip, and you don't HAVE to spend huge bucks on camp-grounds.-----It all depends on what you want from a trip in US
Nigel & Pamala

 

[motor roamin]

You always hear people here saying those big Rv's are fine in the USA but not here because their roads are bigger........wrong load of rubbish yes a lot are........but Nigel is correct if you want to explore and go to national parks etc then 35' is plenty while like Mick you can do it in a 40' with a trailer the same as here there are some places you ain't going to

all the best Rick

 

[Mick and Pat]

The Americans have loads of free POI's as map push pin downloads that show the location of hundreds of useful locations for RVers even the RV friendly Walmarts all you need is the right software to see it, in our case it was Microsofts Streets & Tips which is the US vertion of Autoroute.

 

[gulfbluersr]

All very interesting thanks for the detailed replies It's a long term dream at the moment, last Christmas the idea was planted but to be honest we sort of chicken'd out of the RV route, we were still quite new to RVing and I did a bit of research into hiring a RV in Florida and worked out the cost to hire a RV for 3 weeks we could hire a car and do hotels which we had done the year before and knew it was safe and doable, that would then allow us to do a little investigating while we were there to see what it was all about.

I must admit that I was quite surprised by the RV sites we actually stopped and looked on, I guess they were not that bad just that there was so many just set up for full timing on it did not make them look like they wanted just short stop touring RV's I may be wrong but this was the impression we got....again this was not all of them but most!! And no we were not counting the obvious trailer park type site if you know what I mean!! I guess it could be perhaps we were in the wrong area for RV type holiday? Grand Canyon type area's I guess there is a lot more to see when on that type of trip. We did a flying tour over 3 weeks in 2012 and did Vegas for 4 nights, while we were there we did the helicopter ride out to the Grand Canyon and it sure was superb!! Back then Elaine was still recovering and no way could she coped with a big road trip tour, this was also some of the reason why we chicken'd out on the RV tour last Christmas, we knew she could cope with the car trip so decided to stick with it. This year we are planning Spain for a few weeks and longer if we can get away with it then next year if we like Spain hopefully go for longer but sooner or later we need to get the USA RV thing out of the system!!

Paul I remember we did talk a little about your road trip in US when we were trying to smoke out all our neighbours in Malvern one night, yes we need to talk more about it in Southport

Steve

 

[motor roamin]

All very interesting thanks for the detailed replies It's a long term dream at the moment, last Christmas the idea was planted but to be honest we sort of chicken'd out of the RV route, we were still quite new to RVing and I did a bit of research into hiring a RV in Florida and worked out the cost to hire a RV for 3 weeks we could hire a car and do hotels which we had done the year before and knew it was safe and doable, that would then allow us to do a little investigating while we were there to see what it was all about.

I must admit that I was quite surprised by the RV sites we actually stopped and looked on, I guess they were not that bad just that there was so many just set up for full timing on it did not make them look like they wanted just short stop touring RV's I may be wrong but this was the impression we got....again this was not all of them but most!! And no we were not counting the obvious trailer park type site if you know what I mean!! I guess it could be perhaps we were in the wrong area for RV type holiday? Grand Canyon type area's I guess there is a lot more to see when on that type of trip. We did a flying tour over 3 weeks in 2012 and did Vegas for 4 nights, while we were there we did the helicopter ride out to the Grand Canyon and it sure was superb!! Back then Elaine was still recovering and no way could she coped with a big road trip tour, this was also some of the reason why we chicken'd out on the RV tour last Christmas, we knew she could cope with the car trip so decided to stick with it. This year we are planning Spain for a few weeks and longer if we can get away with it then next year if we like Spain hopefully go for longer but sooner or later we need to get the USA RV thing out of the system!!

Paul I remember we did talk a little about your road trip in US when we were trying to smoke out all our neighbours in Malvern one night, yes we need to talk more about it in Southport

Steve

Remember if you were looking around Florida RV parks around Christmas time a vast majority will look like full timers as the snowbirds will be down for six months, summer looks different especially around the Orlando area.

 

[Elvis]

The Americans have loads of free POI's as map push pin downloads that show the location of hundreds of useful locations for RVers even the RV friendly Walmarts all you need is the right software to see it, in our case it was Microsofts Streets & Tips which is the US vertion of Autoroute.

Looks like autoroute is discounted now, not that big a problem as the POIs can be converted to tomtom (or garmin or whatever) reasonably easily.

 

[gulfbluersr]

Remember if you were looking around Florida RV parks around Christmas time a vast majority will look like full timers as the snowbirds will be down for six months, summer looks different especially around the Orlando area.

Good point Rick makes sense now because what we were seeing was not so much that they looked rough and unwelcoming it was more that most of the pitches were usually full and they were so obviously there for long term stay going by the way they were all set up which was why we thought they were more geared towards fulltime rather than touring pitches.
When we went last Christmas we did look at other parts of US but the weather is not the best over a lot of it so stuck with Florida..........good job as watching the weather reports on TV over there although we had a lot of rain for a lot of the 3 weeks the rest of the country was covered in snow and big time snow!! The whole point of going away is to get Elaine some warmer weather during the winter!!! They say we make a fuss here when it snows......more fuss made over there
Steve

 

[paulharrison]

When we went last Christmas we did look at other parts of US but the weather is not the best over a lot of it so stuck with Florida..........good job as watching the weather reports on TV over there although we had a lot of rain for a lot of the 3 weeks the rest of the country was covered in snow and big time snow!! The whole point of going away is to get Elaine some warmer weather during the winter!!! They say we make a fuss here when it snows......more fuss made over there
Steve[/QUOTE]

We went to Florida in June and it was 34deg in the morning clouded over afternoon and rained about 6pm nearly every day then by 7.30pm clear and sunny, we now go to Spain Sept till mid Nov
home for Xmas and back down here start March, as we find the days are short Dec and Jan so if she likes the sun theres plenty here now
Paul

 

[larryh]

We used mainly KOA (Campsites of America) which were not full timing type sites and catered well for touring by location and services on site including a pool , barbecues and log rings on fully serviced pitches.
They generally cost 25$ a night with free wi fi and 60a hook up so no problem with AC.
When sightseeing we found everywhere geared up for RVs, we had a 30 footer and visited theme parks, shopping areas, even the waterfront at St Louis and Memphis.
I had never driven an RV prior to our first trip and setting out from Oaklands and across the bridges of San Francisco Bay was a bit apprehensive but it was a piece of cake .

 

[gulfbluersr]

We are trying to to Spain but I'm contracted on some work in Cardiff and just up the road from us in Machynlleth the work was supposed to be started and finished over July and August, I have all the materials sat on site since early July as we were pushed to start then they hit problems with Network Rail and they are all arguing so job is just sat waiting to start, I've struggled to plan anything solid since July and I'm still unsure when the job will go I keep getting told it is close but that's been since July, we did actually start work......managed 2 days before they hit problems, gotta love the rail industry

Steve