Are membership campgrounds worth the $$

[Phil Saran]

I have been an Elk member for 4 years. Yes there is a simple induction ritual that you go through.

Dues amount depends on the lodge and what they offer. When I lived in Fullerton Ca. our dues were

about $135. a year. They have a lodge building, banquet facilities and offer 6 RV hook up sites at

a cost of about $25 a night for a max of 3 nights (city rule, not lodges).

 

When we moved to Colorado I transferred my membership to the newest lodge in the USA here in Douglas

County CO and my dues are $68. a year. But we do not have our own building so rent a space for our

meetings.

 

Yes you have to be a Elks member to use their RV sites. I have paid a low price of $10 for dry camping

up to the $25 previously mentioned.

 

Elks do more than just take your money, they provide help to Veterans, donate to food banks, scholarships

for students.

[bobsallyh]

Rynosback, what I meant was the joining of the lodge. They usually have a big initiation in February when Arizona is full of snowbirds.

[Onthego]

We decide the membership parks like Coast to Coast and Thousand Trails aren't something we wanted to join after we went fulltime 4 years ago. We use the Escapee Parks, Passport America, County parks and fairgrounds, Corp of Engineers parks and Elks Lodges mostly, except when boondocking in the Southwest.

 

Passport America is probably the best deal out there. The parks do vary greatly from nice to not so nice along with length of stays allowed. Do your research.

 

Jeff

[Jim & Alice]

My wife and I fulltime 10 months out of the year. We buy memberships where it facilitates our travel needs & patterns.

 

Accordingly we have Escapees (of course!), Thousand Trails, and Hart Ranch in South Dakota. We use these Park locations extensively and the cost is far exceeded by the savings and services we receive.

Jim

[Barbaraok]

Jim,

 

Sounds like us. I know alot of people swear that they are no good, but boy do we save a lot of money each year. Especially on the west coast, there are just loads of membership parks to use.

 

Barb

[Kirk W]

I know alot of people swear that they are no good, but boy do we save a lot of money each year.

Like most things in life, they are great if you like and use them but for us they would be a serious waste of money since we don't care for that lifestyle. I think that they make most of their money from people who buy be then seldom use them like those still working. We spent three months in a commercial RV park once when volunteering for San Antonio Missions NP and they had sold the property their volunteers normally stayed on and didn't yet have new RV sites. It was enough to convince us that there are no such parks we would care to spend extended periods in. Never again.

 

Fortunately we live in a country where people can still live where they wish and in the way that they wish.

 

[kb0zke]

Some time ago we took up the offer of a C2C campground of three nights for free in exchange for a couple of hours listening to a hard sell. We quickly realized two things: 1. we could never afford what they were selling, and 2. we liked what they were offering. Fortunately, I had already heard that used memberships were available, so over the past year or so I've checked eBay for used C2C memberships. We finally decided that we would be better served by a PPA membership, so we signed up for it recently. We do have a membership number, should we want to use our membership soon, but as of tonight we don't have any plans to be at any commercial campground any time soon.

[Cruizercamper]

For the folks that bought C to C Premier, if you don't mind, how much did your membership cost and maintenance fee?

 

We went to two locations and one place said $14,000 and the other place was only $5,300 but it was a resale with $349 fixed maintenance fee per year. We obviously went with the second place.

 

Why is there such a difference in price and is $5,300 a good price?

[Barbaraok]

For those who are on the West Coast and are thinking about trying out a membership park, try the Thousand Trails ZONE pass. $500 for the year including 30 nights, then $3/night after that. If you don't like it, don't renew. We have both NW and SW zones, covering all of the west coast and use them extensively. All of July in membership parks ($0 out of pocket), most of August and all of September - - that's how we keep the cost down.

 

Cruizercamper - what you see is the fact that all of the commission is built into the asking price of whatever park you are considering and their sales people. Lots of people have used memberships they will sell - often offered here. And when looking at a park, it is important to figure out what affiliates they have and have those thrown in if you are buying a new membership. C2C is an example of an affiliation and it is what makes buying into any single park/park system worthwhile. Hopefully you got a 2-week stay one. As it was it a good price, if you use it extensively, then yes it is.

 

Barb

[57becky]

There are a couple of Elks lodge RV facilities near where family is in California that cater to non members, one in Merced, CA and the other in Oakhurst, CA, and I believe they use the fees charged for charity. We considered some of the membership RV clubs, but early on decided it would not work for us, especially after the FIL offered us his C to C membership. Due to health reasons, the in-laws could no longer travel and sold their MH. I'm not sure what they eventually did to get rid of the C to C plan, but they also had collectors going after them, even after calling to explain they couldn't afford to keep the membership or use it due to their health. Most of the time, the little you might save is burned up with the extra fuel you would use to go out of your way to get to a facility.

[Barbaraok]

We've never gone out of our way to use a membership park. And I've never been able to figure out why people would do that. We love wine, so a two-week stay in Sonoma Valley allows us to spend days up and down the valley tasting wine. We look at a park we choose, for what ever reason, as the hub of the spoke for us to explore an area. We don't spend a lot of time in the park, but out seeing the area. Our radius is 50-75 miles. There are actually 2 parks in Sonoma Valley we use, so we have a month there. Then there is another membership park down south of San Jose - great for the south bay area, day trips over to Santa Cruz, the wineries in that area, etc. We also have stayed just outside of Pismo Beach in a membership park - a nice way to spend a week. 2 weeks in Palm Springs area in the winter. 2 weeks in Las Vegas if we want to go. A couple of parks close to Seattle, so a month or so between the two (and just redo if we need a longer time). Parks near Santa Barbara, near LA, near San Diego, Tucson, Phoenix, Sedona, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City. The whole coast of Oregon and upper California. We even stayed at a membership park just outside Badeck, Nova Scotia.

 

So no, we don't go out of our way. That's one of the constant falsehoods that are repeated over and over again. The other is that you can't get out of them. After the court ruling in early 2000s, there is no longer life-time dues. You simply (if you have purchased the membership outright) send a letter before the end of the fiscal year for that membership to the company stating that you are not renewing the membership. You do have to send the letter, just not paying isn't notifying them that you are ending your relationship with them. Or you can sell some of them if that is included in the contract.

 

If you want to spend time boondocking or parked at a big box store, then no they won't save you money. If you only want monthly rates, no they won't save you money. But we pay less than what PPA costs and in the PNW, there are very few PPA parks and most are one night only, while we have 2 weeks at most of the membership parks. So the $3000 or so a year we save versus normal parks means that over 10 years, it is has been well worth it to us. And we had our memberships in place BEFORE we started fulltiming so we started saving money from day 1.

 

Barb

[sandsys]

Years ago we had a C2C membership. Our home park was about an hour from home so we went there most weekends. Then they found out they could not develop the park the way they wanted to because of being too close to a river. So they moved our home park another couple hours away. We declined to move with them. We had to pay an attorney 50 bucks to write the park a letter to get them to to quit trying to make us pay for something other than what we bought. But, the letter did work and that was back when the contract said lifetime plus. (You could will it to your kids.) Times change and, as Barb said, those contracts have been ruled illegal.

 

Linda Sand

[kb0zke]

We took C2C up on their offer of a "free" weekend in exchange for listening to their sales pitch. We, too, liked to idea but not the new price, so I checked for used memberships. We then decided that PPA was a better deal, so we went with that. The very first time we used it saved us the year's cost. We don't usually stay at commercial campgrounds, but they are an option when traveling. For longer stays we prefer COE or similar parks.

 

Again, look at how you travel. If you are only going to go out to one or two parks it would make sense to get whatever will give you a discount there. If no discount is available for where you want to go, why spend the money for something you won't use?