Camping Clubs...?

Storage Man wrote:
Does anyone belong to Thousand Trails, Passport America, or one of the others?

Is it worth it to belong...buy into...one of them?

If so what are the best two or three to look at?

We've had RVs of one kind or the other for years but have always been working and had no time to use something like that. We have retired early and pick up our new motor home tomorrow. Looking at a few long trips and a bunch of short ones each year.

We traveled fulltime for 5 years and here are a few lessons/suggestions from our experiences. We used both Good Sam and PPA. Good Sam discounts generally don't have the restrictions that PPA has. Its a flat 10% with no time or season restrictions - MOST of the parks! PPA is great for shoulder and off-season discounts. As mentioned by other posts, read the restrictions very carefully. You will save your membership very quickly. HOWEVER, most PPA parks DON'T offer any discounts during their busy season, so you have to pay attention to that in their restrictions. Usually their discount is only for 1 or 2 nights. Some of the PPA parks can look pretty "sketchy" and there have been several that we just by-passed.

Several other techniques to use. Check out the weekly and or the monthly rates. Monthly rates are very often less than the daily rates and if you stay at least 2-2 1/2 weeks, you are then ahead of the daily rate game, even if you don't stay the entire month.

We LOVE our national park campgrounds, so by all means, get your Senior Pass for a one time fee of $10. It not only lets you into the national parks, monuments, etc for free, but if the NPS is operating the campgrounds you get a 50% discount. If the campground is a Zantac run campground, they don't honor the discount as a rule.

I would highly recommend against buying a campground membership for at least the first year or two, until you see what kind of traveling and parks you like to stay in. If you decide to go that route, there are many single home park memberships that you can buy into for under $300 that gives you access to Coast to Coast, RPI, ROD and several other groups at low yearly dues and greatly reduced nightly rates.

Also, look at your state park rates. Many states offer their "senior residents" substantial camping discounts.

Good luck and enjoy your travels.