If you were a Snowbird, where would you stay?

We get tons of Canadians and Northern US retirees here in the Winter months. Lots of place to choose from. Many areas close to lakes, Mexico, and Mountains. Take your pick in Arizona. Phoenix area, Lake Havasu, Yuma, Tucson area, Apache Junction, Bullhead City, etc.

There is a great place called Riverbend about 15 miles from Ft. Myers. It is probably one of the nicest class A parks in the country, great events, on-site restaurant and bar, On the river leading out to the ocean, boat docks and boat rental available. Some of the friendliest folks I've ever met.

The unfortunate thing is that I can't go there anymore because my truck conversion is apparently not nice enough to allow in.......we are sad but have to be honest about how nice the place is. I've actually had some conversations with a few board members who may try to change the by-laws to allow coaches like mine to come in.

The warmest area we have found is in southern Texas in the McAllen area and there are lots and lots of RV parks there. We have spent the last two winters there volunteering at a world birding center. My FIL has been wintering there for over 12 years and it is much cheaper than Florida. My brother wintered in Florida and we always had warmer temperatures than he had. The Rio Grande Valley is a great place to winter. Good Luck and Happy Snowbirding!

Last winter we spent 4 1/2 months at the Palm Creek RV Resort in Casa Grande AZ. It rained a total of 5 days in the whole winter. It got colder than ususal in January but still warm enough for me. We never been so busy with pickleball, tennis, and hiking.
I guess we were lucky, because we were told by many (even people not residing in the resort) that Palm Creek is among the top two or three best RV resorts in AZ. We are definitively going back there. There is a lot of people coming from BC. For us coming from Quebec it's a long ride (twice as much as going to Florida) but well worth it.

Enjoy your retirement.

I have seen many times freezing temperatures in Florida really hurting the orange crop.

dbbls wrote:
The Rio Grande valley in south Texas probably has the warmest temperatures. Another warm spot is Yuma, AZ.

Agree with Rio Grande Valley.

Deep South FL will be a little warmer but 3 X as expensive & 3 X more traffic.

We stayed in Quartzite, Arizona for four winters, then this year we went to the Rio Grande Valley in south TX. The wind blew almost every day in Tx, couldn't eat outside at all. We will be going back to Arizona. It does get cool in the desert at night, but it is nice to sleep with out the wind all night. Where ever you pick, We feel it is the people that make the most of our trip.

We stay near Quartzite Arizona, we really like it but a lot of people probably don't as it get cool in the desert at night, it's dusty where we are but we ride atv's right from our park that link into miles on miles of trails. We always say it's a good;) thing all people don't like the same place to winter!

Lake Havasu, I liked it so much I moved here...

I agree with another poster who basically said..."there is almost no where in our country that has true tropical temps/conditions during the winter". Even our southern most points are sub-tropical and will have some winter days and nights that can and will get quite cold. Yet there will be a lot of very nice days.

If cool temps are a deal breaker you will need to head a lot further south into a true tropical climate...Mexico or board a plane or ship and head to the South Pacific.

I'd suggest heading south and trying several different locales across the entire southern tier of the US that suit your type of climate preferences. If you like arid conditions stick to the SW if you like more humidity stick to the SE.