Gated RV Club

I'd take a look at Thousand Trails. You'll hear good and bad about them in these forums but I've been a member for years and have enjoyed it. You can get a Northwestern only membership for $500/yr and there are 12 parks in Wash. No contract and quite a few nights camping. Not quite as "gated" as the one you saw, but still some nice parks.

IMHO I would not put out money for a membership to any of the RV membership clubs. Too much can change over time as you saw 'luckily' first hand before you forked over all that money! Over the past few years I have heard horror stories about RV CG clubs, leases, and seasonal CG's going financially bust and putting campers and their RV's in precarious situations.

When I started out I bought all the memberships. As of 4 years ago,I belong to none. Found out you don't need them and none of them served me as they had professed in their brochures.

There are 'plenty' of simply high end resorts all over the US that look, serve and work like a private club CG. No prepaid membership needed!

I've stayed at many of them and have to admit after a few months of staying at the generic CG's sometimes they are a welcome experience to decompress.

Personally I would rather do that and be able to change travel plans any time I wanted and not feel like I'm paying for something I am not using 100% of the time.

In 9 years of fulltiming, we never felt the need to join a club.

We did buy a lot in the community where our elderly parents lived. There were no decent campgrounds or parks there. We needed that lot when we went thru illness and death of 3 of the 4. It served us well and we sold it for more than we paid in the bad market of 2009.

I suggest you give it a year on the road to see where and how you like to travel, then make the choice. It would be a terrible thing to buy and find you really don't care for what it offers, knowing that you have to spend x amount of days to make it pay.

When we fulltimed, we had a Campground Membership with gated entrance.. We stayed several months each year there.. Few others stayed year-round but was required to move to a different site in the park every so often.. No RV could be set up permanently on a site..

We paid $800 for the membership and $240 was the annual dues.. The annual fee included 35/days use.. After that period of time, if we wanted to stay longer, it would cost approx. $10.50/day or just over 300/month and included full hookups, elec was included in that price..

When we decided we no longer wanted the membership, sold it on craigslist after using it approx. dozen years... We had the option to sell it, give it away, or just give it back to the park.. The Home park is owned by the Members.. It has been in business over 30 years and carries no debt..
Paid for itself several time over when other parks we charging approx $20/day..

The membership also affiliated with C2C, RPI, and ROD.. We joined C2C which cost $79/annual, and that gave us approx. 300 affiliated parks to use for $10/day up to a week at a time..

There are Memberships out there, just takes a little time to find one that may fit your requirements..

There are also places where you can buy a lot in Parks..

Good luck on your adventures...

Several of the "private clubs" in Wa went public. K&M which is on Wwest side of WA went public. We ended dumping the membership as they would let the public in at a higher price then letting members in for free.
We have found in our travels that Passport America, National facilities with Senior pass is the way to go. At least that works for us.

Try a Thousand Trails Zone Pass for a year and see if you like it.

Unlike several who have posted here, we are mmbers of a couple of different systems (Western Horizon & Thousand Trails) as well as a few affiliates and save thousands of dollars each year. The trick is to use them. We always stay at least 100 nights each year in mmbership parks with nightly fees bwteen $0-$10/night.

Most people site 'horror' stories that are years old, often 3rd hand, or didn't understand how to use the memberships. If you like to do lots of volunteering or sit for months at a time then they won't work for you, but if you move every couple of weeks or so, they can really help the budget. Lots of resales available as people drop out of fulltiming, one of the partners dies, or they change their style of traveling.

Barb

enblethen wrote:
Several of the "private clubs" in Wa went public. K&M which is on Wwest side of WA went public. We ended dumping the membership as they would let the public in at a higher price then letting members in for free.
....

Way back when, TT and NACO came together under the TT umbrella. Later on TT bought Leisure Time Resorts. Fast forward to Equity Lifestyle Properties (ELS) scooping it all up and deciding to open parks to the public. R.O.D. responded by saying "We're an affiliation of private membership parks that don't accept campers off of the street". Then R.O.D. and TT parted ways.

Fast Forward to today. Some R.O.D. parks are having a tough time and are putting sandwich boards at the street entrance advertising a daily rate - and R.O.D. has turned a blind eye to it. Maybe R.O.D. now feels the sting from the loss of TT. Go figure!

It's not just KM. You'll come across many membership parks now selling to the public - well... because they have to.

Actually it was ELS would open all of the parks to ROD, just the former NACO and Leisure Time parks. Originally TT had agreed to have all parks in the ROD system at a later point in time, the bought by ELS, which decided againt that.

But again, if you fulltime, and especially if you spend much time on the west coast, you can save a lot of money using them.

Barb