I joined the Happy Camper discount camping club. The way these clubs work (and there are three or four of them out there) is that they have a contract with participating campgrounds to offer half price camping rates to members. There are often restrictions on the half price rates, though…not on weekends, only the first night, on a space-available basis, certain amenities at an extra fee. Even so, if we play our cards right, we can get back the $50 that the one-year membership cost on our first trip.
Now I’m researching parks in MD, Virginia, PA, and West Virginia that participate in Happy Camper so I can plan our vacation. Lex officially has that week off, and we’re going to milk it for all its worth…or for all of $400 worth, which I think is my total budget for that trip, including gas, food, and campground fees. In other words, not a big, fancy trip, but it’ll be something. I’d like to try boondocking at least one night so we can see what it’s like.
We’ve started reading a few RV blogs, and we notice that a lot of RVers spend at least SOME of their time on the road boondocking (self-contained camping) in Wal Mart parking lots or other public areas. Since it’s usually FREE, it’s easier on the pocketbook, but it also requires that we have a place to dump our holding tanks and fill up our fresh water. It also means no microwave and no A/C. Really all we can run are our lights, ventilation fans (just that stuff that runs on 12V). We don’t have a 12V TV, so there’d be no TV, either. That’s why god invented board games and iPhones. We can charge iPhones in the truck as we travel and use them to watch certain videos and read our Kindle books. There’ll be entertainment enough, I’m sure.
