Plan for your RV trip, don’t leave it to chance or the last minute

I’ve said it many times, don’t wait for the last minute to plan your camping trip, and don’t wait to make reservations because RV parks and campgrounds book quickly, especially for those holiday weekends. Well, I didn’t take my own advice – really I wasn’t given enough time, but either way you look at it, it didn’t work out well for my family.

We have a wedding on Labor Day weekend. I know, before you say it, a wedding on Labor Day weekend is unheard of, people just don’t get married on the last weekend of the summer and they don’t ask others to give up a grand and glorious long weekend. But it happened to us, so we tried to make the best of it and combine our wedding plans with the last long weekend of the summer and haul our RV to northern Michigan.

That plan, not such a good idea. Northern Michigan, a destination for thousands during the summer, is not an easy place to get an RV site for the weekend, any weekend, much less Labor Day weekend. I called all of them in the area we would be and I got the same answer from all of the park owners – “Sorry, we have no openings.”

I did have a glimmer of hope for a fleeting second. One park owner said she would know on Friday morning if she would have an open site. A young man was calling back to tell her for sure if he would take the sites he reserved. So, I hoped. But then she told me the “but.” The sites had no electricity. I, unfortunately, have not yet invested in a generator, so no electricity would not do. I kindly said thank you, but no thank you.

So, I wondered is this the way it is everywhere. I know in my own state of Indiana sites are difficult to come by, but we’ve found some. After making some calls, I find that it is typical; many park owners are having good seasons.

It seems there are many reasons, but people are still going camping, even though we’ve seen the numerous stories of RV manufacturers struggling, and some even closing their doors. But even though there may be fewer people buying new RVs, those of us who are using them do not seem to be dwindling. And let’s face it; it’s still a good idea.

To compare, even though our gas mileage when hauling our RV drops from an average of 16-17 mpg to 7-10 mpg, we take our own food and we rent a site for somewhere between $25-$45 a night. And, our fun is right there. We may do some activities around the campground, sightseeing and spending money, but we’ve really saved on our accommodations. We had to get a hotel room for our wedding excursion, and at a rate of $95, plus taxes and fees, and then eating out, we spent much more than the $250 in gas it would have taken us to go the distance and back.

Others have done the math and it seems that park owners are benefiting from that mathematical calculation. Talking to Klaas Bakker, owner of Lake in the Wood Campground in Narvan, Pa., he said his park has experienced a great summer.

“We’ve been full every weekend and we’re booked through Nov. 1,” he said Nov. 1 is the park’s last weekend of the season.

Bakker said his guests have come from all over the country and the world, with guests from Europe, as well. But he has run local ads about staying close to home and that has helped, as well. “People are more destination oriented,” he said. “We have lots of activities and are family oriented.”

Lake in the Wood added a theme this year and printed Gnome money for the park, and also has its Gnome Café. “We just made it fun,” Bakker said.

And that seems to be the consensus for the summer. Fun was in and campers and RVers were filling the parks in many areas of the country. While I wasn’t one of them for the last holiday weekend of the summer, I’m not done. My family loves late summer and fall camping and we’ll haul the rig a few more times, enjoying the crisp mornings that lead to hiking that sometimes doesn’t get done in the heat of summer, and cool nights with huge bonfires that seem more enjoyable when thwarting off the cold.

Enjoy!