we've been rving for close to five years now and when we first started RV life we knew nothing
about this lifestyle other than what we had learned from just watching videos and posts on
social media so that's why now we have learned something that is going to save us hundreds of
dollars this year on campgrounds I'm super excited about it and I'm going to tell you all about it in
this video so you'll want to stay tuned we're charity ben dakota and trinity we decided we
didn't want to wait for a life of adventure so in 2017 we bought our first RV and set off to live a
life of travel in the USA we've visited over 38 states in three years and have many more to go
follow along to learn all the best places to see RV and travel tips and much more
hello and welcome back to our channel now if you've been watching us for a while you know
there is a particular campground membership that we have always said no to for many many years
and for many many reasons one of those reasons being it just didn't make sense for us but now
something has changed and i'm going to share a little bit more about that later in the video
so i'm super excited to tell you why we finally said yes to this membership that is going to save
us a ton of money this year on camping and the cool thing is whether you're full-time
or not this is also potential savings for you as well so before i get into the nitty-gritty
i want to share a big tipping point that really opened our eyes and why that this membership now
makes sense for us whereas for the last three years we felt like it didn't so bear with me
because i need to give you a little bit of a back story for you to be able to understand and to be
able to explain some changes that happened in our lives and how things changed for us
and as i share our story maybe our story you'll find resonates with you and your story as well so
2020 covid was a year that changed it all for a lot of us and i'm betting that if you and i
had a chance to sit down and have a cup of coffee together you could probably share how the pandemic
changed life for you one thing i think we can all agree on is that a lot of us had moments of just
reevaluating life and asking ourselves if the life we were living was what we really wanted
or if we just wanted something different when covid first hit and life as we knew it
was cancelled meaning our kids would be doing school online and there wouldn't be any more
extracurricular activities such as sports and the things that our kids were involved in we decided
to ride out those first few months of the pandemic in our rv in the south now at the time we had a
home base in colorado and it was march of 2020 and the day that ben and i were discussing all of this
it was cold and it was snowing and there was a ton of fear circulating in the media at the
time because there was so much that was truly just unknown and we didn't know much during that
time either about what the next few months or years would bring but we did know at that time
we didn't want to be cooped up in the cold in our house with kids bouncing off the walls for however
long that we would need to self-isolate we wanted to at least be somewhere warmer where we could get
out and do hiking or spend time outside if we were going to have to stay in one place
for a period of time so we packed up our rv headed south and we stayed there until spring then when
spring came and it looked as if some things would start to maybe open back up we continued on with
our typical summer travel plans so it was one day sitting on a beach in california that ben and i
were talking and we decided we wanted to sit and talk on beaches more often than just a few times
a year when we traveled we wanted to be closer to water and to have a home base in a state where we
could be at the beach more and so in the middle of a pandemic we sold our home base in colorado
and relocated to the state of florida this year actually kicked off nearly a year of full-time
rv living for us as we lived and traveled in our rv during most of 2020 until we could secure a
home base in the central florida area okay this is where this ties in so thanks for bearing with me
fast forward to present march of 2022 having a home base in florida means we've been able to rv
more than ever before when we had a home base in colorado we had to winterize our rv and it was in
storage during those winter months and now in the fall and winter months we're traveling throughout
the state of florida and exploring new places and visiting new people and our favorite new spot
is the florida keys being able to camp more means spending more money on campgrounds too and since
the florida keys are our new favorite well let's just say the campgrounds and the keys aren't cheap
so one of our favorite campgrounds in the keys is a part of the thousand trails and encore system
of campgrounds so this got us looking again into the thousand trails membership on a little bit
of a deeper level we always said no to thousand trails we also found that some of the parks could
be in a little bit of a disrepair situation and we had stayed at several thousand trails campgrounds
in the past where we just paid the retail and door rate lastly the thousand trails membership
always felt so complex when we dug into it and you have a certain number of days you could be
in the system and so many days you have to be out of the system and if some of the parks are
encore parks well then those aren't included unless you added that on and you have yearly
maintenance fees and the list goes on and on and on it felt too much like a really bad time share
type of situation for rv campgrounds and so we just always said no thanks that is until recently
so before i get into that i do want to take a quick minute to say a huge thank you to
unique camping and marine for their continued support of this channel having sponsors like
unique camping and marine does help us offset the cost of producing videos like this one and when
our channel sponsors our businesses that already are making products that we love and use we just
love telling you about them anyway unique camping and marine was a game changer for us
because their drop-in pods tank sensor cleaners and toilet cleaners are all a part of helping keep
away those notorious tank smells many people think cleaning your rv toilet with bleach is the way to
go to kill any smells or bacteria killing bacteria actually has the opposite effect when it comes to
keeping smells away so just trust me i used to do this and now we use the unique toilet cleaner
which does not kill the bacteria and that's actually what helps to keep those tank smells
away and because we do love their products we've been able to secure a discount for our viewers on
their product so i'm going to drop a link below to our partners page where you can find out more
about that specific discount and the link to get 15 off the unique camping and marine section
and get all of the details okay now back to why we recently started taking a second look
at the options for a thousand trills this was mainly because the cost of staying in the keys
we found that thousand trails does have an option which is not like the time share membership option
and this option is called the annual camping pass now if you're like us and know you'll be
spending at least a few months out of the year in a specific region of the country this camping pass
just might be worth it how this started to make sense for us is that the nightly rate for our
favorite campground on the keys is 187 a night off season and over two hundred dollars a night
on season however with the camping pass and the encore trails collection parks add-on the nightly
rate at the two campgrounds in the florida keys is only twenty dollars a night plus there are several
other rv parks in the state of florida south carolina texas tennessee alabama and virginia for
the camping pass zone we chose so our total cost with the discount of 150 off the zone pass was
nine hundred and twenty dollars after taxes after fees and the more we camp obviously the more we're
gonna save however if we only ended up using our membership one time for a week of camping in the
keys it will have paid for itself right then and there so we've actually been able to use
it already to camp for free at an rv campground in the tampa area and we have reservations to use
it again for another rv campground in the fort myers area next month now we still do not want
the whole lifetime commitment of the larger time share like thousand trails membership
but the camping pass for the one zone and adding on the trails collection or encore properties
now makes total sense for us to save and be able to have cheaper campgrounds so maybe if
you know you're going to be in a specific area of the country or where you're going to maybe be most
of the time or maybe if you are full-time this camping pass might make sense for you too like it
did for us one tip when purchasing a camping pass option i signed up for the thousand charles email
list and i get emails periodically with specials and deals when i bought our camping pass i was
able to save a hundred and fifty dollars with the current special that was available at the time
because i received an email to let me know that that special was available so where we were once
skeptics and what once didn't make financial sense now does and we just might be seeing more of you
that camp at thousand trails in the area which by the way we've heard that thousand trails orlando
b field is quite the experience for kids so leave us a comment and let us know if you have
any insight into this the camping memberships that we now have include thousand trails a
koa membership which saves us 10 percent and gets us points towards free camping and i usually get
at least three to four nights a year at koas using this membership and that membership only costs 33
bucks so it's for sure paid for itself over and over passport america and we have a discount code
for our viewers which is glam three i'll put all of that in the description box below as well as
a link and with passport america you can save up to 50 on campgrounds so that's one that we
like to have with us and finally we do still have our good sam membership partially for campground
discounts and also still for roadside assistance now on the roadside assistance with good sand
it's kind of a mixed bag if you'd like to go ahead and watch that video about our experience
when we actually needed our rv toad and had to call good sam i'm gonna put that right up here
and then over here i'm just gonna put a video that i think you'll probably enjoy now check us out on
tick tock here we're growing by leaps and bounds there and have some super fun videos we don't see
you out on the road or at the campground maybe a thousand trails we'll see you in the next video