Delaware

We managed to squeeze in a couple of visits to the Elks Lodge, a drive along the shore of Lake Erie, a tour of some of the covered bridges nearby and side trips to Ashtabula and Conneaut in our spare time.

Pennsylvania was a blur as we broke our guiding principles and got on the INTERSTATES! AARRGH!!

Well we had a reason.

The Mid Atlantic area (Delaware, Pennsylvania. Maryland, Virginia) was our stomping ground for 25 years before we moved to San Diego back in 2006 and we have lots of good friends to catch up with.

That being said most of them are still working for a living and we have to fit in with their busy schedules.

A quick night in State College PA at the Walmart split the 400+  mile hop from Ohio into 2 manageable chunks. We found on our RV Parky app that the Delaware Park Casino near Wilmington DE has free dry camping in the parking lot and we headed there, calling our friends Lance and Jenifer along the way.

Lance has been a friend since I first discovered that the hate I had for BMW motorcycles was totally misplaced! Turns out it wasn’t the motorcycles I disliked, it was a sector of the owners of those motorcycles! There is a group called the “Airheads” who love and maintain vintage BMW’s and they are a totally different breed than the owners of modern BMW’s who sometimes have an attitude.

My first Airhead Club meeting had me sitting next to a really nice guy with a sense of humor that matched mine, before we knew it we were fast friends so naturally we had to hook up when we passed by.

Newcastle Delaware Courthouse

Lance and Jenifer like motorcycles, good beer, pubs with character and travel. They quickly dragged us screaming (Yeah Right) to old Newcastle DE which we never in our wildest dreams imagined existed in this area. Delaware to me has always been a blur on I95 while going to jobs in New Jersey. It’s the beginning of toll roads, traffic and the site of endless chemical plants (Think Du Pont) and oil refineries.

The man himself William Penn

Immanuel Episcopal Church

Our surprise was total when we found winding country roads, pretty farms and historical buildings going back to the beginnings of modern USA (Delaware was after all the FIRST state). A walk around the cemetery at the Immanuel Episcopal Church with so many of it’s old headstones engraved with “Born in England” “From Yorkshire England” etc., brought us closer to the early residents of the area.

Lovely well cared for Newcastle historic district.

Lance had arranged dinner at “The Whip”. A neat English Pub out in the country run by – An Englishman – of course. I’m not sure it wasn’t the food and beer that had Dave and Lisa join us for dinner rather than the thrill of meting us again, but they too are good friends for the Airheads BMW club so that might have influenced them a little too. (I like to think so anyway). A supremely pleasant evening was had, followed by another the next night at an Irish bar they like.

Just the first of several taverns we visited. This one possibly the oldest in Delaware.

Lance and Barbara at "The Whip"

The terrible twins 

I guess Dave was operating the camera.

L to R Lance, Barbara, Me, Jennifer, Lisa

Confusion reigned but at least Dave got in this one!

Almost in self-defense from over indulgence, we took the opportunity to go shopping for tires for the Fiesta while everyone was busy during the day on Sunday. After all there is NO SALES TAX in Delaware and we took advantage of it.

Monday came all too soon and the plan was now to fit in with Charlie and Debbie’s schedule just 20 miles up the road for dinner with them and friends from the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle/ Classic Goldwing motorcycle group. Charlie runs a motorcycle accessory business DC Cycle (dccycleparts@verizon.com) from an Industrial Park and we planned to park the rig in the parking lot and camp there for a couple of nights before heading south for Maryland. Then Debbie said “Why not just park it and stay in our spare bedroom?” and we were living in a house for the first time since last July!!

Bob, Renee, Tom and Dawn came round and we sat catching up on what we’ve been missing for the last 10 years, eating Charlie’s great grilled offerings and sipping beer and wine. Time flew, the past 10 years slipped away and it felt like we’d never been away.

Better still, Bob and Renee are “Most of the timers” in that they are retired and spend a lot of time travelling with their 5th wheel trailer, and we found that we’re both planning on being in the Florida Keys in November so we might get to camp together for a week or so.

With all this pleasantness came the hard reminder of how much traffic there is in this part of the country, how impatient the drivers can get and how tight some of the smaller roads are. Even though we planned on driving a total of 40 miles on Monday to dump tanks, fill up the rig and get to Charlie’s, we ended up driving 70+ and running around manically when the dump station at a state park was closed, the gas station we had scouted out for access in the rig was jammed with cars and delivery vans and I95 was like madhouse full of suicidal drivers. But all’s well that ends well apparently, once we found a big cheap gas station in the countryside and a new Cabella’s outdoor store that offers free dump station use with an in-store purchase.

Camping for $25 a night

We set out on our adventure with a budget.

We made the budget well before we even bought the RV as part of our planning, because let’s face it, if we couldn’t afford to go, there was no point selling the house and buying an RV!

I did some research on camping costs. Initially I was thinking $30 to $40 dollars a night based on our experiences to date in commercial RV parks and in State parks.

Our favorite RV club https://www.escapees.com/ has a great forum and I discovered a previous thread about budgets. The majority of people responding had a budget of $25 a night OR LESS!

At first I thought I was misreading it, where can you camp for $25 a night every night?

Well it turns out I was misreading it, what it means is an AVERAGE of $25 a night over the course of a year.

That didn’t suddenly reveal the secret but it did help us in appreciating how to achieve the mythical $25 number.

I expect you want me to tell you the secret too huh?

Firstly you need to consider what kinds of camping there are.

Commercial Parks

State Parks

National Parks

Camping Clubs

Dry Camping (Also called Boondocking)

Commercial Parks are pretty obvious, there’s a great free cellphone app called “RV Parky” that will locate parks near you anywhere you happen to be or you can search an area you might be heading for. The app tells you what parks are around, what they might charge per night (It’s not always up to date), what facilities they have, the contact information and sometimes reviews of the park. A very handy tool.

One thing you need to know about Commercial Parks is that they give discounts to members of certain RV clubs. In addition there is something called Passport America, http://www.passport-america.com to whom you pay about $40 a year and they have negotiated discounts at parks all over the country usually around 10% but sometimes as much as 50%. Be aware though that they may restrict what days they give discounts on.

Good Sam’s Club, Family Motor Coach Association and Escapees https://www.escapees.com/ also get discounts at some parks.

In our experience we get the best discounts at the most parks with Passport America, Escapees and Good Sam in that order.

Another thing to consider also is that most parks offer discounts for weekly and monthly stays. They can be very beneficial especially if you are going to spend the winter somewhere. Our favorite winter spot in Casa Grande AZ has amazing facilities and is under $25 a night based on the monthly rate.

So if you get 3 – 4 months a year under $25 a night it really helps the AVERAGE for the rest of the year. Those peak period, tourist area parks that may cost $70 a night OR MORE! Get averaged out nicely thank you.

State Parks in our experience are NOT the bargain most people assume them to be. They seem to be charging around $35 a night in the places we’ve been to and they usually don’t have full hookups either. Sometimes you can get a discount if you camp in your home state and they have a senior citizen pass. We did get a Passport America discount at a State Park in Ohio but only for 1 night.

National Parks have campgrounds too, although some are difficult to get into due to demand. (For instance Yellowstone has a 1 year waiting list). Some of their campgrounds also have a size limit for RV’s and most have limited hookups or none at all. The great thing for senior citizens is the “Golden Age Pass” or whatever it’s called lately. For a one-time payment of $10 you get into ALL National Parks free and get up to 50% off camping there.

NOTE! As of Jan 1 2017 the price of the senior pass will be $80.

BUT the pass also covers parks administered by the US Corps of Engineers (COE). Never heard of them running campgrounds I’ll bet? Well they have some really nice parks, on lakes usually where they are in charge of the dams. 50% off can mean $10 a night. Great for that budget.

I’m also throwing in another government agency here. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM). They administer huge swaths of the US and have areas you can camp at really cheaply and in some places FREE. Even better for the budget, BUT it’s usually dry camping often out in the wilderness with no facilities at all (More on this later)

Camping Clubs. We once were given membership to a camping “Resort” in Virginia which was nice for free. Except you had to pay annual “Maintenance” of $300 and they weren’t associated with any other campgrounds so you were stuck in the same place. Luckily we were able to give it away and get the dues off our backs.

Another camping club we bought into just for our full time trip is Thousand Trails (TT). They have campgrounds on the West, East and Gulf coasts but not anywhere else. You have to BUY a membership then pay annual dues, for that you get 30 days a year free camping and $3 a night after that. They usually have pretty good facilities and mostly full hookups. Some parks are pretty run down and some are small, but generally we like them. 

BUT don’t buy a membership at one of their parks, they’ll charge you thousands of dollars. Look on Craigs List or E-Bay and buy a USED membership for around $1000. Bear in mind that (TT) will charge a transfer fee of $750. Try and get one that has it’s annual membership fee paid up and still has the 30 days free for the year you buy it. Even with the fees etc we AVERAGE $15 a night in TT parks. UPDATE. I did the math again and it's $21 a night which isn't such a bargain. I laid it all out in another page of this blog:

https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2017/11/thousand-trails-good-and-bad.html

The Escapees have “Coop Parks” that are owned by the people who stay there. There are several on the West Coast and in the “Snowbird” winter spots. If you are a member of Escapees you can get good overnight rates in these parks and they also have dry camping spots for around $5 a night. They have great facilities with pools and rec halls etc.

Some “Clubs” aren’t camping clubs at all but you can camp at their facilities. Who? Try Elks Lodges, VFW, American Legion, Moose Lodges. You have to be a member, and not all lodges allow camping so you have to research it. We’re in the ELKS and have camped at Lodges all around the country for between $5 a night dry camping and $25 a night full hookups. And the lodges have a warm welcome, cheap drinks and excellent food too!

Dry Camping (Boondocking).There is a whole subculture dedicated to boondocking which people take to the extreme. By using solar energy and blackwater systems with macerators or even composting toilets enthusiasts are able to camp without any hookups at all for months on end. Staying on BLM land that has no camping fees or property that is perhaps for all intents and purposes abandoned they live off the grid and extremely cheaply. More power to them!

We limit our boondocking to what is sometimes called “Blacktop Boondocking”. That means we stay at places like Walmart where we have permission from the manager and it’s legal to do so. Other opportunities are Cracker Barrel restaurants, Lowe's home improvement stores, Cabellas stores, casinos, and maybe friends driveways. (Sometimes called Mooch Docking!!)

Usually these are FREE!! So if your camping budget is getting too close to exceeding the target of $25 a night you can do some free boondocking and get it under control again!

To be honest if you’re only stopping the night to break a 400 mile trip into 2 - 200 mile days then stopping in a commercial park, setting up, eating getting to bed, waking up, dumping tanks and packing up again seems like a big waste of time compared to pulling into Walmart, finding a restaurant, going to sleep and hitting the road again the next morning.

So can it work for you? SURE IT CAN. 

Looking at a couple of months of our budget tracking shows February, March and April of this year averaging $20, $10 and $19 per month respectively using the techniques I’ve described.

UPDATE!
We just completed out first full year (Jan 2016 to Jan 2017) and I pulled all our numbers together off the cost spreadsheet I run.
During the year we stayed at campgrounds that cost $75 a night for over a week and one month we averaged $35 dollars a night.
BUT the final average for the whole year was $24.30!!!
So it is certainly possible without spending every night at Walmart.

Now get out and camp!!

UPDATE 2021

I was just running thru the back pages of the blog and decided to update this page.

We have been fulltiming for 7 years now, WOW!

So does the $25 a night average still hold up?

YES IT DOES.

This year parks have been full post Covid and as a result camping costs have gone up BUT we have spent nearly all year camping at Elks Lodges and our average cost is way below $25 even with a few expensive commercial parks thrown in.

What has become painfully obvious is that we have to get rid of our Thousand Trails membership as now they are renting out spaces to anyone, you don't have to be a member. That means its harder to get into the parks without making reservations months in advance.

Brian

08/24/2021

Ohio

Ohio has been a pleasant surprise. I don’t know what we expected of it, I used have a picture in my mind of Cleveland and heavy industry. What we found was totally different.

Our major reason for coming this way was my desire to see the US Air Force Museum in Dayton OH. Billed as the largest air museum in the world, it is full of significant aircraft from light airplanes to the huge B52 bomber. We walked for 7 hours! Then at the end of the day we still hadn’t seen 2 of the galleries, plus in June they are opening a whole new wing to it.

Very rare B18 bomber

Bockscar. The aircraft that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki and ended WW2

Using the “Don’t plan anything, Stay off Interstates” method we wound our way northwards thru Columbus the capitol of Ohio. 

This was such a pleasant stop, we camped at Alum State Park just on the north of the city but fairly close to downtown. A picturesque park, unfortunately only having electric hookups but just repaved in its entirety this month, it’s on a huge lake and while we were there it was very quiet. We wandered down into an area called “German Village”. In the 1800’s a flood of German immigrants came to Columbus and set up in the same area, building German style homes and of course several breweries!

German Village, German style house.

The neighborhood has survived and been subject to a big revival in its fortunes thanks to the efforts of inhabitants starting in the 1960’s. There is a delightful little park dedicated to the man who started the revival. Just one lot in size, it is a special little refuge and beautifully tended. As we walked into the area we met a couple of people who were working on planting new flowers and shrubs. It just so happened that Bruce was the Chairman of the Garden Club who have taken this park and the general area under their wing, volunteering to maintain the park and numerous planters along the sidewalks. What a great example of community activism.

King Gambrius symbol from a now closed brewery

German Village neighborhood park

Bruce chairman of the garden club with Barbara

We have reservations in Jefferson OH East of Cleveland for the Memorial Day weekend (Only planning for holiday weekends!), and halfway between Dayton and Jefferson just happens to be Wooster OH. Using our go to phone app “RV Parky” we saw there was one campground and one Walmart in Wooster. Choosing the campground and letting the GPS take us there introduced us to Meadow Lake Park.

Meadow Lake

So peaceful

Rural surroundings

Meadow Lake isn’t listed in God Sam’s Guide, Passport America or Escapees. They don’t give discounts, they don’t even have any signs directing you to them. Even the entrance to the park has only a small sign to tell you it’s there. But oh what a tranquil and well-kept place. Only water and electric hookups with a dump station but well worth stopping at. The entire campground is shaded by huge trees. There are 2 small lakes, one stocked for catch and release fishing and for swimming. The permanent sites have concrete pads but the rest of the area is entirely grass, such a pleasant change from the usual gravel. To say we like this place is an understatement. This is the 2^nd best campground we’ve been to after Bayfield in Colorado.

I think Wooster is populated by aliens. Everything is too perfect, I swear there’s not an uncut lawn in the whole town! The Elks Lodge is one of those warm welcoming places too, and they say we could have overnight-ed in the parking lot if we wanted even though they don’t show it as a possibility on their website.

Typical Wooster area house.

We made reservation months ago for the Memorial Day long weekend. The official start of summer in the US. It’s when the swimming pools open for the season and everyone who has been cooped up all winter heads out to go camping for the first time of the year. Hence our unusually well planned destination.

Memorial Day Parade

Huge bicycle contingent

We’re here for a week. It’s a nice park too with lots of amenities and 3 stocked fishing ponds. I intend to relax. Paint and fish.

There’s a plan that went well! I finished 2 paintings and got 90% done on a third, made some sketches for possible future paintings, then I was contacted by the RV Rally organizers for the Vermont Rally in July and asked if I would do a “Painting Party” for the craft area. Sounds like it might be doable, I’ll have to do some research and planning.

Meantime I broke out my fishing stuff for the first time in ages. I considered selling it all when we left San Diego but in the end kept it. First time out at the bigger of the 3 ponds I caught 3 small mouth bass! I thought the facility was catch and release so I put them back. Next time in the small pond I caught 2 more! Finally while Barbara was doing laundry I went back to the big pond, borrowed one of the row boats and caught 2 BIG big mouth bass! The first one was big and fat, obviously a female full of eggs so I put her back. The second was a bit smaller and having found out this WASN’T a catch and release facility I kept this one which weighed 2 1/2 lbs and measured 21” long.

Just a tiddler I threw back

I kept this one as it fit the grill so well

We managed to squeeze in a couple of visits to the Elks Lodge, a drive along the shore of Lake Erie, a tour of some of the covered bridges nearby and side trips to Ashtabula and Conneaut in our spare time.

Northern Kentucky

So here we are in Singing Hills RV park set to explore the area.

Singing Hills is in Cave City KY. The whole area is riddled with caves, the largest of which is Mammoth Caves in Mammoth Caves NP. This one cave has over 400 miles of known passages. It’s the largest in the world. They are currently working on the pathways in the historic cave entrance so the tours are abbreviated and it’s busy even in the “off” season. We had to make reservations for the following day and even then we couldn’t get the tour we wanted at the time we wanted it.

"Frozen Niagara" in Mammoth Caves

Having visited several other caves such as Carlsbad Caverns, Grand Canyon Caverns and Luray Caverns we were a little disappointed with the “Frozen Niagara” tour we took. The other walking tour was longer but involved 500 steps. Barbara doesn’t do too well with steps so we took the shorter Frozen Niagara tour. We talked with some people at the campground who did the longer tour and they really enjoyed it. Maybe when the historic entrance opens again in 2017 thing will be better.

Fairly close is Bowling Green KY home of the GM Corvette car plant and the National Corvette Museum. Not being car fans the only reason we went to the museum was for lunch. The have a traditional American Diner there, we didn’t think the food lived up to the hype and glitz.

We did visit the railroad museum however and thoroughly enjoyed it. Their Hospital Car set me thinking about a painting and I started sketching some ideas back at the rig.

Pullman Dining Car

Hospital Train

Always wanted to ride out on the little platform at the back

There is a scenic route going north from here that goes thru Hodgenville, Bardstown and Elizabethtown. We planned on continuing to Louisville too but we had so much fun visiting Lincoln’s Birthplace, his boyhood home and the four museums in Bardstown that we missed Louisville entirely and went home for a rest. This is all beautiful country, we could spend months exploring just this one area, but we have to move on as we have plans!!

Didn't you always want to try this?

This fancy monument contains?

The log cabin Abraham Lincoln spent a few years in as a child

This log cabin without a fancy monument was where he was born?

Old village museum in Bardstown KY

There are 4 museums in Bardstown

This one is dedicated to General Hal Moore

The Movie "We were Soldiers once and young" 

starring Mel Gibson was based on his true story.

Elizabethtown was home to Carl Brashear

The movie "Men of Honor" was based on his true story

One of the T-AKE navy ships we built in San Diego was named after him. 

I briefly met his Grand Daughters during the shakedown cruise.

A lovely well preserved city center.

If you have your own plans to visit this area we’d recommend Singing Hills RV Park. It’s nothing fancy but it’s so peaceful. The park is so green, with large well-kept grassy areas, its own lake with license free catch and release fishing, warm welcoming owners. For GS members there’s a 10% discount but for Escapees members it’s 50% off the first 2 nights and 25% every night after that. Our 6 nights came to $136 with full hookups. It’s also only 7 miles from Mammoth Caves.

As we left we had an episode with our GPS. We call her “Nagging Maggie” a term we learned from the Dolinger Family in Maryland.

We wanted back-roads and I programmed Via Points joining the little towns along the route we wanted to take. I have to say that we have a very laid back method of route planning in that we only loosely sketch out the next day’s proposed route just before we go to bed the night before we leave.

This one got even more laid back when we forgot to do even that and I was loading town names into the GPS as I was eating breakfast an hour before we left!!

Anyhow Maggie got us about 2 miles from the campground and to a fork in the road with no highway signs. I went left when she wanted us to go right and in revenge she sent us down 20 plus miles of roads that were about 3 feet wider than the rig! I was expecting some huge farm tractor to come hurtling down the road the other way on one of the many blind curves. Luckily none did.

To get revenge on her we went our own way just to make her have to keep recalculating!

So what has this got to do with anything?

Only that this part of Kentucky is so beautiful. The back roads between Cave City and Maysville on the Ohio River are breathtaking. We definitely need to come back and spend a couple of months exploring this state. We aren’t even in the mountains which everyone says are the best bit.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures! 

Old Washington Kentucky

Our route north was designed to keep us off interstates, on scenic highways and in the direction of our next stop in Dayton Ohio.

We like to travel around 200 miles a day.

To keep our average camping costs down we sometimes stay in Walmart parking lots where it’s allowed and with the permission of the manager of the store.

All these lined up for an overnight stop in Maysville KY which is on the Ohio River east of Cincinnati.

After setting up we went looking for somewhere to eat. We’d seen the signs for the “Antique District” and thought there might be somewhere neat there. 

We didn’t find a restaurant but we did find Old Washington KY.

The next morning we took some mail to the Post Office there and explored this fascinating little place.

The Old Washington Post Office

Some interesting facts? The northernmost skirmish of the civil war was here when Morgans Raiders were attacked by Union Cavalry.

Harriet Beecher Stowe witnessed a slave auction here while visiting the village. She later wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” based partially on what she witnessed here.

The first Postal Facility West of the Allegany’s was here.

The first houses built here used the timbers from flat boats that brought the settlers here along the Ohio River. At the time this was the "Wild West" the furthest anyone had explored.

A terrific little find only made possible by throwing away the planned itinerary and playing it by ear!