BLM campgrounds easy on RVers' budgets

BLM campground in northern Arizona

Many RVers are on a budget and always looking for ways to cut costs. Campground fees are one area where they can do this. Private RV parks charge monthly rates as low as $10 per night, plus electricity, where they may charge overnighters as much as $40 to $50 a night.

Camping facilities operated by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management make it easy on an RVer's budget with dirt cheap, even free, fees.

As we drove through Arizona and Nevada, we’d see RVs parked in the middle of nowhere, with no other rigs in sight. Camping like this on BLM land is free.  Slightly more organized are BLM campgrounds like those on the outskirts of Lake Havasu City and Quartzsite in Arizona.  At Quartzsite, especially, you’ll see hundreds of rigs in BLM campgrounds that cost $140 for three months during the winter season. Rigs must be self-contained; businesses selling propane and potable water, or collecting waste water in the black and gray tanks, come to you. I don’t know what these services cost, but they should be factored into the budget.

We boondocked a couple of days at a BLM campground a few miles out of Lake Havasu City. Located just off a major highway, you had to drive over a very bumpy road to get there. The camping area itself was not level and covered with a fine, almost sand like, gravel. We stayed there two nights, enjoying the peace and beauty, and would have stayed longer if we could have had a level spot where the trailer jacks didn’t sink into the ground.

BLM campgrounds generally aren’t very fancy, like those operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but they’re workable. Not all of them are like the BLM campground at McKays Bend, about 20 miles east of Lewiston, Idaho, on Highway 12 to Missoula, Montana.

McKays Bend campground in Idaho

McKays Bend is gorgeous, better even than some of the private RV parks we’ve stayed at. Picnic tables sitting on concrete pads, barbecues, asphalt pads for parking the RVs on, spacious sites with beautiful green grass and lots of shade trees, and full hookups, all for $18 a night ($9 if you have federal access or senior passes). Oh, it even has showers, which I’m told makes it the only BLM campground to have them. BLM generally isn’t into showers. But they were here when BLM took over managing the campground from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

And did I mention McKay Bends is on the Clearwater River? The river is just a short walk away. Strolling along the river bank at sunset is a nice way to end the day.

There's another BLM campground a few miles east of McKays Bend. We took a look at it. Sites seem bigger, but there's less shade and green grass. Still, it's nicer than some private parks we've been in, But, clearly, McKays Bend is going to ruin us for other BLM campgrounds.

Not all RV spaces are created equal

Camping at an Oregon State Park

It’s no surprise to learn that all RV parks are not created equal, but it may surprise some, especially those new to RVing, that not all sites within a park are equal. They’re not.

Some spots are gravel, others gravel with concrete pads and still others are all asphalt.  In some parks, what you pay for a site determines the surface of your spot. Some sites have lawn, picnic tables and shade trees, yet in the same park, other RVers will find themselves wilting under a hot sun.

In some parks, the sites are different widths.  It never fails that park management will put the smallest rigs in the wider spots, while big rigs get sites so narrow they can barely drive through them. I’ve seen this happen at parks where every site pays the same rate.

Some parks leave plenty of room between spaces, which is nice. Others force rigs to  park so close together, you sometimes are unable to put out your slides; sometimes rigs are so close together, you can hear the people next door snoring or making other bodily noises.

Some pull throughs are so short, the back of the trailer or the front of the truck, sometimes both, extend into the street, making it difficult for other vehicles to get through.

Price doesn't seem to matter. Two of the most expensive parks we've stayed in had the worst facilities. In both cases, we would have not stayed at these places if we'd had other choices.

Some of the nicest parks we stayed at were the least expensive with clean, nice facilities and friendly managers.

 



RV friends with casinos? You bet!

Players club cards

I’ve collected many things in my life: stamps, baseball cards (when I was a kid), souvenir wine glasses (but only if I liked the wine)…but one thing I never thought I’d have a collection of was casino players club cards.

I’ve never been much of a gambler, so I never bothered with players club cards. Then I became a full-time RVer. Casinos became a favorite stopping place when we were on the road. And not just to gamble, either.

Casinos are good places for RVers to stay overnight. Free. Some casinos have specially designated parking lots for self-contained RVs; some parking lots are paved, with spaces outlined in white lines. Others can be just dirt or gravel fields. Some casinos offer shuttle service between the RV parking lot and the casino.

Some casinos limit RV parking to players club members; others don’t care, but look upon their freeloading guests more favorably if they belong to the casino’s players club.

Players club memberships are free; many come with benefits, like $5 in free play or discounts at a casino restaurant. If we’re boondocking at a casino, we’ll usually eat at least one meal there, maybe spend a couple of bucks in slot machines.

If we have a choice of boondocking at a casino or a truck stop, we’ll go for the casino every time. We tried a truck stop one time and only one time, because we were tired and couldn’t find any RV parks or casinos. The only overnight parking was at the entrance, and trucks coming and going all night made it impossible to sleep. At 4 a.m., we said the heck with it and got back on the road.

 

 

RV breakdowns on the road

Before they even hit the road, RVers worry about what happens if their RV or tow vehicle breaks down, far away from their familiar repair shops. It’s a legitimate worry.

Basically, repair shops can be a crap shoot. Some are good, others are rip-offs. In 15 months on the road, we’ve had experience with both types. A couple of times, we’ve had the luxury of asking locals for recommendations, while other times we had to settle for the first repair shop that came along.

We encountered a great example of good service in Cedar City, Utah. The truck started having problems as we neared Cedar City on Interstate 15. We stopped at a Love’s truck stop; the clerk recommended Rolling Rubber and gave directions to find it. We pulled in there. A mechanic stopped what he was doing, quickly diagnosed and repaired the problem, and we were on our way in less than 30 minutes. He refused to accept payment for the parts or his labor.

In this day of big box stores and online shopping, finding a business that provides this high level of customer service is extraordinary; it is even more extraordinary when a business goes out of its way for customers who are just passing through.

Contrast this with the repair service we received at an RV dealership in a small Arizona town. A water pipe broke and flooded the bedroom. The shop billed us more than $100 to fix the pipe. A week later, the leak was back. It turned out the repair shop had only taped the broken piece back together. This time, Jon fixed it himself with an 89-cent part he got at a hardware store.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that sooner or later you’re going to have breakdowns on the road. There are, however, a few things you can do to make the experience less painful.

One, if your RV is new or less than five years old, buy a maintenance service contract, either from the dealer or someplace else. These are expensive; ours cost $1,500 for five years, so we thought seriously about spending that much money when we bought our trailer. We’re glad we did; the first repair bill was $2,300, but our cost was only $100. So far, repair costs total more than $6,000, but we’ve only paid out $400.

Which brings us to No. 2: be prepared to make simple repairs yourself. Jon’s changed three of the overhead lights in the trailer; replaced a circuit breaker by upgrading it from 20 amps to 30 amps so we could use the microwave and the air conditioner at the same time, and fixed a broken toilet, among other things. When we were in Yuma, one of the parts guys at the RV Super Center was a whiz at diagnosing problems based on Jon’s explanation of what he thought was wrong. He knew the parts we needed as well as any special tools it took to do the repair. (Jon brought along about half his tools, so he’d have what he needed if our scooters or truck broke down, but some just wouldn’t work on the trailer.)

Three, get a roadside assistance plan. You can get these through your vehicle/RV insurance company, but they may limit you on dollar amount or the distance towed. We have Good Sam’s roadside assistance, and it’s been a godsend. You get five service calls a year for $79 plus Good Sam membership. We used it three times the first year, including for one tow that would have cost us $700. We’ve also used it when we ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, had a flat tire and no spare, and got locked out of the truck, with spare keys in the trailer, which was a hundred miles away.

Great review for Yuma snowbird's guide

My latest ebook, The Snowbird's guide to Yuma, Arizona, just received a very nice review from a website geared to Canadian snowbirds.

Here's what Suncruiser Media had to say about it:

Like the snippets of sample appetizers, handed out by folks at groceries store, you get a small taste of what’s available but you’re left hungry for more. It is informative and decently written; and although I would have liked it to be twice the size, the information it contains will easily save you the cost of the book 100 times over.

If you need more reasons to buy it, such as ways to save money in Yuma, check out an earlier blog.

The snowbird's guide to Yuma, Arizona is available only on Amazon where it sells for $2.99.
 

Six reasons why you need 'The snowbird's guide to Yuma, Arizona'

Need a good reason to buy The snowbird's guide to Yuma, Arizona? Here are six of them:

1.     The snowbird’s guide to Yuma, Arizona is full of tips to make your sojourn in Yuma more pleasant. This guide is geared to first-time snowbirds to Yuma, but anyone who plans to visit Yuma will find the contents useful.

2.     The snowbird’s guide to Yuma, Arizona has tips on how to save money when you’re eating out. It lists Yuma restaurants that offer discounts to their senior customers.

3.     The snowbird’s guide to Yuma, Arizona offers a comprehensive list of things to see and do in Yuma and the surrounding area. This includes attractions, outdoor activities and visiting Mexico, which is just a few miles away.

4.     The snowbird’s guide to Yuma, Arizona lists all major flea and farmers markets where you can search for treasures among someone else’s trash and shop for fresh veggies for the dinner table.

5.     The snowbird’s guide to Yuma, Arizona is more comprehensive than websites on Yuma, though not as comprehensive as the only other snowbird’s guide to Yuma I found. It does, however, contain the most recent information available, while the other publication is five years old.

6.     The snowbird’s guide to Yuma, Arizona is a bargain at just $2.99 and is available for instant downloading on AmazonKindle. Books don’t get any more convenient than this.

The joys of saving money

As RVers on a budget, we are always looking for ways to save money on our excellent adventure.

We've found numerous easy ways to save money on groceries, eating out, gasoline and RV parks.

Of course, this means we prefer tourist attractions that are free or low cost, and always ask for senior discounts. And then we hit Tucson where some of the attractions we especially wanted to see cost upwards of $20 per person, fees that our budget can't handle.

Luckily, the Tucson Visitor Center is making it possible for us to see everything we want to see here. The center offers an attractions passport that it calls the Book of Fun. The pocket-sized booklet costs $18 and offers one free admission with one paid admission.  It paid for itself on the very first attraction we visited after buying it. We've used it other times and plan to use it a few more times so we're money ahead. The visitor center told us it was only good on regular adult admission, but we always ask for the senior rate and get it.

The passport is good for most major attractions in Tucson, as well as some in Tombstone and Bisbee. When an attraction already has free admission, it usually offers a discount at the gift shop instead.