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Old 05-31-2012, 02:59 PM   #1
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1966 26' Overlander
Provo , Utah
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How to Full Time in One Location

I'm pretty new to the forum, so I apologize if this has been adressed. I read as much as I could from searching, but couldn't find much on the topic.

My wife and I want to full time, have bought and began restoring a 66 Overlander (much thanks to this amazing community), but can't travel as it would seem most of you do. We're finishing up our degrees, otherwise we'd be on the road.

Do any of you have advice on finding a place to perminently park until we're a little less location locked? It feels like we've tried everything. Most trailer parks have rules, or cities have laws, about living in an "RV". None of it makes sense to me, and I figure there's gotta be a work around. Any help would be awesome, as we're beginning to lose hope.
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Old 06-01-2012, 01:46 PM   #2
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Milford , Ohio
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On occasion you can find a trailer park that has a few RV sites, but I suppose you've checked them all. An RV does not meet the building codes for a mobile or manufactured home, so yes the rules for parking them are different.

Sometimes motels will have a few RV sites in the back where you might be able to rent by the month.

Check for seasonal or resort campgrounds in your area. These places will rent a site on a yearly basis and people set up camp there for the whole season. Sometimes there are rules though against living there full time as they don't want the camp to turn into low income housing and want to keep it a weekend retreat for families. If you are both college students and plan to be taking off in less than a year, explain your situation and they might grant you an exception.

See if your local state park or another campground is hiring camper hosts or workampers. You will be required to work a certain number of hours a week, maybe not good for college students, but you'd get a free site and maybe a small amount of pay, which is great for college students.

Another version of the last idea is to just find a convenient campground where you can work out a monthly rate with the owner. State parks usually have rules regulating how long a person can stay, but I've seen exceptions granted in my area.

I just checked www.campgroundreviews.com and it looks like you have a KOA near the center of Provo, convenient. There also looks like a nice state park west of town, maybe not too convenient but at least scenic. A third choice is located in between those two and sounds as if it has long term sites for rent, though might be a bit seedy.

Best of luck,
Christopher
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Old 06-01-2012, 04:26 PM   #3
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I am a "semi-one location" camper.

For many work camping is a great option. It doesn't work for because my partner & I own an answering service. Any 24/7 business tends to drag you in at odd hours now and then so it's just not for me.

There are a lot of membership campgrounds around. A few very fine ones are Airstream Only, but they are rare. One chain is 1000 Trails. You can search "Time Share Memberships" on eBay and you'll realize:
  1. You want to tell all of your friends and neightbors never to accept a "free weekend" to a timeshare without checking the resale value of ZERO on eBay
  2. campground timeshares aren't all that rare, but they aren't nearly as popular as the other kind.
At any rate when these are brand new you buy a membership for $5K to $18K and then pay annual maintenance dues. For that you get either a campsite you own outright and can rent out when you're not there or a certain number of weeks you can use the campground on a space available reservation. On my base campground, you can buy 1 membership which allows you to camp for 2 weeks, then move off for one week. Or you can buy 2 memberships, camp for 4 weeks and move off for one week. You can reserve a space up to 60 days in advance. Downside is that this campground closes January & February.
The trick is to find one that was built 30 to 40 years ago. The memberships almost never retain any resale value. So someone who bought them in 1970 has almost certainly aged out of the camping experience. Their kids don't live in the area, etc. and no one wants to continue to pay the $600 annual dues for each membership. I literally got two memberships and title deeds for the recording fee plus paying the current year's dues. I may have told this story a bit too widely because now six years later most people are actually having to pay a couple hundred more! The campground used to have hundreds of vacated deeds - now there are fewer than a dozen left.
My business has clients all over the world - with most being in Virginia and North Carolina, so on my week "off" I can set up appointments to visit existing clients and meet potential new ones - and stay at a nice state or private campground in the area. Virginia seacoast doesn't get intolerably cold most winters, but in the mountains most campgrounds close in October and reopen in April or May. So during the off season I stay at another local campground, or go south to the NC Coastal area. These weeks tend to be a bit expensive, but that is offset by the very cost effective $1200 I spend for over 33 weeks I spend at the condo campground.

Good luck on your search. Paula
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Old 06-07-2012, 10:03 PM   #4
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1966 26' Overlander
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Seriously, thanks to you both. These ideas really bumped up our motivation. I hadn't thought of nearly any of them before. Still working on finding a place, but this is a good push in the right direction.
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Old 06-10-2012, 02:01 PM   #5
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The oilfield -- and other remotely-located capital-intensive projects -- would shut down if it were not for "permanent" RV lots available. Same for military bases.

Sounds like Utah just wants to direct rental profit to a particular few, in a particular fashion. Same kind of "excuse" used in "dry" areas around liquor control laws . . it's always profit dressed up as a moral, ethical or zoning concern.

Keep searching. There will be somewhere, somehow, a type of trade-out of work in exchange for a location with water, sewer & electrical if nothing else.

Ask around at school . . and don't forget the many "exemptions" for the religious. The "employment terms" for one of those corporations may be discomforting at first, but workarounds to "the law" are the norm on any number of living issues.

Same for USGov programs.

.
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Old 06-11-2012, 09:01 PM   #6
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You might also try looking for private spaces. I suppose it can vary state by state, but here on the Oregon Coast there are privately owned RV spaces with hookups that can be found without too much trouble, depending upon what you are looking for. We have one that overlooks a private lake on the landowners farm. In total we have about an acre and a half that is ours. It came with a wrap-around L-shaped deck that was perfect for our portable hot tub. We set up a 10x10 canopy and have a container garden of flowers and veges. We cannot see any nearby houses, lights or other distractions and it is actually less expensive than a park. In our search we looked at several we had found via Craigslist but after seeing this one we took it immediately and have been here for a year.
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