Quote:
Originally Posted by mandolindave
Hey Paula, What is a "condo " campground??
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I'm fulltiming, but not retired. I have a condominium deed for my memberships. The campground is called "Indian Cove Resort" and is in Virginia Beach, VA. It's two miles from "Sandbridge beach" the million dollar resort area.
Many of these condo/membership resorts were started in the early 70's and many went bankrupt - ending up with the land being sold and investors whose original investment might have been $7000 or more losing almost everything.
Indian Cove has survived, but many of it's original owner/members have moved away, divorced, died, or just lost interest in camping. I (and you) can buy up the old memberships for the cost of the annual dues - currently $500 per year per membership. One person can have a max of 2 memberships. Each membership allows me to stay for 14 days, then move off for 7. With 2 memberships, I can stay for 4 weeks, and pull off for 1.
Compared to public RV parks in this area, their summer rates are $45-$65 per night so a $500 membership dues, if you use the facilities for 3 weeks in the summer, will cost you HALF as much as a public park.
Many part-time campers store their units here (about $300 per year) and the campground will pull them on site and set them up for a nominal fee - so they don't even have to own a tow vehicle. Lots of school teachers are campers. They live in Virginia or surrounding states and spend lots of time here in the spring, summer and early fall. The weather is great from mid-March through early November, so lots of campers spend weekends here pretty much through the season.
In many areas you can find really nice "mobile home communities" and really nice RV parks. We have a few nice RV parks but in this area mobile home communities are "trailer trash" parks. I seriously considered staying at Holiday Trav-l Park full time, except for when I'm on the road, but it costs $4000 per year. As often as I travel I would only use the site about 40 weeks per year at most. Holiday Trav-l Park gets very congested in mid-summer and their rates skyrocket during holiday weekends - Labor Day 2006 is already sold out.
Indian Cove has nice facilities, 2 pools, canals with access to Back Bay, a boat launch, pavilions for dances, etc., decent bath houses, but the water has a high iron content - something they'll be working on over this winter - and it is QUIET most of the time. It is on the edge of a wetlands reservation so we see egrets, blue heron, deer, and misc. other non-threatening critters in the camp all the time. (and yes the skeeters are bad.)
So that's my story, Tin Lizzie