Tim Smith
I mentioned in a previous post that the Coast to Coast membership we have probably needed it’s own post, so let’s talk about it!
How we ended up with the membership is kind of a funny story, so let’s start there.
When we bought our travel trailer, one of the perks they gave us was 2 free nights at one of a chain of resorts called Ocean Canyon Properties, with the opportunity to get 25 additional free nights. The pamphlet that they gave us made the resorts look really nice so we decided to go ahead and schedule our free nights. One of the resorts is located in Glen Rose, so we figured, what the heck. When I called to make our reservation, I was told that the initial 2 nights are indeed free, but you only get the additional 25 nights if you sit through a 2 hour presentation. SIGH…… I get it now. It’s a time share. Ok, fine. We’ll go collect our free nights, say no to the time share, and go on about our lives.
We got to the resort and it was beautiful. They had cabins as well as RV spots, a pool, hiking trails, a club house with pool tables and other games and many other activities. The night we got there they even had a band come and play in the pavilion.
After exploring the resort and listening to the band for a while, we settled in for the night. And we practiced. We practiced saying “NO” to the time share. No matter what they say, no matter what promises they make, just say “no.”
We went to bed feeling pretty good about ourselves and the practice we had put in…
Then we walked in to the presentation the next morning and the first thing the lady said was, “This is not a time share.”
Surprising spoiler – It actually wasn’t.
So, what is it, exactly? Simply stated, it’s a membership to a network of RV resorts all across the country.
Much to our dismay, the longer we listened to the lady giving the presentation, the more we realized that this actually made a lot of sense, so we ended up buying the membership. Honestly, it’s been one of the best things we’ve done to prepare for this big adventure, I’ll try to explain why.
It’s a membership, so you have to pay a fee up front. It wasn’t an insignificant fee, but when you think about what we were paying each month for rent, it really wasn’t much at all. For less than 5 month’s rent that we were paying, we now stay rent free everywhere we go. We do have to pay yearly dues, but that’s only ~$500. Some resorts actually charge an administration fee, but not many. And that administration fee is not very much at all as a general rule. It has ranged from < $1 a night to $5 a night. To give you an idea, we’ve paid as little as $5 to stay at a resort for a week to as much as $35 to stay for a week. It’s November 16th today as I write this. Looking back at our records, in the last 30 days, we’ve paid a grand total of $8 in “rent,” or “nightly fees,” if you prefer. This is impressive when you consider that the normal nightly fee at these resorts ranges from $30 per night to $80 per night.
Another reason we decided it was a good deal is because it’s a lifetime membership and since we plan to do this for the foreseeable future, it just made sense. This means the only thing we have to pay from now on is the yearly dues. Not only that, but we can pass it down to family members if we ever decide to stop traveling all the time and settle down somewhere long term.
With our membership, we can move from resort to resort in the network as long as we do not stay more than 7 nights at a time. We can stay more than 7 nights, but if we do that, we have to stay somewhere outside the network for 7 nights before we can re-join the network. And now you know why we move every weekend! Staying free all the time is a lot better than $350-$400 a week, right?
Another thing we had noticed before we got the Coast to Coast membership was that it was VERY difficult to find campgrounds that had available spaces. We were trying to plan our route for the first month or so and had noticed that almost every campground we tried to book at were completely full and we couldn’t get a spot. Some that we were able to find availability at would only have a couple of days here and there available instead of a week or 2 at a time. To be quite honest, we were kind of starting to freak out about that. It looked like it was going to be a struggle to make reservations anywhere. With Coast to Coast, since most of the resorts and campgrounds are members only, we haven’t had to worry about that at all. There was only one resort that we wanted to stay at over Labor Day weekend, but they had a “Special Event” going on where they were only taking reservations that weekend if that was your home resort. Our home resort is Tres Rios in Glen Rose, so we were not able to stay there that week.
Coast to Coast also has a really nice website where you can search for resorts and their availability and even book your stay. They also have a trip planner where you can put in where you’re starting and where you want to end up and it’ll show you each and every resort in the network along the way until you get to your destination. We tend to use that as a good starting point, but they also have a tool that shows you each resort in every state. So, we’ll use that to see if there are any other resorts close to any interesting sights we want to see or towns we want to visit.
Bottom line, even though we practiced saying no to the presentation, the membership is real high on the list of the best things we’ve done to make this journey even more enjoyable than it already was.
