Florida in the rearview mirror

I guess we enjoyed our time in Florida but the weather was a major disappointment. We’ve now crossed three states since leaving Florida – Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana - and we’re starting the long grind across Texas. It’s pretty daunting when you enter the state and the mile markers start at 880.

Monday night we squatted on a Walmart parking lot on the east side of Houston. We left Gautier, MS early Monday morning after stopping at the Thousand Trails membership transfer office in that sleepy little town to pick up our membership materials for our Thousand Trails campground membership. We’ve been researching membership campgrounds since we started on this great adventure but hadn’t got serious about buying one until this winter. I started out by bidding on a couple on ebay but got outbid. I was kicking myself one night because I had an opportunity to exercise the buy-it-now option on a membership at $350 but thought I could steal it for less. That one ended up fetching over $450.

I kept looking and eventually stumbled onto one on Craigslist somewhere in Texas that the guy wanted to give away. Its hard to beat the price on a freebie but we have learned that these memberships come in a host of different flavours and you really have to know what you are getting. I’m sure there will still be some surprises along the way but so far we are pretty pleased with ourselves. In exchange for $1000 US in transfer fees we have the right to camp for 50 nights free of charge in about 40 locations down the west coast, across the gulf and up the east coast of the US. Next year we will have to pay $500 to keep our membership current. If we go over our allotted 50 nights the extra nights cost us $5 per each. We can spend up to 14 nights in one location and then have to leave that location for a week but we can go directly to another location in the “system”.

The flaw is that there is only one campground in Canada that is part of the Thousand Trails system but that one happens to be located in Cultus Lake, BC so there’s nothing wrong with that for a location. We’re locked into a 10 year contract at $500 per year so that could get tiresome but we already know that these things are saleable for over $400 if you know how to do it. There are some of the same memberships advertised on ebay for over $3000 but I have to believe those are owned by fools. These things are like timeshares – there is a lot of money in them for the guy that is selling them.

So today we settled into Colorado River campground – which is on the Colorado River halfway between Houston & San Antonio, TX. We had intended to hotfoot it across Texas to Mojave and get our awning installed before going to Mexico but I talked to Clifford a couple of times in the last two days and we are now waiting for some essential parts to arrive so the awning will have to wait until we get back from Mexico. That’s not all bad because it eased the time pressure for the run across Texas – which you may remember is 880 miles.

The campground is located well away from any other signs of civilization, about 6 miles off the interstate. They call these places “Preserves” and they do a good job of maintaining a natural appearance. There’s lots of trees, relatively large sites and lots of green space between the sites. On the downside the cell coverage is crap but we will cope with that and the wind has blown steadily since we arrived. We’re both still scratching the hundreds of bug bites we got in Gautier so a little wind isn’t all bad.