1 Year Camping Cost for Full Time RVing

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ3mNGHoL0Q

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Hi there! You’re probably here because you’re trying to gauge how much it costs to RV full-time. While we didn’t keep track of every dollar spent over the year, we did keep a meticulous record of the campgrounds we stayed in and how much they cost. Campground fees can become an RVers highest expense if you’re not careful, so we wanted to make sure we were on top of it.

Now, we do have a Thousand Trails membership that we invested in the first month on the road. There was a buy-in cost for that membership as well as an annual fee but we will be writing a detailed blog post on that separately. The Thousand Trails numbers you will see here are the additional nightly costs for the Trails Collection and one 50AMP hookup site. But again, more on that in another post.

Below is the summary of our spending from July 2017 to July 2018. We stayed in 44 different campgrounds and our average nightly rate came to $20.62 for the year.

Our Thoughts

If you watch our YouTube channel then you’ve probably heard us complain about KOA prices. Well, here’s our proof! The average nightly rate for KOAs was $45.62 and that was the highest nightly rate we had. We only stayed in KOAs 14% of the year too. While we spent the most money on privately owned campgrounds, we did stay in them 32% of the year and our average nightly rate worked out to be $33.39 (which really isn’t bad for our 42′ fifth wheel). 

As you could probably tell, the prices significantly drop once you get to our membership campgrounds. We stayed in RPI, Thousand Trails, and Trails Collection (Encore) resorts 53% of the year. When you book an RPI resort, you know you’ll only be paying $10-$15 a night. Encore resorts are a toss up, some are free but others are an additional $20 a night. Obviously, Thousand Trails are free since you purchased the membership upfront. The $40 you’re seeing under Thousand Trails was actually an additional fee for having a 50AMP site. This campground was booked when we had our Zone Pass and not with our current Elite Membership.

Also, if you want the detailed excel sheet that includes the campground name, dates stayed, address, cost, and website, you can grab that below. Please feel free to delete all of the information and use it as a template to book your campgrounds. We hope you found this information useful and were able to get a feel for what RV campgrounds can cost you.

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