Security Precautions Options

[joez]

I bet if you came to our campground you would not be able to tell which campers are permanent and which are over nighters. We are very strict about the sites not looking "lived in". We make everyone feel welcome, even if they turn their noses up at us.

I believe that yours is the exception to the rule. After more than 250 nights per year in our mh for the last five years, our experience is that commercial rv parks with a preponderance of permanents are either low income trailer parks with roaming dogs, unsupervised children and rusty appliances outside, or villages of semi permanent construction/oil field workers with multiple vehicles per site, or, in a few cases literally havens for real undesireables.

Being here long term allows us to get to know the permanent residents better than we do someone who is only here for a night or two. Our long term guests get to know each other and tend to look out for one another

In the best of majority permanent rv parks this very quality of "looking out for one another" can present issues for transients, especially if your stay is longer than just an overnight. Residents are understandably reluctant to allow visitors into their circle and management (even subconsiously) cannot help but favor their friends and cash flow providers. In some the cliques have been uncomfortable to be around and very clear in letting us know by comments and actions that we should leave as soon as possible. We have been told that we should not use a laundry on a particular day as Mrs. so and so (a resident) only had that day off work to do her laundry, or not to use our grill as Mr. X (who lived next to our transient site) had COPD and didn't like grill smoke.

Our experience has been that, even in really nice parks, a lot of permanent residents tend to make a transient's stay different from a park that is mostly transients.

[nedmtnman]

OK, back to the original post about security. We have been fulltiming nine years and have found a great security system. Guard cats! We started out with my old cat Mikey and he died. Then it was Casey who we lost in Maine. Now we have Bill and Bob our attack trained guard cats and in all this time we have not had ONE security issue. Nothing has been stolen, we have not been attacked or accosted. Guard cats are the solution.

[chowhound]

You may be correct. But read the bad reviews and a large number of them are about parks with long term residents with decaying rigs, junk all around and a general feeling that you are one bad step away from having a Ned Beatty kind of day.

I had forgotten that movie; In my opinion, the higher number of long term residents relative to transient campers makes for a less desirable (for the transient camper) environment. I am sure there are exceptions as dalsgal points out, but I just have not experienced it.

[Texasrvers]

This thread has already deteriorated from the OP, so here goes again.

Much has been said about the feelings/impressions travelers have for permanent residents at RV parks. Here is another take.

When we were building our house, we lived in our motorhome for 6 months. The park we were at had it all. Many permanent residents in double wides, park models, and RV’s; full timers, seasonal, and part timers in RV’s; and then there was a section for short term and overnighters. The permanent places were very well kept. We used to walk around the neighborhood to get ideas for landscaping our new place. It was that nice. Most of the people had regular “9-5” jobs, and were not seasonal or transient workers. We weren’t there long enough to really be part of any group, but we did meet and talk to some of the permanent people. There’s always another side to each situation, and it was certainly interesting to hear their take on the transients.

First, they didn’t care for the constant movement of vehicles in and out of spaces, and the accompanying noise--someone shouting directions at the driver; the straining of engines to move just an inch forward or onto leveling blocks, the commotion of setting up or breaking down camp, the slamming of doors and storage bins early in the morning and late at night, etc.

Also they believed the overnighters tended to make messes which they didn’t clean up (in the bathrooms and club house and at their campsite), and in general they did not respect the park’s property because this was not their “home” and someone else would clean it up. Along these lines, overnighters let their pets “go” on the residents’ lawns and didn’t pick up after them.

In our time there every member of the office staff was as nice as they could be and always responded quickly to our needs. However, they, too, talked about how demanding and rude overnighters sometimes were, complaining about the least little thing.

Finally, it has been mentioned that permanent residents can be cliquish and not friendly to transients. The people there felt just the opposite. They talked about groups of RVers that came there every year who would have nothing to do with anyone who was not in their group and that they tended to look down on the residents because they lived in an RV park.

Now I am sure that not every RVer acted this way. It was probably just a few bad apples, but this experience was an eye opener for us. We had no idea that permanent residents viewed overnighters (us!) any differently.

Now that we are in our house we are back to being travelers and staying in a park only a few nights at a time. We still prefer transient type parks simply because, as someone else said, our “vacation” schedule does not match well with their “daily living/work” schedule—not that one is better; they are just different. However, when we do stay at places that have permanent residents, I know we now have a much better understanding of how to be good neighbors.

[a.d]

The Park itself is a reflection of the management. The management is a reflection of the owner or owners where the buck starts and stops.

[Wink]

You may be correct. But read the bad reviews and a large number of them are about parks with long term residents with decaying rigs, junk all around and a general feeling that you are one bad step away from having a Ned Beatty kind of day.

I call that a run down trailer park as I would call a run down stick built house neighborhood with a few over night sites. As with any neighborhood you will have good ones and bad ones.

[a.d]

I was recently asked while traveling in our R.V. with our grandchildren. How do we know the R.V. parks we stay at during our travels are safe? I did not know. So I started to ask around. In california you can go to the MEG--- L-W web site (free) use zip code of the park, search and scroll through looking for the parks street address. This way is time consuming but affective.The other way is to search by street address. Type in street address hit search then click on blue squares close to the red star. This method is a little more complicated but much quicker when mastered. PLEASE COMMENT ON ANY OTHER SECURITY PRECAUTIONS THAT CAN HELP.
A.D

ad 2013

Decided to start doing my home work a little early this year on places we want to go and see
and parks to stay at along the way.Suprising how much can change in a year.Was checking the meg----law website and found that some of the parks had APT numbers instead of space numbers. Thought maybe they dug up the parks and put up apartments. Jumped on the old map website and zeroed in and made a few calls. Meg----law website must be making a few mistakes, or getting wrong information. No apartments. still parks and spaces. This certainly is putting a crimp on my planning stage.

ad 2013

Decided to start doing my home work a little early this year on places we want to go and see
and parks to stay at along the way.Suprising how much can change in a year.Was checking the meg----law website and found that some of the parks had APT numbers instead of space numbers. Thought maybe they dug up the parks and put up apartments. Jumped on the old map website and zeroed in and made a few calls. Meg----law website must be making a few mistakes, or getting wrong information. No apartments. still parks and spaces. This certainly is putting a crimp on my planning stage.

[HappyCampers6]

We prefer rv parks that don't have many or any permanent residents at all. It's a personal preference but we like to be around others that are on a vacation schedule as well. When we are looking at parks nearby we try to take time to go drive through the park before actually camping there. We also research, research, research....read reviews and carefully plan our trips. This makes for a much more pleasant camping experience for our family.

[docj]

We prefer rv parks that don't have many or any permanent residents at all. It's a personal preference but we like to be around others that are on a vacation schedule as well. When we are looking at parks nearby we try to take time to go drive through the park before actually camping there. We also research, research, research....read reviews and carefully plan our trips. This makes for a much more pleasant camping experience for our family.

From our experiences during the past two years of full-timing, it is increasingly difficult to find CG's that don't have long term residents. There are lots of families living in RV parks these days including KOA's and other places where you might not expect them. Some I have met are there because its easier than obtaining an apartment for a short-term employment gig. It's likely that others are there because they've lost their homes during the Great Recession.

IMHO I don't care if someone is staying at a CG for a day or a year as long as they keep their site neat and don't bother me. Frankly, we've encountered obnoxious vacationers more frequently than we have unpleasant long-term residents. As for your desire to be with vacationers, I suspect you have no way of telling whether someone you describe as "permanent" is not simply someone who is staying for a month or more but who doesn't, necessarily, "live there" permanently. As retired, full-time RVers, we consider ourselves to be on permanent vacation but we may stay at some CG's for a few weeks or even a month or two at a time. Although our ages may be different than yours, I think we can be as pleasant as any other folks you may meet. Just because we have our plants, flags and bicycles out at our site, if you encounter us at a CG don't write us off as just more of "those permanent residents" you're trying to avoid. If you're looking only for CG's to be filled only with homogeneous collections of young families with children I think you're going to have a hard time finding them.