Should you join an RV club?

This week we talk about RV Clubs and why you may want to consider joining one. We talk about their many benefits, including their efforts to help us find and preserve free overnight places to camp by promoting a Good Neighbor policy. Our guests are the people who run one of the most popular and active such organizations, Travis and Melanie Carr of the Escapees and Xcapers RV Clubs. RV clubs serve as a network of like-minded folks, offering support, encouragement, adventure and fun, usually with special perks and discounts for its members.  I think you’ll enjoy meeting the Carrs in the interview of the week segment, coming up in just a few minutes. But also this week, we’ll update you on our activities, share the RV News if the weeks, answer some of your questions and get another great off the beaten oath report from our friends the Burketts. But first, my lifelong traveling companion and my bride… Jennifer. WHAT MIKE AND JENNIFER ARE UP TO THIS WEEK Jennifer overlooking the Ausable River in the Adirondacks JENNIFER -We are in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains of New York, where we plan to spend a couple weeks taking photos and video and researching things to do and places to stay for another of our Seven Day Adventure Guides. MIKE - Look for it later this summer. We arrived here Sunday after spending the past several days near Montreal, Quebec, attending a rally put on by the French-speaking Leisure Travel Vans club of Quebec. Although neither of us speak French, club members made us feel very welcome and we had a wonderful time meeting folks and touring their RVs.  Jennifer and Mike peaking at the Quebec rally JENNIFER -Many of those attending spoke English as well and when Jen and I gave a little talk to the group they provided a translator. We've attended many rallies and gatherings over the years but this was one of the best organized such events e have ever seen. We had a ball! RV LIFESTYLE NEWS OF THE WEEK MIKE Grand Canyon National Park set to receive designation for promoting dark sky  Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park has been working for years to reduce its light pollution and apparently it has paid off, as it is about to become an official International Dark Sky Park. The International Dark Sky Association promotes reducing light pollution so people can see the stars in all their glory, and recognizes certain spots throughout the country and even world  that do this. I highly recommend finding a Dark Sky spot near you. Jen and I had members of this organization on our podcast a while back. To learn more and hear that podcast, click here. JENNIFER Campers urged to stay below 4,000 feet in New York's Adirondacks to protect alpine zone If you are heading to the Adirondacks, where Mike and I are this week, be sure to keep all your boondocking below 4,000 feet elevation. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is advising people against camping above 4,000 feet in the High Peaks and is ticketing those who do not follow these guidelines. The agency is trying to keep campers out so plants in the fragile Alpine zone won't be trampled,. contributing to soil erosion. MIKE Writer describes his love affair with state parks, offering beautiful places to camp often inexpensively  When Jen and I are somewhere new to an area and hear there is a state or provincial (if we are in Canada) campground nearby, we often check it out. State campgrounds are usually in beautiful locations and are relatively inexpensive. So when I read an article recently in the New York Times by a writer who tells of traveling the country and searching out previously unknown gems in each state, we had to share. JENNIFER Stopping to view bears along a stretch of highway near Canada's Jasper National Park not allowed If you're heading to Canada's Jasper National Park anytime soon, there is now a no stopping rule along highway 16. The reason is so many bears feed along the highway this time of year, it is not safe for tourists to stop. The closure is temporary and will be lifted when more food is found at higher elevations.  MIKE RV Industry contributes $32.4 billion to Indiana's economy, study says  We all know the RV industry is a big - with a large chunk of the industry headquartered in Indiana. A study from the industry written about in several Indiana publications last week says it contributes  $32.4 billion to Indiana's economy annually, supporting 126,000 jobs and 650 businesses there. Nationally the study says the RV industry contributes  $114 billion to the U.S. economy.  This part of the podcast is brought to you by RadPower Bikes,an electric bike manufacturer offering direct to consumer pricing on powerful premium electric bikes. Now with free shipping   LISTENER QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK Chris is looking for a manual for his Roadtrek RV             We send him to: https://www.roadtrek.com/owners/#section-manuals    A listener named Melanie heard our podcast last week about traveling alone and what can go wrong and called us to share a harrowing tale about something that happened to her that had a happy ending, thanks to help she received from fellow campers. Do you have a question you’d like us to answer, or a comment on the things we’re discussing. If so, we invite you to leave us that question or comment on the special voicemail number we have for the podcast – it’s 586-372-6990.  If you are driving and can’t write it down right now, just go to the RV Lifestyle travel blog at rvlifestyle.com and scroll down the page. You’ll see that number prominently posted on the blog. This part of the RV Podcast is brought to you by Battle Born Batteries, maker of quality, safe and reliable lithium batteries that can be installed in just about every RV. Get in touch with Battle Born to find out what lithium batteries and an upgraded energy management system can add to your RV Lifestyle. Check them out at https://rvlifestyle.com/lithium RV INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK We’re big believers in RV Clubs. As we shared at the top of the podcast, we just returned from attending a rally by a big club in Quebec and we had a ball. So this week we talk about RV Clubs and why you may want to consider joining one. There are quite a few that you can choose from, some quite large, others small. Some are organized around special interests or shared activities; others are geared towards owners if certain RV brands. It’s safe to say there is an RV club out there for everyone! Our guests are the people who run one of the most popular and active such organizations, Travis and Melanie Carr of the Escapees and Xcapers RV Clubs. RV clubs serve as a network of like-minded folks, offering support, encouragement, adventure and fun, usually with special perks and discounts for its members.  I think you’ll enjoy meeting the Carrs Here's a transcript of the interview: Mike:                Well, joining us right now, Melanie and Travis Carr. You guys, welcome again to the program. I think we had you on about a year ago, year and a half ago. Travis:              I would say so. Melanie:           Yeah. Travis:              It's been a bit. Melanie:           I can't even remember when. It seems like it's been forever. Mike:                I know it was there, but I'd have to go back and check. But so much has changed and is changing in the RV world. And I think a huge draw of it is what you guys are all about, and that is community and networking and a tribe, if I could use that word. Tell everybody about the Xscapers, and just how that is just phenomenally growing across North America. Travis:              Yeah. Do you want me to kick it off? Or do you want to start? Melanie:           Yeah. Go ahead. Travis:              Yeah, we founded Xscapers almost five years ago. Melanie:           Yeah. It's been about four and a half years now. Travis:              Yeah, about four and a half years now, on March 8th, 2015. And the reason we founded it is we're involved with Escapees RV Club. I'm the president of Escapees. Melanie is the vice president, so we've been involved with the club my entire life. Joe and Kay Peterson were the founders of Escapees RV Club, and they're my grandparents, so the club has been in my bloodline for a long time, and RVing is nothing new to me. And what happened was when we came back and started working for Escapees directly in our own travels, in our own experiences and stuff, we started realizing that there was this big void within the club. We would travel around to the parks and talk to people, and meet others who were working from the road, or who had kids, or were in the younger audience. Travis:              And we would kind of ask them, "Hey. Have you heard of Escapees? What's your thoughts? What's your feelings?" And too often, we got the same story, and that story was, "Well, Escapees is really for retired full-timers." And we're like, "Wait a second. We're not though. we're a club for everyone." But we realized we were not meeting the needs of a segment of those RVers that were really important to the club, and actually the founding roots of the organization. So Xscapers was created as way to come back to those roots and bring the younger generation, those working on the road, into the fold and feel welcome and have a place to call their own and have a community that they connected with. And that's really what it was all about, and kind of where the concept came from. Melanie:           It's still a part of the Escapees membership, so everybody that joins, even if they're just joining to be a part of the Xscapers community are an Escapees member first, so it's kind of folded into the membership. You pay the $39.95 a year for the Escapees membership, and then you basically flag your account to become an Xscaper, and that will get you access to the community, the specific information that goes out to that group, so it's all one membership. Mike:                It's kind of,