Re: Where do full timers go?
There is no one place that RV folks winter. In Arizona there are lost of us in Quartzsite, Mesa/Apache Junction, Tuscon, Yuma, Benson, and two or three other places. In Texas there is the Rio Grand Valley, the Rockport/Fulton area, Corpus Christi, and up around Galveston. There are a large group over near Mobile, AL. Florida has bunches of RV folks from Pensacola, to Miami and back up the coast to Jacksonville. Souther California has many more from Salton Sea, to Palm Springs, to San Diego and even up toward central CA. There there is a fair number around Deming, NM and more over near Big Bend. Biloxi, MS has some and so too New Orleans. It all just depends upon what you are looking for. Just about any place that is reasonably warm in winter has a significant number of us.
DL.
Not sure what you mean about the cost of our commute? Why would we want to do that? We do most of our shopping in Apache Junction, which is 25 miles away. Mesa is 5 to 10 miles more. So far, the only time that we have been in Phoenix was when we passed through on our way here. I don't really know of any reason that we would go there. Gas costs less here than it did in California, last month by about $0.20/gallon.
And as "live on volunteers" we don't worry about the cost of the RV sites since we don't pay for them except when in route between stops. In the past six months we have probably paid for a site no more than 20 nights, if that. At this location we have six RV sites here in a beautiful setting, each site has full hook-ups with 30A/50A power, propane supplied and a laundry room/shower room & lounge building in the center of the resident area. We don't pay for it so I suppose we just might be able to supply our own gasoline to run around and see everything while we are here.
It is true that the cost of many things have risen over the past eight years that we have been doing this, but not nearly as much as some imply. Fuel costs are controllable since it just means adjusting the amount of miles driven and how long you stop in one place. We first did this to save money when we started but since Pam now has a pension too, we considered not doing it but we much prefer the RV sites at places such as this to the cramped, tiny RV sites in the commercial parks and we have experiences that you could never have any other way. We love this life and plan to keep on as long as we can. There is no way that we will live long enough to visit all of the interesting places that there are to volunteer.