Valued Sites

Life is good here at Defeated Creek. The weather has been picture perfect, the company wonderful and the food plentiful. Most of our time has been spent simply enjoying this delightful place. We’ve even managed to get out and see some sights. 

Between sightseeing we’ve been thinking about sites. Web sites, that is. Online browsing fills the time we once spent reading daily newspapers and magazines (and then some). It’s our primary method of staying connected with the world in general and our fulltime RVing community, specifically. 

In a sea of sites, there are several we visit on a regular basis. We frequent all of the blogs listed over there to the right. These are folks who are sharing their experience as future, current or former fulltimers. They’re listed here because, in our opinion, they tell it like it is. Free of hype and hoopla, these good people are making a small but mighty contribution to the fulltiming community by publicly sharing what they’re up to. We find these “reality” sites entertaining, educational and inspiring. Plus, they help us keep track of our friends and meet up with them whenever we can! We can only hope that our meager little blog might provide the same for other members of this community we are proud to be a part of. 

Besides these blogs, there are five RV-related sites we find most valuable. 

rvparkreviews.com is an example of the value the RVing community can create together. This site features more than 100,000 reviews of RV parks and campgrounds across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The reviews are written by everyday RVers and provide helpful, unbiased insight to parks unknown. We use this site regularly to help us find the places we call home on the road. And, we’ve contributed reviews on every place we’ve stayed. Here’s a link to our reviews.

 

rvnetwork.com is the Escapees discussion forum. As members of this RVing club, we enjoy the campground discounts, member campgrounds and mail service. The free forum is open to any and all RV enthusiasts. With more than 16,000 registered members, we have found the collective wisdom available here to be quite valuable. Topics range from “Beginning RVing” to “Working on the Road.” Two topics are of special interest to current and future fulltimers. “Sharing the Fulltiming Lifestyle” is a very helpful and friendly thread that explores all aspects of life on the road. “Graduating to Fulltime” is an area where fulltimers check in with their “class”. We communicate regularly with our Class of 2009 and have met classmates from our class and other years. We’ve even contributed words of encouragement to future classes, like the Class of 2014!  

rv.net is a network of many sites. It’s a great big source of information for and from the community at large. Besides info on campgrounds, shows and RV reviews, there are blogs. Lots of them. The rv.net Open Roads Forum is vast. Our favorite thread is “Roads and Routes”, which contains more than 200,000 topics about to get from here to there. If you’re wondering if Highway 123 is the best way to reach Location ABC this is the place have that question answered. 

irv2.com bills itself as a friendly RVing forum. And, we’ve found it to be just that. With more than 50,000 members, there’s always someone there to help a fellow RVer. There’s gobs of information here. We spend our time in the specific owner’s forums for our motorhome, chassis and engine. We have learned so much about our moose from fellow Winnebago, Freightliner and Cummins owners. We’ve asked and answered many questions. Whenever we have a question this is the first place we visit. This is also the first place we go to offer help whenever we can. 

rvforum.net is a smaller forum, with a mere 27,000 members, that has a dandy Winnebago owner’s forum. (It touts that it is the friendliest online RV forum. We won’t dispute that!) Through this forum we had the pleasure of meeting up with several Winnebago owners at the Grand National Rally in Forest City this summer. We have found this to be a great group of friendly, knowledgeable and helpful folks.

With free and easy access to these five fantastic forums and all of these beautiful blogs, we can tap this wise and wonderful community in just a few quick clicks. We get helpful information and advice whenever we ask, and contribute the same to others wherever and whenever we can. 

It’s just one more reason we love this lifestyle. Though it’s just the two of us and the cats traveling along with the moose and squirrel, thanks to this powerful network, it always feels like we’re traveling in the company of family and friends.