Now look what we've done

The other night we had Vickie, Bruce, Dave and Karen over to the firepit. We had been told we couldn't use it but the other night the owner was here and he said we could... don't have to tell me twice. It was fantastic to have that fire going to keep us warm outside while we visited with friends.

We've been here for about 5 weeks now and while the temperatures have been fantastic from 7am - 5pm, once that sun goes down it feels damn cold even though it's still around 17C but being in 30C temperatures all day heats your body core making 17C feel cold. So that firepit was a fantastic addition to our experience here.

So some of you will be aware that this whole RV thing was my idea and Brad was kind enough to indulge my wanderlust. He mumbles and grumbles, mostly because it's just what he does, but he likes it here too. This resort is fantastic. With 5 swimming pools, 5 whirlpools, 2 tennis courts, 6 pickleball courts, a fishing lake, 4 laundry rooms, exercise room, horseshoes and even a fishing lake. It is a luxury resort with a 14 hole golf course with the 15th hole being the name of the new restaurant opening any day. The palm trees and rolling greens of the golf course make this resort so stunning I can't even explain it, best to check out the website which has a short video showing everything.

This resort is different in that it is a condo corporation. The lots are for sale, we're told there are not many with this option and I am inclined to believe that. Apparently back in the day (20 years ago) it was a Thousand Trails that ran into financial trouble.

Anyway, we just bought a site here. Many of you will be disappointed I'm sure, but that's alright by me. The point of our RVing was to get away from Canadian winters... now we have a place to go every year and can branch out from here if we desire.

To be clear, this is not a timeshare. Noone was preaching the wonders of it to us, in fact the office didn't know we were considering it until we showed up to make an offer. There is a seperate website which has listings of what is for sale and what is for rent, should anyone be interested. You can also get a feel of what a build out could consist of on that website.

The resort has a management office which also has a rental pool so when we are not here the office can rent our site out. We have not decided whether we will or not as there are obvious income issues with this concept. We could create a U.S. corporation and do it that way with proceeds being put into lot development or some such but we have yet to figure out whether we want the hassle.

This alteration to our style means we will likely change our rig, we purchased this little one for boondocking and state park purposes, now we can go a little bigger.

We still plan to 'RV' slowly back and forth to Canada stopping here and there, ,so there are a lot of considerations that we have yet to decide on.

Given the rental rates at other places, we feel that this is a good fit for us and the offer we made was very low, so low in fact that there was a reasonable chance it would not be accepted, but the current owner has personal complications which require him to sell it fast. The site has limited improvements on it and we don't like them anyway, so they will have to go and we will be designing a new build-out and do most of the work ourselves since we are able. The purchase also includes a golf cart which is the transportation of choice around the 600 site resort. Our current landlord has just purchased new furniture for this rental site and while talking to Brad we purchased the current furniture (livingroom set) for $100 so at least we have comfortable seating for the remainder of this season.

I do not have any pictures as yet of our new site but will make a point to get some. The site is one of the larger sites in the resort, easily double the size of the rental site we are on currently. It's exciting to have this new endeavor.

Neither of us ever expected to be purchasing anything in the U.S. and while we gave a lot of consideration to it when we first arrived several weeks ago, we decided not to 'jump in' without giving this long and serious thought. We also wanted to make sure it was a sound purchase by gathering intel from others who have purchased here.

The other day we decided that since we both really like it here and it is so much less hassle than trying to find new places to go all the time, this was a great opportunity. There are many improvements in the works around this area in California which we hope will only help our bottom line in the end but the offer we made did not take any of that into account, obviously.

We are only about 2 hours from LA, less than an hour from Palm Springs, an hour to the beach in Oceanside, San Diego about 1.5 hrs and of course Mexico just the other side of San Diego. From LA you can get anywhere... a cruise, or flights. Plus the bonus that flights from Palm Springs go straight to our family city, as so many people there go to Palm Springs for a winter getaway.

We hope you will continue to follow along as our new endeavor blossoms and we get our site built the way we want it.