Our Seasonal Site Story

AKA Building the Perfect Campsite.

In 2019, we heard through the grapevine of a small, private campground that had seasonal sites for rent. We nearly jumped at the chance; we were tired of tearing our hair out trying to book campsites months and months in advance to get a spot. After talking with the owner of the campground, looking at the sites that were available, we chose one.  The site we chose hadn’t been rented in a while and needed a lot of work.  We started in the spring of 2019 clearing out a lot of trees, cleaning up the property in general, putting in a gravel pad. We had decks professionally built and added a new shed,  put in a professionally built bonus room, a fire pit, concrete steps creating a walkway to the shed, and planter boxes. 

All of this took a lot of blood, sweat and tears as we did some of the work ourselves. We hired university students in 2019 to help with clearing the site. Clearing the site was a huge undertaking.

Here are some before and after photos:

We have enjoyed our time at this seasonal site for the most part, especially during the pandemic. All Campsites in our area were at a premium and trying to book something would have driven us crazy. 

But we’ve decided to let our seasonal site go and have sold the improvements to the site. We have enjoyed our time at this seasonal site for the most part, especially during the pandemic. All campsites in our area were at a premium and trying to book something would have driven us crazy.  Our last night there was August 8th.  This year (2021) we spent approximately 24 days at the campsite; last year was the equivalent of seven weeks – the longest we’d ever camped.

It is a bittersweet feeling letting it go, but we are mostly relieved and happy. There was always that tension of when to go, how long to stay, what to pack, etc. etc. We felt the pressure of going out there as we’d paid for a seasonal site and wanted to get our money’s worth. We had a number of summer projects on the go at home as well as appointments this year and it kept getting harder and harder to get out there. 

We were not enjoying being tied down to always doing that as a vacation due to costs. 

We are looking forward to doing other things, such as camping in campgrounds in Alberta at places we’ve never seen like Pigeon Lake, and camping in the mountains again. 

There’s definitely pros and cons to seasonal RV sites. Weigh options carefully if considering.