extend a stay in an RV park due to illness?

Has anyone had to extend a stay in an RV park due to illness?  How did you handle arrangements with the park ? assuming their sites are reserved in advance?

I had a close call with our last trip.  I started to come down with the flu but was able to drive home.  I was flat on my back for several days after that.  My DW doesn?t want to learn how to drive the DP.

Thanks in advance?

It probably depends on the individual campground

It happened to me last summer on the way back home after a month long road trip. We had reservations and stopped for one night at the KOA in the small town of Jackson, MN. While we were camping on this road trip, I always made reservations for campsites with both water and electricity. I was feeling very ill and it was a struggle for me to set up camp (tent camping). After going to bed for the night, I woke up GF and asked her to take me to nearest emergency room. I ended up staying 3 nights in a 13 bed rural hospital in Jackson MN, a surprisingly modern facility.

GF talked to KOA owners about me being in the hospital and extending our stay. They were very understanding and could not have been nicer. In fact, owner told GF to stay as long as needed and even helped her break down camp when I was released from hospital. I was still very sick and weak when discharged. Owners also told GF that they would not charge for any extra nights at KOA. Perhaps because we were old baby boomers camping in a 40 year old tent, they figured we had limited resources. Not sure they would offer the same no charge for additional nights for someone in a $100,000 MH, but maybe.

I suspect most RV campground owners/staff would be understanding and make accommodations in a similar emergency event. Just need to explain the situation and ask for help.

Let me follow up by saying I highly recommend the KOA in Jackson MN which is just off I-90. It has nice facilities with a fairly well stocked store, roomy spaces with a lot of trees for shade, and, of course, wonderful, friendly owners.  )  It turned out my severe illness was due to an extreme reaction to a tick bite (Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever).

GF was a trooper. I was so sick that GF had to deal with the thought that I might pass away. I still tease her that she was most worried that she would have to drive the 1,300 miles home with me in a body bag in the passenger seat.  ;D  On the trip, I had always set up the tent, used the electric pump to blow up and blow out the air in my queen size, high loft air mattress, set up the Coleman camp stove and other camping equipment, and did all the cooking and coffee making. Plus, it took a lot of care and planning to store all that equipment in the car along with our 80 lb hound. She just couldn't get all that stuff back into my 4 door sedan. So, she made an executive decision to throw away the tent and all the bedding that she couldn't fit in the car. In addition to all that, she had to deal with the dog who became so depressed about my disappearance that he stopped eating. She had just about reached her stress limit by the time I was discharged and she picked me up from the hospital with the car already packed and ready to hit the road. 

Now, for the rest of the story. The ER staff did not diagnose my allergic reaction as being cause by the tick bite. It wasn't until we return home that I saw my primary care doctor who diagnosed me as suffering from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. A couple weeks of high daily doses of antibiotics cured me. On a side note, it is now medical protocol to treat any tick bite with a regime of antibiotics.

Also, GF and I decided that we had done enough tent camping in our lives. Upon getting home, I immediately started looking for a travel trailer and tow vehicle.

Yes, over the years we have had to extend our stay for various reasons. Once the RV broke down, and once whe my brother dies unexpectedly, and once when my wife got ill and was hospitalized.  In each case we  were able to work things out with the park, which fortunately had enough spaces so they could shuffle things around to handle us and the incoming RVers who had reservations.  Probably somebody did not get the spot they had reserved, but life happens. It's always possible that there simply won't be anyway to handle both your overstay and the newcomers. A rock and a hard place, as it were.  I'd move out of the way if at all possible, even if sorely ill.  Get myself checked into a hotel or hospital and have my RV moved to a storage area so that the incoming people did not have their stay ruined because of my bad luck. They have expectations too.

We've only had to extend stays for bad weather so far, and the parks have been very accommodating although we did have to change sites a couple of times. I have helped others a few times that needed to extend their stay due to illness or injury, but needed to change sites. And once moved a rig to a storage area due to a death. Knock on wood, so far my illnesses have been brief or mild enough that I could still manage packing up and driving to our next location ok. We did stop in a rest area so I could nap for an hour once before continuing though. These days, we try to keep our park to park travel times to 4 hours or less, so the driving isn't too tiring. My wife is capable of driving our coach, but her failing health has made her time behind the wheel much less now. So far this winter, I've done all the driving...

IBTripping said:

Let me follow up by saying I highly recommend the KOA in Jackson MN which is just off I-90. It has nice facilities with a fairly well stocked store, roomy spaces with a lot of trees for shade, and, of course, wonderful, friendly owners.

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Knock wood, we've never been delayed for an illness but I just wanted to say that we have stayed at the Jackson MN KOA and enjoyed it. It was only 1 night back in 2007 on our trip out to Yellowstone but I'm glad to see it's still a nice place.

Thank you all - this is very helpful!

Do you belong to FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association)?  I'm not current on their membership perks, but they used to have a program that provided volunteers to drive your motorhome back home in case of emergency.

You're correct, Margi.  The FMCA has that benefit as well as many new ones.

I suspect the answer is on a campground-by-campground basis but we had to stay several months in Coburg, Oregon when I broke my elbow which required three surgeries and physical therapy.  The campground owners were very good about it.  Even the other tenants looked after us!  And one of the local waitresses was so nice she would cut my meat for me.  People really are nice when you need help!

ArdraF

This is one of the reasons that having your DW at least somewhat confident with the DP could be an important step to take. There are classes that teach RV driving, or you can go to a big empty parking lot on a weekend, set up some cones, and let her practice with no consequences.

I can't say those suggestions have ever worked for me... my wife never drove our motorhome more than a few feet forward, and she's not interested in anything related to our trailer towing now. But we're gonna get her behind the wheel when camping season hits again!

What ArdraF is talking about is this.(from their website) I have seen this work.
FMCAssist is emergency medical evacuation coverage available to members worldwide as long as you are more than 100 miles from home. You can be traveling in an RV, car, plane, ship, or motorcycle to be eligible for this benefit. If you are a full-time RVer, you are always considered 100 miles from home. Some exclusions and limitation amounts pertain to this benefit.

FMCAssist coverage is provided by Seven Corners and is underwritten by Lloyd's of London.

That is just one of the benefits. You can look here for more. https://www.fmca.com/fmca-about
Bill

It is also included in your membership fee, not an "add on".>>>Dan

Utclmjmpr said:

It is also included in your membership fee, not an "add on".>>>Dan

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And that was the main initial impetus for me joining FMCA -- that alone is worth more than the membership fee, to me, though other things benefit me, too.

Also, GF and I decided that we had done enough tent camping in our lives. Upon getting home, I immediately started looking for a travel trailer and tow vehicle.

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That is exactly how I ended up fulltiming in a motor home. My DH got really sick while we were tent camping. He had congestive heart failure. I had to leave all our stuff and take him to the ER 90 miles away. Luckily we were with other people, who stayed up there but I was unable to leave him to get our things. We had taken both vehicles and had left Bob's at the campground. My camping friends packed up a bunch of our stuff and put it in Bobs while another friend drove my RAV back up there and brought Bobs back. A couple days later, when my friends were packing up, they loaded the rest of our things in my RAV and one of them drove it back to me. I pulled everything out and set it up t air out and cleaned it all then stored it for the winter. 

I told Bob we were never camping in a tent again. We started looking for a class C. We went to an RV show in February there in Minneapolis. Our weekend camping in a class C morphed into fulltiming in a class A diesel pusher.

Yes this is a great benefit. I had the chance to see it work for a couple who were with us at a rally in Rockport Texas. They were going to evack him by air ambulance to San Antonio but weather conditions were bad so they used a ground ambulance. The transport people picked up the RV and their toad and drove them to San Antonio and set the coach up in a designated park and plugged it in. One thing that impressed me was the toad was in a shop geting some work done.  They went and got the toad from the shop.
They will also arrange for the transport/care of your pets.
There are some outher features but you can go read about them.
Bill

cadee2c said:

I told Bob we were never camping in a tent again. We started looking for a class C. We went to an RV show in February there in Minneapolis. Our weekend camping in a class C morphed into fulltiming in a class A diesel pusher.

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Thanks for sharing your story. You have some great friends.

i was just thinking of something similar just yesterday.  I shudder at the thought of even typing it...
but I saw an RV on the road with a small street/dirt motorcycle hanging on the back.  For some reason I thought about how fun that would be ...then I had a morbid thought about what would happen at some destination the rider got into an accident on that bike.
Nobody would know where his RV is.
or how to contact loved ones at that RV (unless they had an emergency contact info card or something..)
and what would the campground think and do about this "abandoned" rv?

blw2 said:

I had a morbid thought about what would happen at some destination the rider got into an accident on that bike.
Nobody would know where his RV is.
or how to contact loved ones at that RV (unless they had an emergency contact info card or something..)
and what would the campground think and do about this "abandoned" rv?

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I ride my electric motorcycle on all my RV trips. I have wondered the same. Hopefully, I never have to find out. But life is a gamble and such stuff as that I will worry about then I have the need to.

BTW, it's not only fun to have the bike on RV trips. It's extremely useful to people like me who do not like to tow anything. My Zero 6.5 is carried on my hitch with one of these.

In highly recommend electric bikes on RVs, just for the fact the get up the ramp safely on their own power with no clutch and great low speed throttle response even at less than 1 MPH. Very easy for a single person to get the bike  up and down the ramp in seconds.

-Don-  Auburn, CA

blw2 said:

i was just thinking of something similar just yesterday.  I shudder at the thought of even typing it...
but I saw an RV on the road with a small street/dirt motorcycle hanging on the back.  For some reason I thought about how fun that would be ...then I had a morbid thought about what would happen at some destination the rider got into an accident on that bike.
Nobody would know where his RV is.
or how to contact loved ones at that RV (unless they had an emergency contact info card or something..)
and what would the campground think and do about this "abandoned" rv?

Click to expand...

Great point !

Everyone reading this.  Make sure you have emergency contacts in your cellphone.  Apple phones let you access that ICE (In Case of Emergency) contact even if phone is locked.  LEO will look through your phone for an ICE contact.  Not sure how to do it, Google your specific phone, but do it 

Next, please let people know where you are and your itinerary. 

And again, if you have an Apple phone, use that feature called 'Find my Friends'  It will let whoever you let follow you, know where you are, as long as you have cell service.

Adding ICE to your phone is good thing and can realey help.
Something we do is when checking in to a campground we always get a couple business cards. After you are set up you can write on the back what spot you are in and the date. We travel with pets so have added "Pets on board please rescue" Put the cards in the front of your billfold where they will be easily seen. You could add a ICE number to.
Bill