Sunday, December 15, 2013

Nature's Own RV Park - Kingsville, TX

This is the RV park about two miles from the Ford dealer. It is about the farthest we could drive with the damage and even then, there was a smell of smoke when we arrived. It is a brand new facility with concrete roads, level gravel parking spots and large, spotless showers and laundry room. The park is full of new or almost new motorhomes and trailers, many of them high end types.

Norma did laundry and talked to the manager today. She learned that 90% of the park is young people, mostly single men, working on nearby pipeline, power line and wind farm projects. These jobs all pay a per diem to the workers, as much as $125 per day! This money is not taxable and the smarter guys are using it to pay for their RV's. The monthly rate here is only $350 per month (plus electric) so that leaves a lot left over to buy groceries and make payments on a rig. The not so smart ones are handing all of their per diem over to one of the local hotels.

The bottom photo is us. They were full but put us on the end of a row, not in a numbered space. There were hookups though. No discount because of the much smaller space, still $34 per night.


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9 comments:

  1. Ya gotta love the name of the park - not seeing a lot of nature there. Why do park owners do that - take all the vegetation away? Same deal with our park up at Marwayne this summer - lots of workers. Up there though a little more costly at $600 per month for full hook ups. Guess it is a bit of a ghost town there during the day…..

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    1. Very quiet here and also at night. I think they are working long hours and just crash when they get home.

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  2. Gotta love those smart guys can get things done and still have money left over.

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    1. I wish I had the same opportunity when I worked but tax laws are different in Canada and tax free per diems cannot be used to purchase assets although a few people did it anyway and did not get caught.

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  3. Quiet, clean, that's good news. Anything from the insurance company about covering expenses?

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    1. No, we have not even called them. We are waiting to see what the mechanics say about the damage. If it was caused by running over something it might be covered. We will call our agent on Monday.

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  4. Yep, lots of folks working for a living in this part of the world. I suspect the per diem doesn't technically pay for the RV, but rather the person gets extra dollars to live on sine he is traveling on business and if he doesn't use it all to say rent a hotel room and buy restaurat meals, he can use it for what he wants.

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    1. It is one of the differences between Canada and the US laws. One of the Telus workers got caught many years ago doing the same thing and they went back several years and made him pay income tax on everything he collected on per diems. It cost him a fortune. You can rent an RV but not buy or "rent to buy" one.

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  5. We went past that park about a week ago and I looked it up on the Internet because I thought it had to be nudist park with that name! LOL!

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