So You Want to Own a Campground?

Hi, I'm Donna Bordeaux with Campground Accounting. We are here today at Pine Ridge Campground in beautiful Roebuck, South Carolina, and we're talking with Brad McGoward. We've been working with Brad for several years now, and we're going to hear a little bit about his journey as a campground owner. So we want to talk a little bit about how you got to be a campground owner. And I've heard a little bit of this story before.

Yeah.

But let's go way, way back.

I was born in 1962. So I was working at AT&T. And it was. It was a good job, but I wasn't happy there. Just a lot of stuff. But anyway, so I was trying, always trying to think, what can I do next? You know, where. What can I do? Where can I go? What kind of job do I want? I want to. I was a lineman. I was tired of climbing poles, didn't climb any more poles. So they sent me out of town for six months to Asheville. And they would give you money for, you know, per diem, money for a place to stay, or give you a place to stay and give you money for food, or you could have all the money and you could take care of everything. I said, well, I got a camper. We camped. We weren't like every weekend campers, or maybe in the summer, maybe once a month, you know, kids had things going on. So it wasn't like we went all the time, but we went. But I was thinking I could take my camper somewhere and stay in it. And so I found a place, Rutledge Lake, Nice campground, up in. Outside of Asheville. And was there for six months. And at first, it was just a place to sleep and, you know, eat, go to work. But the longer I was there, I kept seeing people coming and going and coming and going. I'm like, you know, this is not a bad gig. How hard can it be? You know, I'm not a business guy. No business background, Just a high school grad. No nothing. But I figured it can't be that complicated. And so I looked around on the Internet and I found a class for campground ownership. It was. Darrell Hess, gave it. He doesn't do it anymore, but that's who I. Who it was with. And we went. My wife and I went for two days. I went to every class. She sort of hung around some. She thought I was. She thought I was. Lost it. So anyway, we sat through that thing and ended up. Started looking. And we looked at 13 campgrounds. This was the 13th one we took, sold our house, whatever we made off the house, plus our 401k. And Donna can tell you more about all the Rob stuff, but I took our 401k and rolled in our own corporation and barely had enough to make the down payment. It was like Texas hold them.

So what were you looking for when you were looking for campgrounds?

Cecilia will tell you that every one of them worked for me. I was so ready to get out that I had this idea now, didn't matter which one it was, I was taking one of them. But, you know, we wanted North Carolina initially because that's where we're from. We want to stay close to family. And there was only, I think, nine for sale at the time. And some of them were way more than I could afford. Some didn't look like they would make enough money for me to do that as my job. I could maybe do it, but I'd still have to work somewhere else. We made an offer on one in Boone and didn't get it, but it was seasonal. And that's sort of, you know, that's one of those things that's good and bad. You know, you're off in the winter, but you're not making money then either. And it was like June or July, I think, when we found out it was for sale and made the offer. And so you got a little window of making money and then you had to survive. So that didn't work. And so we found this one in I think November, I believe it was. No, it was for that because we sold our house in October, I think it was, anyway. Not sure the dates. Been a long time.

That's all right.

Ten years, ten plus. So we sold our house and moved into a camper and came here. But it was Roebuck, South Carolina was not high on the list. You know, it's near Spartburg. We didn't have any information really on the area. I just never thought highly, for whatever reason, you know, the Spartanburg was a place that people would come to camp, you know, I guess. But when we got down here, it's not the same as it was, but it's out by itself. Sort of feels like you're out in the middle of nowhere. Had good customer. In November, it was full. So this was it, I guess. But we looked at some North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee.

Was it listed for sale when you bought it?

It was, but it was under a business for sale. It wasn't a campground for sale website. And we'd seen it early, you know, before we looked at a Lot of the other ones and just never said. And finally we got to the point where, okay, if we don't find something here, we're gonna have to start looking farther out. And we didn't know. I mean, we would have. I guess we, we didn't really want to.

And so, so was it love at first sight? Did you come here and say, like, this is the one, or was it.

Like, well, for me, for me, like, I said, they were all that way. I was just so ready to get out. So Cecilia said, yeah, she, she, she didn't have. I don't, you know, the vision of owning a campground wasn't hers, but, but she was good. She was practical and she, she saw things that I didn't see and, and was pointing out things. So, yeah, it was. I mean, it wasn't perfect, but it was something we thought we could do, manage. It wasn't too big, we could handle it. And, and we thought we'd make a living. The guy did owner financing, and so he gave me a good rate. And he'd done a lot of work. He'd had it for six years, but it's 50 years old now. And so it's been. Been through a lot. A lot of people have done different things.

Right. But awesome. So when you first had that thought, like, yep, this is the one we're going to move forward with. I'm sure you had, like, a laundry list of, like, I could do this, I could do that, I could do this, I'd change this. Did you have that whole laundry list lined up of what you were planning to do, or did you figure, like, we're just gonna go there and see?

Well, it was, it was, you know, like I said, at first, we didn't have any money, so there was whether what I wanted to do didn't really matter. It's what I could afford to do. And so most early on, it was just basically keeping things going. Now we made little stuff, like we added more holiday activities, that kind of thing. We did those type things. It didn't really cost you any money, but it was probably, gosh, a few years before we felt like we could afford to start doing really, some changes. And part of that's, like I said, was probably us not knowing any better because we probably could have raised rates right away because he was really cheap, I think. Yeah, but you were afraid. You're afraid to make that. And I keep telling you many times, you've said, you guys need to do this and change your rates and do this. You know what's it called when you move dynamic? Yeah. Do all these things and we're like, I don't know. I don't know. But you've been right on all that stuff. I'm just saying. Anybody listening to this, Listen to Donna. She's good about helping you out. So we did. We just didn't know and didn't have the money. So there might have been visions, but it wasn't anything we could put in practice. I can't tell you what they were now, a lot like the site we're sitting on. It wasn't. It was a single part model, and we'd rent it monthly. And it just finally, you know, when it. When I was done with it, we decided to make it a site. And I didn't really have a plan for this site till I started doing it. It was like, let's pour this concrete. Not big enough. Let's add this deck. Let's add this pergola. Let's do this. So, yeah. So. But I'm saying that's kind of. No. Did I have a vision of how things I want to do? I'm not that guy. But up close I can, but not far off, I guess.

And when did you reach the point where you thought, like, looking back, like, yeah, this was a good idea. I'm really glad we did this.

Or have you reached day one was a good idea? I was so. Like I said, I was so ready to leave. Just having fun.

How was that when you got to go into your employer and tell them, like, I'm done?

Well, I told him I was doing something and I'm gonna be leaving. But I didn't tell him what it was. Cause I don't know how reasonable my thinking was. But I don't want anybody else looking for campgrounds that's not already looking for one. Because there's only so many of them out there, and I don't want them beating me to the punch. So I didn't tell anybody what I do until pretty much we'd already not done the deal because we moved down here in, like, January and stayed in our camper for three months. Work camping. But I did a lot more than a work camper. I did everything he would let me do. And I was out there every hour. It wasn't like 20 hours and you go home. I was. If he was working, I was working because I was trying to learn everything I could learn. So.

So what's the biggest thing that, looking back, you say in our search, I.

Wish we would have listened to Your accountant? No. I don't know.

Did you have an accountant when you first started?

Well, we had. Somebody did our taxes. We didn't really have an accountant. We just did our taxes. And. And. And there are things we call and ask. It was. It was Marcia.

Yeah.

That used to own Cape Red down the road. We met him at the Carvik, which. The associations. I'll throw that out. I know. Say this to me. I'm jumping around. Sorry, but the associations, you know, if you don't know. Arvik is the national association, and they have a lot of good information. They have classes you can take, vendors, you know, all these kind of things that can help you learn things. You don't know. YouTube. Like, there wasn't. I guess there was YouTube. I don't even know if there was YouTube. And I didn't watch much if there was. But I think there's a lot more channels now. There's. I've seen quite a few people have campground owner channels. None of them are good as ours, but. But. No, but it's. So there's a lot more information out there. But I. I mostly were winging it, you know, I think mostly if you. If you're good to people and you try to keep a nice place and. And some minis, if the kids are happy, then you're okay. And. And camping is so busy right now, you'd really have to try to mess up. I think to not do okay, you may not do the best, but to make a living, I think you can if you. Unless. Unless you're doing something really crazy.

Yeah. And, you know, with the family campground experience here, you guys provide a great experience. People love coming here. They come here year after year, week after week. They're looking. You've got events stacked up all the time. You got the barbecue competitions. It's just a great place for people to be. And like you said, if you can just put smiles on people's faces and give them a happy memory, they love to keep coming back.

Some of those things, like the barbecue, that was a Covid thing, just so happened they needed a place to go and they used us. After Covid's over, they wanted to start paying them to come. And, like, I can't do that. So it was nice while it lasted. We got a lot of good, really good free barbecue, but I don't know that that will ever happen again. But, yeah, it was good. But you try to come up with things. We did food trucks this year, which hadn't been doing that. Seems to be working out Pretty well. So it's always learning and stealing ideas from other campgrounds. People do it all the time, so.

Yeah. Yep. You got to watch what's going on in the industry and see it. Yeah. Awesome. So moving then a little further into ownership.

Yes.

So you got your feet wet, got that first year under your belt. What were your thoughts then? Like, what were you thinking?

Like I said, I. The whole idea was to be better off down the road than I was when I was working for AT&T and we were making a living now, you know, I don't know how everybody else does it, but for us, the house, which is up on the hill is, you know, the campground owns it. So we got a free place to live that pays for our phones, it pays for our vehicle, it's paying for our, you know, electricity, all those things. It's covering all those kind of things. So money wise, I didn't make a big check because I put it. We were putting most of it back in, but we were living okay. And I wasn't living great. You know, I wouldn't like people.

But the cost of living, campground owned.

Right. People start counting camp sites and all that kind of thing, and they're thinking, okay, this is what they're making. You know, everybody comes here thinks that way, but it costs a lot to run one of these places.

It does.

It's not. It's not. And then you have to have help. The bigger you get, the more help you need. Right. And then you're either paying them or paying them and giving a place to stay, which is what we do. That adds up. And I'm not making money off that site.

Right.

So that's. I got three of those right now that I'm doing that way, so. So that doesn't help you. But, you know, you got to have help. You got to have help. And the bigger you get, the more help you need. And I think it's hard to find help nowadays. We have some really good ones, but.

Well, luckily you have some built in help.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right. You're a solid employee. Your son.

Right.

So tell us a little bit about how Evan moved into the business and what his role has been.

Evan, he was. He was. He wasn't a college guy. I think he went for one year and that wasn't his thing. And we were going to say, okay, well, we're doing this. Come with us. And that was the plan. And then he met a girl, so he was gone for two years. So we bought it in 2013, and about 2015 it worked out that his wife then by then. Or they got married where they're here but they're engaged. They moved. She got a job at Duke Energy and could work remote. And so she worked from the house which was the single watt across, double watt across across the pond. For a while they lived there. And Evan came and started work with us. And Evan really good with people. Very personable, hard worker. We don't see eye to eye on everything but how many parents and kids do. But really good here. Really good. And it helped a lot because then that gave us some days off because really you don't get a lot of time off if you're just a couple trying to run a campground. We didn't have a lot. We didn't have any work campers then either. I don't think. I think that was later on.

But you were the go to guy.

Yeah. I mean you did everything. You know you did everything. And early on, like I said, money we fixed. Luckily I'm fairly handy. I can't fix everything but I can. I was alignment. So I can change breakers and I can dig a hole and fix the water line if I have to. Those kind of things. So otherwise you're paying somebody.

Right. Right. So then we're building the puzzle now. So now you got. Got the ownership in. Got a little help now along the side that you can depend on. Always trust in. So things are growing.

Yes.

You put a lot of money back into the campground. Keep. Keep reinventing over and over. So then comes a stage like let's say three or four years in. I think we met.

Yeah. Right.

And then you decided like let's take that next step.

Right.

And you guys really took a leap of faith in us.

Yes. Yes.

That's how it always works. Because we, you know, we can't give you the automatic guarantees on things. But in knowing how to do things. Right. We made some pretty strategic moves.

Yes.

That I'm really thrilled about. You had the Robs plan in place with the 401k right?

We did.

We were able to take an opportunity moment and exit that.

Yes.

So that's going to provide some really great benefits. Has already. And as we talk about selling a campground.

Wow.

Big time. Yeah, big time changes. So that's a good move to make sure that you're lined up to be making good decisions all along the way. So since we've been working together, tell me a little bit about how you feel about the approach. And I'm not looking for compliments here. I just want to know About. I just want to know about how things have changed for you when now you have some besides having your son to help you and some other work campers to help you. And now we're helping on the accounting side and the financial side and navigating that world. How has that changed your world?

I guess. I guess before that happened, we added those sites.

Oh yeah. We bought.

Evan, bought a piece of land initially. They built their house on an acre of it, the campground. Bought the rest of it from him. And we added. Better get the permission and all that. That's a long story. But anyway, had rock. All kind of issues up there. I've talked about it in some other ones, but we bought the other piece of property and put in 28 sites up there monthly. And those. Those worked out really well. You know, we had to borrow more money. Got out of my owner financing. I was in owner financing. I couldn't. He couldn't come up with more money. Had to go to the bank. Had to actually refinance twice because when we ran the rock, we were running low money and had to do it twice. Right. But it worked out. And that allowed us to get your suggestion to get out of the robs because we had that big investment and it changed things. Said we weren't worth anything, which hurt my feelings a little.

But now you're happy about it.

But it worked out. Yeah. It was one of those things. It's paper. I don't know how it works. But anyway. But it was good to get out of that. And that freed us. You know, we were. So we made more money then and we're free to do more things. I think that's where a lot of the improvement started coming in because we were able to do it now. It's not like, you know, crazy stuff, but I mean, we did the road this year with $75,000. We probably couldn't have done that if we hadn't added more sites for a while because that came. Increase the income. So.

And that also freed up because you were able to take some of your monthly sewer down here and move them up there so you could make this more.

Right, right. It's one of those. And I don't know the exact. I don't know how you. I mean, I know you can figure out what your monthly rate is and how many nights that is and that kind of thing, but do you know how much a site will rent if it's empty? You know what I'm saying? You don't really know how many calls you. How Many do you need if you. If you're turning people away all the time? I'm sure there's a formula somewhere of how many sites you could add. I'm not. My brain doesn't work that way. We just.

You just know you have.

Yeah, we know you have a good product. Right.

You create your own demand.

We felt we needed more camping sites for the weekends, which pays more, but. But at the same time, you hate to turn away, kick people out, so. So adding those sites was able to make that work. And I can't speak for everywhere, but Spartanburg's busy. We turn away people all the time from monthly sites. Cecilia's told me you need to add more sites. Babe, I'm doing all I can do to keep up with the ones I got. And we were having space for a lot more sites. I could add a few here and there, but it wouldn't make a big dent. But, I mean, it'd help, I guess, but it's one of those things.

All right. Okay. So how many years in are we now?

10.

Okay, 10 years at probably about 8. We started talking about your exit strategy.

Right.

And at first you were a little teetering, like. Yeah, I don't know.

It's. It's hard, you know, it's hard to make change. Change is hard. Yeah. You know, and I. It's not like I haven't done it before, so it's comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. And we. And. And actually, like I said, we didn't pay ourselves hardly anything early on. I think the first year, basically, we just paid ourselves back from our home loan. I don't think we even took a salary. A year, year and a half or so. And even after that, like I said, since the campground covers most things, we didn't need as much. But I still wasn't. I'm like. I'm working myself to death for, I don't even want to say, $20,000 or something. It was crazy. I'm like, I'm killing myself. At some point, I ought to get some reward out of this thing. You know, that's the. I mean, early on it didn't matter. I was okay. But the longer you're in it, you're linking. Why am I doing this? I mean, I know when you sell, that's when you get your money, but at the same time, you ought to be able to say, gosh, I sure would like to go out to eat at that nice restaurant tonight. Can't do it this week. You know, you ought to be able to do something every now and then now we went on vacation. But that was one week, two weeks out of a year when everybody else was getting four weeks out of the year. And I'm working the holidays and they're out here having a good time and it's like, you know, at some point.

Well, it's hard watching other people be on vacation. Right, Right when you, you're gonna be the worker guy.

We'd be out here talking, you know, you make friends, you meet campers, people that are monthlies, and they'll say, hey, where you going? I was like, I'm going home. It's eight, I've been working all day. I'm still working. You know, you may, you may think you're having a fun time and I'm enjoying myself, but I still feel like it's working. If I'm out here, it feels like work, you know, and so I'm ready to get away from it. So that changes. But I sure almost forgot your question. Well, you know, you, you, you hope at some point and then Evan, okay, that throws things out exit wise. But it was just Cecilia and I, we sell, we're done. Evan's involved now. So what do you do with Evan? Just. Does he take over? Do you, do you let him pay me? That puts to me that put a lot of pressure. I don't know if I'd want that pressure of providing my dad his retirement. You know what I'm saying? Does that make sense? It's like, that's a lot to put on somebody. What if something goes wrong and I can't pay my dad this month or whatever? You know, something happens at campground and I don't have the money, and then dad's sitting there, his house is going to be foreclosed. What am I doing? So it was one of those things. It's just cleaner to.

Family always comes first and you never want to mess with it.

It's cleaner to get rid of it and let him. And he's 32. I think he's got a lot of time and he'll be better off than I was at 32. Come, come selling time. So. And he could do whatever he wants to. I mean, he may, you know, he could stay on, he could, he could do his own, you know, it's not, it's, you know, I started with $300,000. He ought to be in that range. He could do something a lot younger than me, you know, and if he did it for 10 years and got to where we are and all the.

Wealth of experience of what he's learned along the way.

All free. I gave it to him for free. But, yeah, it's. You know, at some point, you think, how many good years you got left, too? You know, I'm 60. You're healthy. You're never guaranteed anything. Yeah, I could work. I keep on doing this and stay till 70, 67, wherever. Wherever people retire at most time and. And then die the next year. You know, a lot of people do that.

Yeah.

So.

Well, we started talking about the exit, and then you said, yep, I think I'm gonna list it for sale. Yeah, right. As I say, you listed for sale. You had lots of people come look. Not quite the right fit, and then nobody really.

The first time, it was, like I said, we thought it was a good time to sell because business was so good, camping was booming, so many people bought campers. There seemed like, for whatever reason, people had more people discovered campgrounds as an option of owning something.

Right.

Seemed like to me. And so we thought, well, now's the time. And so we listed it and had for, I think it was 3.7 something. We paid 1.1 million, 50,000 is what we paid for. And I thought, well, okay, we'll see what happens. I really wanted more than that, you know, I thought. And I didn't know what it was worth, per se, back to not knowing, but they said, this is a good figure. And I said, okay. So we listed and had three people come look, and no offers. So I said, well, maybe it's not a good time to sell, you know, maybe it's not. So the more we thought about, we finally said, you know what? Let's just stick with it, and we'll just keep going. And so we were that for about a year.

Yep.

And then I had a guy that kept calling me, how you doing today? What do you think about selling? Nah, I'm good. Well, everything going good? Yeah, it is. He's a very personal guy. Very nice guy, you know, but he just kept. And finally I said, look, for how much, you know, can you keep calling me? What's your idea? And he threw out a number. And I'm like, really? I said, well, if that happens, yeah, we could do that. So we're almost there.

We listed it again. Yeah, you got an. You had two offers.

We had. It's hard to depend on how you count them. We had people off once. They said we were interested in talking about we hadn't signed a deal with them or anything to be our broker thing. They had people that worked. Had already been working through them for other properties.

Right.

And they kept, you know, hey, you got anything else coming up? And so they said, yeah, this. This is. We're talking to somebody right now. So I. We got offers before even listed.

Right.

And they were more than what we had listed for before.

Yeah.

And so you're like, okay, well that's great. I didn't even put it on the. Out there yet. And I've already getting, you know, more offers.

Right.

And I don't know, sort of. I don't know why. To me that makes sense why it would be different with a. I don't want to say. I think I've already said before on another video, why a campground? Why Website didn't do as well as a business website. And once again, Donna said the first time list with Colliers, that's not who I listed with. But. But she told me more than once. I'm like. And I went to the website, I'm looking at Don. I don't see any whip. I don't see campgrounds. They're hard to find. Why. Why would anybody buy a campground here? You can't even find them. They're not even listed under campgrounds. It's like under multi use or something. Or something goofy. I'm like, who's going to find this thing? So I didn't believe you. Once again, I was proven wrong. But so. So this guy kept. Kept bugging it. And so we had that. That one listing or that one offer early on, and then we got another one and the other one was like four. Really. It was one, but it was four different options, like option A, B, C and D of how to. How to do it. And then we put it online and we didn't get a lot more people. We got one other guy that did full price. Boom, right off the bat. And we're like, it just went up today or last week or so. It hadn't been up long. And we were ev and I and say. We're like, well, you know, this is what we said. Should we just take it? Or I don't know. You know, this guy's jumping right now. Who knows what it. What you could get. And they suggested we hold off and we did. And we ended up getting the same offer. We finally finalized on the same offer, but not with the person that made the first offer. He sort of just faded out, I think. I'm not sure about this. What's the thing called where you have to. When you sell something? I think that's what he was under. He was under Time constraints.

Got it.

And I think. And we didn't move fast enough for him, so he did something else.

Now you've got an offer.

Yes.

And you're in the due diligence process under contract.

I don't. That's the part that's confused. It's a lot of different papers we gotta sign. We agreed to a price initially. Then there was a purchase agreement that we're working. We worked on for a while, back and forth. I signed it Friday.

Okay.

They have not re. Signed it as I know of right now. They may have. Nobody called me or told me unless something changes. And I don't know why. We were pretty upfront when we listed our broker, asked for a lot of information, how much taxes, P and LS all these things, reservation information, all this stuff. And we were pretty. And with your help, we had everything ready pretty much. And it was. It was easy. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Here's everything you want. They want something else, we send it to them, it's gone. So they've had all the paperwork, I think. I don't think there's anything they haven't had as far as that goes. So it was down to, you know, what if we find this or, you know, those kind of things. What would. Yeah, things would change. And like, property. Like, there's so much stuff on here. And the. The way it read. And me not being a lawyer, I just want to make sure I wasn't saying something I shouldn't say. Like, we have a house that has our furniture. Right. We have two vehicles that are the campgrounds. But we thought we'd keep them. We thought we'd keep them. You know, we have computers, a few. A few tools. Not. Not much because I. You know, when I came here, all my tools came with me. Right now they've worn out and broken and been, you know, used or lost or whatever over the years. And so I've replaced them and they're the campgrounds. And I don't. Wasn't planning on taking much.

Right.

But if I needed to take a.

You don't want to have to go buy a new.

I threw it, like I said, a thousand dollars max worth of stuff. Which it wouldn't have been probably anywhere near that, but just to cover it. But it wouldn't affect the campground to how you run the campground. Because I have plenty of screwdrivers. I have plenty of. I have a couple drills. I have all this. So it wouldn't hurt anything. Yeah. And so. Stuff like that. But. But. And so is that language Getting figured out. Right. So like I said, we signed it. Hopefully they'll sign it today. And once that, once he gets signed, then the due diligence starts. And it could be 30 days and they can extend it for 15 more days with another amounted escrow.

Right.

But it could be less than. It could be a week. They could say we're ready, you know.

And most of their due diligence is kind of already done. Right, that's exactly.

They wouldn't have made that. They wouldn't offered that kind of money if I couldn't prove that I was making that kind of money.

Right.

And then as far as this is as is where is, you know, they've been here, they've rode around, had a guy come and take some pictures. So I don't know, there may be. They may come and check something, but I don't know what they would, you know, it's not gonna change anything. You know, they know we maintain stuff, but there's always something needs to be fixed or is getting a little old. You know, it's 50 years old. There's gonna be things. So I think they're okay with that, but I don't know that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, good. It sounds like we're on the right path and everything's moving pretty smooth. There's always little hiccups in there, but it doesn't sound like anything too unsurmountable.

At this point, like I said. And it. If it falls through. Falls through, we'll just move on. We'll just put it back up, baby. Yep. Or hold for a little longer. I don't know what we'll do. Probably this point, we'd probably put it right back up if it fell through.

Yeah. So now you've reached this point where you bought the baby, you've raised it, kept it all good, made it pretty, made people love it even more, and you're ready to pass that off to someone else. What's the next phase of life look like?

Well, initially, you know, it's one of those things you. It's like I don't. Have you ever thought about, boy, the lottery was a billion dollars or something, right? Now, what if I won the lottery? You know, what would you do? And it's not the lottery, but it is. I mean, lotteries are values. There are different values there. It's not the billion dollar lottery. And it's even not the 10 million dollar lottery. It's, you know, it's a but. And when you think of taxes and all that stuff, it's a lot less than people think. You look at the number and it sounds great, but it's really drops, drops, drops, drops. But initially we were, we were, we. I dive so s just got into diving. So we were thinking about getting a boat and, and heading to the Caribbean and diving off the boat and, and living that life for a while. Never had a boat, but we watch videos.

Hey, YouTube will help you on anything.

We'Re like we could do. I'm out. I was a paratrooper. I jumped out of planes. Never flown linemen, climb poles, worked electricity, bought a campground. I figure I could do it. I'm not scared of trying. Found out the insurance right now because of the past hurricanes is really hard to get for somebody without any past experience. And you can't go hardly anywhere. You have to stay on the coast and all this things. So I said well that's out. So we are looking at St. Croix I think is our. Probably that's our probable destination. Find a little condo. Nothing. I mean if you look at prices of houses here and prices of a condo there, not a whole lot of difference. Yeah, things are expensive now but. But I think we can get in something. Hopefully break even, you know, pay it or not break even, but pay it off and not owe any money on it. And then what our money comes in. We'll, we'll live off of that. May have to borrow a little bit depending on what we. What we just finally signed because there's only so many open down there, you know, so you may have to change your mind, you know, to make it work. But. And I don't know for how long it may be, you know, we're back, back to health, you know. How long do you got left? It may be forever. It may be three or four years. I can't imagine less than that at that amount of time. Yeah, I think you got to figure it out for a while first. I mean I'm sure if we like to dive. So I'm sure we can dive for a while and make it happen. And I think we'll both get some kind of little side thing, whether it's volunteer or part time job or something just to you know, fill some of the time.

You gotta keep active.

Yeah. But I'm ready to take a break.

Yeah, that sounds like the big dream story when you pull it all together from start to finish.

Yeah.

You conquered a lot of milestones along the way.

It's. It's emotional. Yeah. And I love, I love doing this. It's not. I've really Enjoyed it. But there's times. We won't get into the times, but there's times. It's like, what in the world? You know, like, lately, since we. Since we decided to sell, I can't tell you how many things have acted up or broken or just weird.

It's like when you start looking at new cars, the old car all of a sudden starts breaking down, getting stuff going on.

Yeah, it's exactly what's been going on. But it's. It's. But like I said, it's old. Things are supposed to act up, but sometimes it's people, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People are.

There's really, really, really good ones, and then there's some. You're like, who raised you? Yeah. You know, why are you acting that way here? Yeah.

Awesome.

So what are your predictions for, like.

The future of campgrounds in general?

Like, the industry as a whole? You know, it's okay. I'll go up. This. This is a long. This is probably. I'll probably give you a long answer, like, give everything else back. During COVID you know, when all these people bought campers, my thinking was, okay, they're. They're gonna be a lot of used campers for sale. You know, just. People don't know. And they're jumping to this because they're tired of being home. They don't want to stay in a hotel now. But if you. If they went somewhere they liked and the camper didn't tear up too much, because they're going to tear up and the kids have a good time, they're gonna stick with it. And that's what I've seen. I thought a lot of them would be gone and out of here, but that's not the case. They're bought and upgraded. We didn't get a big enough one or this one doesn't have the features I want. So they're not getting out of it. I'm not saying nobody. And there's age. Age happens. You know, people. We've had a lot of people over the years. 10 years used to come all the time, and they just sort of disappear. You know, they've aged out, but I don't see an end to it as long as, you know, even here you go, even if the economy goes south, crazy south, and you have a house that you're paying this much for and a camper that you're paying one tenth of that for. Worst case scenario, you find a place you can put your camper and live in your camper. You know, it may not be the situation you want, but you can afford it. And I think we're in an industry that's pretty much foolproof. Now, you may drop your prices to make it work and keep people there and all those kind of things, but I think you'd survive.

I don't think anybody's dropping prices. No, no.

But I'm saying if it went terrible. Went terrible. But as far as just how are things going now? Yeah, that's great. And I don't see an end. But like I said, worst case scenario, I think something can happen.

From an occupancy standpoint, what are you seeing right now? Are you seeing, like, some of your higher occupancies? Is it higher than it normally would be or about the same?

We are, you know, or you just.

Need to raise your prices so your occupancy isn't as high.

I may need to do that again, but, like, I'll probably leave that to the next guy. I don't know if we're going to change anything right now. I just let him make those decisions. I think that's a good time to do it when somebody else comes in. Yeah, I mean, I could do it and save the anger, but I don't need that right now. I don't need another problem. I don't want any more problems. But, yeah, I think campgrounds, if you have a place that's halfway decent, like I said we said. I think I said this earlier, halfway decent. And you keep it up and you're nice to people, you'll be fine. Now, I think a lot of our. My wife is very personable, remembers people's names, dogs names, all that stuff. You know, she. Her and Evan are the personalities. I'm. I'm the fix it guy. I'm okay, but I. I run out of things. It doesn't sound like I do, but I do run out of things to say in. In conversations, you know, talking about this. I can talk for a while, but. But like sitting around something at a table and just talking, I run out of things to say. Yeah, you're asking me questions. That's why I can talk.

Now, another. You said about age.

Yeah.

Are you seeing a trend of younger campers now? Not just the older aging out, but it used to be people thought about in the big stereotypical world that campgrounds, like the full timers, they were all older, retired, and just going across the country, fluttering around. Are you seeing a change in that structure?

Now back to Covid. The people that can work remotely, not Cape Ground owners, can't but people can work remotely. A lot of them were. We had a lot of people, you know, working, traveling, which is good for, you know, if you want to do monthly. If you. There's a lot of different. Different kinds of campgrounds. You know, it's what you're into. You could do a monthly campground and keep that thing slap full. Probably if you're in a place that's halfway decent, I think, you know, it's just place for people to stay. But yeah, our. Our. I think a lot of them are younger, doing that. The monthly thing. And I think also people, you know, get tired of staying in a hotel too. You know, that was me. I didn't want to stay in a hotel for six months.

Yeah.

So.

Especially people with kids.

Yeah, right. Yes.

Traveling as a family.

Right. And, you know, if you have a place with playground and. And pool and all those things, they want those things, so.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Well, like I said, looking back, and it's not. It's not because you're here, but I think you guys made a big difference. And we, you know, a lot of it's not. You don't know everything. You can't know everything. And sometimes it's good to have somebody that knows the stuff you don't. And accounting was one of them. You know, a lot of things, you know, pricing all that stuff. We were just sort of going by what the guy had before, and we'd say, okay, well, let's raise it. Were you doing $20?

You had a manual system before, right? With reservations?

I guess you'd call it that. It was. So we got here, the guy had sheets of paper. They're probably five feet wide and three and a half feet tall, stuck beside the wall. On the wall right beside. Check in. And it was a grid. So it was like dates of the month and campsites. I remember which way it was. Might have been months and day. Months and sites, whatever. And he only had. At the time, I think we only had 17 sites for camping when we. There's 50 sites up here, but 17 were for camping. The rest were his monthly. We're up to like 28 or so now, and we probably could do more, but some of the sites don't work. But anyway, that big sheet of paper. So you had to write down. When they called, you would write a little form out. He had like, little tear off, you know, like the mimeograph copy paper thing. And we keep that and then give them part when they show up. But fill out that form and then go to that grid and write it down, like their last names, like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, on this. Dates, this person. And then you'd see what's open kind of thing. And that was fine for the first month, but if you're like three months back, you're up underneath all that paper trying to, you know, where am I here? And writing this stuff in. So I think that didn't last very long. We bought just a. I think it was Campground Match or was the name of that one. And it was basically just a spreadsheet kind of thing. And we didn't use all this. It had a point of sale, but we didn't do any of that. We just did it. The way he was doing was just basically keeping track to get rid of that big piece of paper. And then we changed to another system that didn't work out, and now we're on res Nexus, which is not perfect. I don't think any of them. I don't doubt any of them are perfect, but. But it really works well for us. We. We did online. Another thing we did online reservations. That helps out a lot. You're on the phone so much. So all those things, you know, there's a lot of changes since we've been here, and some of them. I don't think the online thing was much when we bought it. I don't know if anybody was doing much of that early on.

Yes, it was just in the beginning phases.

Yeah. So we got it. We're slow on technology. We're not cutting edge of anything, but, yeah, that made a big difference. You guys do it this way when you sell, how are they gonna run it? I'm like, man, I don't really know. I think they own campgrounds. They. They already do some amenities. Will they do the exact same things we do? No. You know, nobody's gonna. I didn't do that. I stuck with the guy. The guy that owned it for me. He did things a certain way, and I stayed with it for a little while until I figured out we're not doing this anymore and this is changing and we're doing this different. And we got, you know, we did it how we wanted to run it. And that's the thing about a personally owned campground. You know, it's not a. It's not a koa. Nothing against koa, so don't get me in trouble. But, you know, they have a system that you do it this way. I think I would say you go to classes to learn how to do their way of stuff. We didn't do any of That, I mean, we went to Carvik and Arvik and all those things and heard stuff. We made our own decisions and, and some of them were right, some were wrong, but none of them killed us.

Right.

And I think in the long run, people like mom and Pops a lot of times.

Well, I'll tell you, we just came back, as I mentioned, from traveling and we had a couple of experiences at big corporate owned resorts along the way because there weren't any others, right. And man, I came back and I told Chad, like, we gotta not hit those again. Yeah, we had situations where there were trees and they said, oh, we got a company that will trim the trees, but they're not gonna trim them now. They're just gonna scrape down your rig instead. And then we went to one other campground, we had a tree issue and you know there's a guy there before we back in the site, like two minutes later. Like, I know you would be like, let me trim that for you.

Well, I try now, like I say, trees grow all the time.

Oh yeah.

And I'm out here, I'm out here, I drive along and I every so often I'll say, okay, that looks a little low. And I don't have a measurer, but normally I got a, depending on what I'm cutting, pole saw. And if I, you know, I can sort of get an idea where I need to be. But we try. Like I said, that's one of those things you try to keep up on. But there's so much all the time. And sometimes I want to do this today, but I got to do this today. Whether I, what I wanted to do or I had planned.

Goes on the to do list.

Yes. Goes out, goes out the window. You just got to do the important. Sometimes you put out the fire first.

Yeah. But we definitely noticed a difference between the mom and pop owned campground where they care.

Right.

Whereas you could pop into another one where some big corporation owns it and that person standing behind the counter could care less if you have a great experience or not.

Right.

They are just there to get their job done and marking the computer that you're there. We actually arrived at 1 at 1:45 in the afternoon. It was pouring rain like a monsoon. I run inside because of course we left our rain jackets in the car that were towing behind us. So I run inside, I'm soaking wet, and Lace says, oh, I'm sorry, we won't have your site ready until 2 o'. Clock. That's check in time.

What are they doing between 1:45 and.

2, there's a big question.

Somebody out there doing something.

There was nobody there doing anything at all. And so she said, we'll let you know when it's ready.

Yeah, well, we let that kind of stuff. I mean, I have people show up at 10 o' clock for a 2 o' clock check and I'm like, it's a bit much. I still got people leaving. And if the site's empty and you call me, I don't mind working with you, but our road's narrow in some places and I don't want you passing because I'll get that review.

Right.

They won't say. They won't be mad at that guy. They'll say, road's too narrow. I had to, you know, wait for a. I had to back up because a camper was coming the other way. Well, they shouldn't have been. You know, that's why we have. That's why we have our. That's why we have our times. But it happens, you know.

Yeah, but there is a difference in somebody who takes ownership of a campground and they care about what that review says, right?

Oh, yeah.

Versus somebody.

Reviews just hurt you.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, you hate to. I mean, and we, and we have, we have them and it's like, why don't you tell me? I could have fixed that if you let me know. But instead you put it out there for everybody. That. Forever, you know.

But the response to it, honestly, I'll read when we look at reviews, whether it's for a campground or a restaurant, if I see somebody had a complaint and I see that owner has put in their response, and it's a, hey, I'm sorry. I wish I would have known. I'd be happy to take care of that. Blah, blah.

You're not answering. You're not answering the person that wrote the review. You're answering everybody else.

All the others are looking.

And we. I don't like that. I know. I know a guy that owned one up sort of near here and he was really rough.

Yeah, I know what I'm talking about.

In his answering of reviews. I mean, he was terrible. Yeah. And I'm like, wow. Yeah. We never answer them bad. I mean, there's. Sometimes you have to say, well, you're incredible.

I'm pretty sure we have a whole podcast about that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was like, wow. Yeah. I'm like, man, like. And I've said this in another video, but I. We have a family that stayed with us years ago from Woodruff, which is, you know, 15 minutes down the road. They know everybody. I can't tell me people, they've gotten here because they came and camped with us, you know, and like I said, it's been here for 50 years and people still don't know. I have people all the time. Gosh, I just live in, you know, Simpsonville, which is not that far away. I never knew this was here. I'm like, well, you hadn't looked. I guess because it's. I got signs on the interstate, it's on the Internet. I think if you look for Pine Ridge, if you look for Pine Ridge Campground, I think we're the number one in the country. There's more than one, so make sure you get the right one. We're in South Carolina, we're. Which happens. I had somebody just the last week that was supposed to be in Michigan, made a reservation for us and was pulling into a campground in Michigan. I'm like, sorry. And that day, you know, they want a refund. I'm like, and I hate that you did that. But I, you know, I can't. I've blocked the site for you. Yeah, I blocked it for you. You know, what's the odds of me getting rid of it today? You know, so.

Well, you're doing a great job.

Well, we try. But back to the, back to the customer thing. Cecilia's like all our camp hosts or helpers or whatever you want to call them, work campers and Cecilia and Evan and I'll do okay. But they're really good at that up front thing. Personal say, ask questions. Sometimes it's almost too much. I'm out there waiting to take them to their site. We got three in a row waiting. I'm like, okay, a little less talking. I gotta get them out of the way. But people like that. Yeah, yeah, it makes a difference. Instead of. Here's your map.

And we were talking earlier again, being up in New England and coming back home here, right. And like people talk to you here. This is the norm in the south. It's the southern hospitality way. And people, especially in the north, it's just a different way of life.

Right.

And here people do appreciate that, especially people who aren't from here.

Right.

They may be taken back a little bit at first, but they're like, wow, they really are happy to see me.

Yeah, that's the sail. So she, she'll talk to somebody and she'll know like that they have common friends somehow in, in the office, I'm like, how did you even get to that point that you figured out that you knew each other. You knew some of the same people. I'm like, it's crazy. She's. She's very good.

Yes, she is.

Sam.