It’s Winter Holiday Time!
This season brings gatherings of friends and family. With FMCA and chapter membership, the fun can last all year long!
National President
Rett Porter, F369084
rporter@fmca.com
I hope y’all are planning to get together with family and friends over the holidays. Claire and I will be staying in Arizona, enjoying great parties with friends.
As I have looked over the compliments and concerns that come from our members, I realize that I need your help to come up with ideas and answers to resolve a big concern. We want to have younger members with families joining FMCA, but we need to have areas and chapters that will be receptive to children and their younger-than-many-of-us parents. We need to create places for all of our members and their children to feel part of FMCA.
Recently, a family member voiced a concern that they couldn’t find a chapter that wasn’t turned off because they had children. We need new chapters started by younger members with children or existing chapters modified or expanded to appeal to families. Creating a new chapter is not hard. FMCA does not charge fees for starting a chapter, and truly there are few requirements to keep it going. A chapter is only required to hold one business meeting per year and can have as few as three members to fill the officer positions. The officers decide whether the chapter will charge dues.
Several months ago, Claire and I attended the Great Eastern Area Rally (GEAR) in Lewisburg, West Virginia. GEAR had asked Charlsanne Miskell, chair of FMCA’s Youth and Family Activities Committee, and her husband, Chris, to come and work games for the rally. We saw kids from age 6 to age 92 playing everything from bingo to water balloon toss/fights. (If you haven’t seen them, water balloons now come in packs where you fill up to 100 balloons all at once; this makes water balloons really easy to fill.) The senior kids were having just as much fun as the preteens. They had a bonfire and made s’mores. So many members played bean bag baseball with all ages participating, laughing, and having a lot of fun. We had similar multigenerational games in August at FMCA’s 105th International Convention and RV Expo held in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Some ideas for creating a chapter could be centering it around geocaching, home schooling, or pickleball. These are activities in which all ages participate. Another idea is to share responsibilities in holding rallies. FMCA has a group of three chapters — Elk International, Military Veterans, and Full Timers — that get together and host what they call a Tri-Chapter rally. The chapters take turns hosting the rally. This allows more activities with fewer members. Those who attend are members of one, two, or all three of the chapters.
In another chapter, RVQue, members lend their cooking talents to other chapters, adding services and supporting other chapter events. They smoke, grill, or barbecue meat for another chapter’s event, allowing the RVQue members to do what they like best (making food) while helping the other chapter succeed in their rally. The host chapter provides side dishes and the meat that will be prepared by RVQue members. This is the way chapters are meeting and interacting with each other.
If you or someone you know wants to get a chapter going, contact Penny Gortemiller, director of chapters and governance, via email at chapters@fmca or by phone at (513) 474-3622. You also can learn more about starting a chapter in an article that begins on page 36 of this month’s issue.
If you have any suggestions on how we can get more interest generated in programs for young members and/or to assist chapters that are having issues maintaining healthy membership numbers, then please send me an email at rporter@fmca.com.
FMCA is a family organization that needs to support families of all ages. We will continue to grow and provide benefits, but we can do this better if our members believe in FMCA and tell other RVers about our programs. Through the years we have seen that FMCA members who belong to chapters stay in FMCA longer because their friends are also in FMCA. Conrad Kleinpeter, F283752, once asked me, “How many lifelong friends have you met in a hotel while you are on vacation?” He is right; you won’t find them in a hotel, but you will meet lifelong friends in FMCA. Have you met yours yet?
Adventures Ahead!
These aren’t your ordinary camping locations. The Harvest Hosts and Boondockers Welcome networks provide opportunities to get a good night’s rest in some unusual places
Chief Executive Officer
Chris Smith
csmith@fmca.com
One of the benefits of owning an RV is experiencing the world in a unique way. Being able to drive to your next adventure in a house on wheels provides the ultimate convenience. The possibilities of where your next journey will lead you are endless. To help members find their next destination, FMCA has partnered with Harvest Hosts.
Harvest Hosts is a network of wineries, breweries, distilleries, farms, museums, and other attractions that welcome RV owners for overnight stays. Their current network consists of nearly 4,000 camping sites, and they keep adding to it. With a Harvest Hosts membership, one evening you may find yourself enjoying a wine tasting, while the next night the highlight is petting an alpaca! In this issue of the magazine, you can read about two different stays at Harvest Hosts locations. The first stop is the Legendary Alpacas of Texas ranch in Maypearl, Texas, south of Dallas; learn more starting on page 70. And the second is Sam Mazza’s Farm, with an article in the “Livin’ The Life” column starting on page 78.
The good news is that FMCA members new to the network receive a 15 percent discount off the normal Harvest Hosts membership rate of $99 per year. There are no camping fees at the host sites. The only request is that you spend at least $20 to support the host in exchange for the stay. This might include purchasing fresh produce from a farm, wine or food products from a winery, or tickets at an attraction. What a wonderful deal for a campsite!
To participate in the Harvest Hosts network, members must own a self-contained RV. Most host locations do not provide hookups or bathrooms. Overnight stays are limited to one night and must be booked in advance. One of the best things is there is no limit to the number of Harvest Hosts stays you can book per year. It truly is an amazing deal for such a low yearly fee. If you are a golfer, you might want to consider the Golf Plan, which adds more than 400 golf courses as host locations, for an additional fee.
To help its members find a place to stay, Harvest Hosts provides multiple options for researching and booking sites. You can access their mobile app or website. These pro-vide interactive maps, host search functions to find locations near your destination or route, and access to host pages to view comments and photos of locations.
If you need a place to stay and are not as concerned about a destination location, Boondockers Welcome — a Harvest Hosts company — also is a great option. Membership provides access to over 3,200 hosts who provide free overnight RV parking on their private property. Members of FMCA receive a 15 percent discount off the normal rate of $79 per year for their first year of Boondockers Welcome membership. Most of the same conditions to participate in Harvest Hosts apply to Boondockers Welcome. Only self-contained RVs may stay on-site. That said, Boondockers Welcome estimates that approximately 70 percent of the hosts do offer electric or water hookups. If that’s the case and guests choose to avail themselves of the hookups, a fee is involved.
To learn more about Harvest Hosts, please visit www.fmca.com/harvesthosts. For more information about Boondockers Welcome, visit www.fmca.com/boondockerswelcome.
And consider this: Your favorite RVing friend probably would love a membership to these organizations. What better time to give this gift of adventure than during the holiday season? Gift certificates are available for purchase at www.harvesthosts.com/hh-gift-membership. Happy holidays, everyone!
Contact An FMCA National Chaplain
Chaplains Connection Line: (833) 458-0778
Email: chaplains@fmca.com
The mission of FMCA is to bring together RV owners who share similar interests in congenial traveling, recreation, and social activities in order to preserve and perpetuate the traditional ideals and spirit of friendly and wholesome family fellowship as manifested by the founders of FMCA.