Living in an RV Park: How We Deal With Tight Parking in a Friendly Way

We’re living in an RV park full-time. That wasn’t part of our original plan when we started living in our motorhome, but we got lucky and found a park we love on our first try.

It’s on the edge of the desert, so you feel like you’re out away from town. We see lots of wildlife, from snakes to gila monsters to jackrabbits to quail and a lot more.

We’re 15 minutes from the airport, which is important for Levi’s job. Walmart is 5 minutes down the road, and we’re less than a mile from I-10. There’s a nice pool, clean restrooms, and while there are activities during the busy season, it’s not a loud party place.

It’s now a 55+ park, but we got grandfathered in because we were here before the change. The people who run the place are top-notch, and we’d be stupid to leave!

We love living here, but it’s not all sunshine and kitten farts. This place is full AF in winter. And with the fullness comes a lack of space, because this RV park is on the small side.

Last season was especially interesting because there was an influx of people new to the RV life because of the pandemic. Like us when we started four years ago, many of them were still learning and weren’t yet aware of the ins, outs, and general etiquette of RVing.

This past winter, we had some minor problems with neighbors parking in our site. Which, honestly, we don’t mind. We only mind when they park so close we can’t get our basement storage doors open, because we store stuff we need down there. (Like TOILET PAPER 😂)

It’s really only a problem when people try to cram 3+ vehicles on a small RV site. Our particular RV park has a limit of 2 vehicles per site, and any additional vehicles (including motorcycles and ATVs) have to be parked in an overflow lot.

The management at our park is good at enforcing the rules, but just like any other group of humans, a few RVers just don’t care and/or think rules don’t apply to them.

And if you’ve ever been at an RV park in the winter in Tucson, you can probably guess that management has to pick their battles and doesn’t have time to police parking issues.

We wanted to approach the problem in a proactive and friendly way for our next neighbors.

One thing I miss about living in a house is gardening. So we used our neighbor parking situation to scratch my gardening itch.

We bought three pots, planted hot peppers in them, and set them up on the side of our RV with just enough room for the basement doors to swing open.

We put shepherd’s hooks in the pots and strung up some Govee smart lights to create some lighting on that side of the RV for when we’re working in the water or battery compartments.

The smart lights are great because we can adjust the brightness with an app and put them on a timer, so they’re not obnoxiously bright.

We left enough room up front for our next neighbors to back in without problems, but now they physically can’t park on our side of the pedestal without running into heavy pots.

With a little creativity, we’ve been able to enjoy the same things we enjoyed when we lived in a house in our RV as well. And hopefully, the next busy season will be a little less stressful without people parking on top of us!