How We Started Our Good Sam Chapter, Carefree Sams

Just like most people in a Good Sam Chapter, we all camped as kids and as adults, while we were raising our families. Some tented it, some had a pop up, other towed a trailer around the US while they worked their jobs, a few went big in a Class A from the start. But all of the members of our chapter have camped for many years and have been members of Good Sam Club. Some of us are even Lifetime members. All of our original members have camped together before. We each had attended a previous Samboree or The Rally or two. We met with several local chapters and even camped with one or two. None of them felt like the right fit for us. So, we spoke to the State Director, Joe & Debbie Weston, at the Spring Samboree and decided that we had enough interest to start our own chapter. That meeting was in April, it took us until June to get the founding members together and select officers. It took us until October to have our first meeting and until November to have our first camp out. We are still working on our own guidelines for how our chapter will operate.

We did design our Good Sam Chapter patch. We had several members sketch out different designs. Then we voted on the designs to decide on the final design of our patch. We created a patch that looks like a license plate, with Florida and our chapter number on the bottom of the license plate frame. The interior of the plate contains two “carefree people,” the Good Sam logo and our name Carefree Sams. We called ourselves Carefree Sams for a couple of reasons. One – We are very carefree, we do not plan much, we camp on a whim and are generally carefree. Two – Many of us do or did live in a community owned by Carefree. Three – It really had a ring to it and it really appealed to us! We also selected a unique color for our vests, purple. Purple? Yes, purple. No other chapter that we saw had that color! So, again, it seemed to be an easy choice for us.

What is the most important reason we started our own chapter? We all feel the answer is simple. We enjoy camping and we enjoy service to our community. We felt that Florida Good Sam chapters offer both of those. We also wanted to be with like-minded campers, have fun, develop lasting friendships, be successful and thrive as stewards of our community.