By Michelle Bates
A ribbon cutting and grand opening was held Friday, May 19, as many gathered together to celebrate the return of Trade Days.
Originally set to just be an RV resort with plenty for a family to do, owners Wade and Amanda Townsend said it just wouldn’t be the same if they didn’t bring back the famed Bonnie and Clyde Trade Days.
“I bought this place and we weren’t going to do Bonnie and Clyde Trade Days,” he said. “We were just going to do an RV park.”
Amanda Townsend said the vision was to turn it into a luxury RV park, and that’s what they’ve been working towards – are still working towards. However, they began getting phone calls asking if they were going to bring Trade Days back, and after much prayer, they decided to go for it.
“They kept asking, and I told myself if that wasn’t a sign from the good Lord, then I didn’t know what was,” he said.
As of May 19, there were more than 200 vendors there underneath the pavilion and lined up outside for craftsmen and women to sell their wares.
Trade Days weekends are every third Friday of the month, with June’s opportunity from Friday, June 16, through Sunday, June 18.
RV hookups, bathrooms and showers are available.
Vendors are still being sought for crafts, apparel, ironwork, animals, woodwork, homemade goods, food trucks and more. More information can be found online at bonnieandclyderv.com.
Before they purchased the property and developed a vision for it, Townsend said he read a book about seizing opportunities. He went in with a business partner to buy it.
While the partnership later dissolved, the Townsends spent a great amount of time and money, more than a year, cleaning up the property and getting it ready to open.
“There was a 136 acres of trash everywhere, metal, glass, it was bad,” he said. “We’ve only been running the business since January. And I started it back up and it began to pay the bills. We were close to running out of money.”
They actually set fire to the entire property to cleanse it and just allow the land to begin again. Now it hosts the Trade Days, an RV park, a Frisbee golf course, a pond stocked with fish, and they are working on getting playground equipment and other things together for children to do.
“We offer an outdoor peaceful experience for campers, free roam of the place, you can play Frisbee golf, you can fish,” he said, adding he attended a conference in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Bonnie and Clyde RV Resort and Trade Days is – to his
knowledge – the only place like it. “We touch everyone in one way or another when they come through here, and people really appreciate that.”
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