Craig and Jennifer Alsup are Mississippi campground owners with a sense of adventure and hearts for making a difference in the lives of people who need help around the world.
They started their adventures young. At age 25, after earning their master’s degrees in psychology and public health administration, the Alsups embarked on a 16-month, 76-country backpacking trip around the world with dozens of bucket list adventures, including sky diving in Fiji, scuba diving around the Great Barrier Reef, hiking the Inca Trail at Machu Picchu, trekking in the Everest region of the Himalayas, tent camping in big game parks in Botswana and Namibia, and RVing in New Zealand, where they also enjoyed trekking across massive glaciers.
After traveling across six continents, Craig returned to work in therapy and spent the next decade working full-time as a therapist, splitting his time between offices in southwest Missouri and Hattiesburg, Miss.
Meanwhile, Jennifer worked in public health administration and soon landed a job as executive director of the Southwest Missouri Area Health Education Center.
While they both had satisfying careers, the Alsups felt a new kind of calling in 2015 when they both volunteered to help with disaster relief efforts in Nepal after the impoverished Himalayan country was hit with a 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
“We rebuilt 50 small homes in a village and provided food, clothing, and toys in around 20 other villages,” Craig recalled, adding, “I helped to lead a team to rebuild those homes for a couple of weeks and fundraised for the other outreach to villages where my friends were helping.”
The Alsups eventually got connected with Fort Worth, Texas-based Manna Worldwide, which manages 250 ongoing mission projects in 50 countries. MANNA hired Craig as an Associate Director for Asia, where he organizes teams of 10 to 20 volunteers on five to eight mission trips a year to a variety of countries, including India, Nepal, Fiji, Mongolia, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines. Jennifer also helps Craig with his mission assignments, leading teams, planning trips, fundraising, and spreading awareness.
The Alsups relocated to Fort Worth in 2016 to be close to MANNA headquarters and to DFW International Airport. Two years later, Craig dove back into the therapy business. Only this time, he took on an ownership role, recruiting other therapists to handle the clients while he managed the business aspects of the practice, based in Fort Worth. This practice has since grown to three locations in the Fort Worth area.
This allowed the Alsups to boost their income and to continue their work with MANNA Worldwide, which included fundraising for MANNA’s mission projects, a responsibility that led Craig and Jennifer to take RV trips to different cities across the country, where they made presentations, met with donors, and recruited volunteers with an interest in supporting MANNA’s mission work.
As if they didn’t already have enough to do, the Alsups embarked on yet another adventure in 2023, only this one was in their home state of Mississippi: They acquired Askew’s Landing RV Campground in Edwards, a tiny town roughly 30 miles west of Jackson.
The Alsups had traveled across the country in an RV as they did their outreach work for MANNA, and they knew there were a lot of fixer-upper type parks. Askew’s Landing needed attention, and the Alsups saw a new business opportunity. They learned about it from Craig’s parents, who knew the owner was ready to retire.
“We got there and it looked pretty run down, pretty rugged,” Craig recalled. “But the bones were there. The beauty of the place was there. It was kind of a diamond in the rough. We could see a lot of potential for it to be a great place again. I couldn’t leave it like it was, underutilized and dirty.”
Askew’s Landing has 97 RV sites as well as primitive tent sites and a 15-acre fishing and kayaking lake. The campground is also in a historical location off the Natchez Trace Parkway, as well as Interstate 20, and not far from the Vicksburg National Military Park.
The campground itself was originally part of the Bridgeport Plantation, which was founded by Duklet Askew in 1859. The plantation consisted of around 2,000 acres, with about 500 acres cleared for cotton farming. There was also a ferry for travelers across the neighboring Big Black River. The campground is near the river, but not right on it.
On May 17, 1863, as the Civil War raged, Confederate troops fleeing the Battle of Champion Hill crossed onto the property and used the ferry to flee across the river, burning it behind them to deter the Union Army, which was in pursuit. Another Civil War skirmish took place at the same location later that same year.
During the second half of the 20th century, Sidney Knox Askew, a fourth-generation member of the Askew family, lived on the property, which he used to raise cattle. By the 1970’s, Askew and his wife, Roma, who were both avid campers, built a 15-acre lake on the site of the previous pond and converted their land into a campground, which they opened in 1983.
The Alsups have spent the past couple of years making improvements to the park, including replacing most of their original monthly campers with overnight and vacationing campers.
“When we came in, pretty much everything needed cleaning,” Craig said. “About 70 of the campsites were full of monthly folks who had allowed their sites to become dirty, overgrown, and spread beyond the campsite bounds. The park had a lot of people who had been there forever, paying very low rates. So one of the first things we did was begin to change the pricing to fit the surrounding area.”
When the Alsups acquired the park, some long-term campers were paying as little as $100 or $200 a month.
“When we first came in, we raised the rates after a month, and then six months later, we would raise the rates again. Each time, we raised the rates by about $100 to $150 a month,” Craig noted.
Park rates are currently about $590 per month, which includes electricity, sewer, and water.
“Our local electricity supplier doesn’t allow us to meter our electricity,” Craig said.
Raising the rates has helped, however, because it has provided the Alsups with the money they’ve needed to continuously improve the park.
“I think we started out with a list of over 200 things we wanted to fix,” Craig said, adding that they have fixed most of the things that they wanted to address, with roughly 30 items still needing attention.
Improvements so far have entailed fixing up the camp store and pavilion; upgrading the laundry to new machines; improving the water well system, including a new well pump and chlorinator; and adding a rental cabin and two glamping tents.
The Alsups also replaced the pool pump and chlorinator; built a new pool sundeck; painted the pool fencing; added two dog parks, a playground and lawn games; built a gem mining sluice, and created a walking trail.
For marketing, Craig built a website, added online bookings and credit card payments, optimized the park’s Google Business Profile, replaced all park signage, built online listings, and developed a very active social media presence.
“We envision more improvements,” Craig said. “We’re now working on adding more resort-type amenities, including a potential lagoon, a jump pillow, more cabins, a coffee shop, a pizza kitchen/snack bar, GellyBall and foam parties.”
The Alsups also offer campground activities, including themed weekends, crafts, scavenger hunts, Karaoke, bingo, vendor and food truck events, live music and community campfires.
The improvements and activities have enabled the Alsups to diversify the demographics of their park, which now includes a growing base of local families with kids as well as retirees who are traveling across the country.
“We’ve seen the most growth with the local crowd,” Craig said. “Some people knew about the park and camped there a long time ago. Now they are coming back (as a result of the improvements we’ve made) and they are camping with us more and more frequently and recommending us to friends.”
The Alsups have also identified ancillary services they can provide to increase their income. For example, they capitalize on their 15-acre lake and swimming pool by selling daily, monthly, and annual fishing, kayaking, and swimming memberships.
They also sell propane, ice, firewood, kayak and propane grill rentals, and rent out their pavilion. They also offer RV storage.
“When we started, we had eight different revenue streams. Now we have 24 different revenue streams within the park,” Craig said. “We’re running at about 60% occupancy, and business has really picked up since this past spring. We’re bringing in far more nightly campers than the previous owner.”
The Alsups oversee their campground from their home base in Fort Worth, but they have a team of knowledgeable staff members and an excellent manager who are eager to help them improve the park.
“We have an on-site manager and staff that are workampers. Three are full-time and three are part-time. My parents help out, too. They live 15 miles away,” Craig said.
While the Alsups have been in the campground business for less than two years, they’ve already gleaned a few kernels of wisdom to share with other aspiring private park owners.
Among them:
— Don’t limit your vision of what you think your park could be: “Your vision for your park will evolve and expand as you and others embrace its full potential and imagine what it could achieve at its highest level of utilization,” Craig said.
— Look at your park’s numbers: Is it undervalued because it has eight revenue streams instead of 24? What could you be doing differently to generate more income?
“Diversifying revenue streams is key,” Craig said.
While most parks have multiple revenue streams, if they have a laundry, ice, propane and RV storage services, they could likely add more. The Alsups added daily, monthly and annual passes for fishing, swimming and kayaking; grill rentals; site lock fees; dump station fees; pup fence rentals; kayak rentals; as well as fees for park events. In the future, the Alsups may consider offering cooking, fishing and other workshop fees as well as fees for fishing gear rentals, golf carts, pedal carts and boats, vending, laundry services, and dog wash services.
— Hire slowly and fire quickly: “We’ve learned that if we want to hire well, we need to hire slowly,” Craig said. “If we didn’t hire well, we should move them along fast, for their benefit and ours.”
— The biggest challenge is getting the right people in the right positions to help you run your campground.
— Get involved in Facebook groups for your local area: Ask a lot of questions of your local people to find out what they would like to see at your park.
“We have gleaned so much great information and buy-in from groups and even used a Facebook group to help us choose our park’s logo,” Craig said.
— Do everything you can to ensure that you have a well-maintained website, an active social media presence and positive online reviews: “People often choose RV parks based on what they see and read online,” Craig said.
The Alsups have grown Askew Landing’s Facebook followers from around 100 to nearly 4,000 in 18 months. During the same time, they have increased their Google reviews from 108 to 631 while increasing their ratings from 4.1 to 4.7 stars.
“We’re getting 30-plus new reviews per month on average and it’s speeding up as we get busier,” Craig said.
As a service to other business owners, Craig said he also offers marketing services for RV park owners and other business owners, helping them attract more customers and grow their revenue using SEO, Google Business Optimization, website creation and personalized coaching.
As WCM was going to press with this report, Jennifer was keeping busy helping Craig run the campground in addition to helping him with his MANNA responsibilities of fundraising and leading mission teams. She also homeschools their two children, Sarah, 14, and Jude, 11.
Craig, for his part, keeps busy overseeing Askew’s Landing, working with MANNA, and leading his therapy practice. But he hasn’t ruled out acquiring another fixer-upper park if he finds the right opportunity.
“I’ve got my eyes open for a great deal, especially underperforming parks that need some TLC and vision to bring them to their highest and best use,” he said.
