October 2025 will always be a special month for Greg and Jenny Holmes.
That’s when they opened Alabama’s newest RV park: the 57-site JG’s Campen Life RV Campground in Cullman. It’s also when they got married, on Oct. 25.
“We were the first to be married at our campground,” Greg Holmes, 68, said.
“Love conquers all,” Jenny Holmes added. Even during campground construction.
The newlyweds started building their park in February and originally planned to open last summer. But they faced more than a few delays, initially because of an unusually wet spring, which turned their construction site into a muddy mess.
“During the whole month of May, there were only 38 hours when we could work with heavy equipment because of the mud,” Greg said, adding that they also had to move a lot more dirt than they expected.
The Holmes also discovered that the further they got into building the campground, the more unexpected increases in material costs and additional time needed for the subcontractors to finish up the job.
Despite these challenges, they ended up opening the park Oct. 1 — three months behind their original schedule, but soon enough to catch the snowbirds heading south on Interstate 65.
JG’s Campen Life RV Campground has many amenities, including a gated dog park, virtual golf, pickleball, GellyBall, a hiking trail, a golf cart trail and two fishing ponds. There is also a creek nearby that is suitable for kayaking.
The park also has a swimming pool that is open during the summer months, a community fire pit, as well as a camp store, private bathhouses and a playground.
Greg said some people have pointed out that they spelled “Campen” incorrectly, but it’s actually the name of a German town in Germany and Cullman was founded by a German, so it works, he said.
