Family camping in Thousand Trails

Oregon

San Benito RV & Camping Resort [Paicines, CA]

• Dog Life: There were goat heads (caltrop thorns!) everywhere, which really hurt my paws.

I refused to trust the grass after the first one - DIDN’T pee til we got to Hollister. Went to the fenced in dog area, and was getting slobbered on and mounted by a neutered dog - not cute; my folks got me out of there right quick. Fenced area was not big enough to run, and some of the other dogs (on extendable leashes no less!) were less than laid back.

It’s California, smoke some good herb and be kind to your neighbors!

• As far as signal: ... if a guy in his forties tells you he’s a desert, believe him.

This was a dead zone. There was spotty Verizon, not even enough to Netflix & chill. No way human could actually work. AT&T’s ghost didn’t even haunt here.

• Discounts: Thousand Trails campground, so did not ask on anything else - that’s legit the entire point of joining up.

• The Park: Several loops of FHU with not enough shade to around. Several poorly marked tent sites dispersed - meaning no utilities, though they are sprinkled throughout the loops.

There were some other buildings, including a hot tub, and bathrooms/showers, but human did not explore these. They were too busy enjoying the air conditioning and trying to figure out our next stop.

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TL;DR - hard pass.

Lake Minden RV Resort [Nicolaus, CA]

• Dog Life: They host dog shows!

During the event there was tons of fun and activities. For normal days there’s a nice-sized fenced in off-leash area. The walk around the lake itself is lovely - the RV park encircles the lake!

Aside from my noodle family, the other doggos there seemed nice enough. I was too busy hanging with cousins to make new friends though. Stay on leash when not at your site, there is wildlife, including many stray cats.

• As far as signal: workable!

Beware: Only Verizon and *only* in the “D” loop so two-way instead of FHU, though their showers are nice so it’s easy to get by. Be sure to speedtest your spot!

• Discounts: Thousand Trials park, they are the reason we joined! Though when we originally had a retail spot, learned they offer weekly rates and do also honor PA - it’s amazing what calling in can do for you.

• The Park: Showering in D loop was fine. Free hot showers, clean, and decently spacious private area to dress in your shower stall. In the same bathroom as the toilets, along the opposite wall.

Grass and gravel back-in sites both in the A (FHU) and D (two-way) loops, can’t speak for the rest of the park. Decently level in both loops, though A loop is tight and has a lot of trees to maneuver. We had to ask our neighbor to bring in the awning so we could set up, thankfully they were very nice about it.

The park has a 5mph speed limit one-way loop-road around the park (remember, the park encircles a lake) so keep that in mind when scouting for your spot.

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TL;DR - reasonably priced, or members stay free. Wouldn’t go out of our way to stay here, but it wasn’t bad. Fairly easy access to Sacramento & Davis.

Timothy Lake South- Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania

Timothy Lake South is a wonderful Thousand Trails Campground. The park allows each camper to choose their site, which I appreciated. We were able to find a spot with two to three bars of cell signal and clear access to the southern skies. Which meant we had Data/Phone access plus Dish signal! A win-win for us! The sites are spaced out decently with full hook-ups and fifty amps at each site. The…

We have been doing some research in camping memberships, to see if they really can save money. It seems that if you do RV full time, and do want hookups at least half the time (the other half boondocking or other) Thousand Trails can save you money per year in the long run over state parks, city parks etc. For a conservative example, if one were to stay 15 nights a month, half the time, at a state park, that would be 15x$25 = $375/month, or $4500 a year. That shoots up if you do more than half the month on average. In comparison, for a Thousand Trails membership, you can buy packages up to an $8000 one time charge buy in, and roughly $900/year maintenance fee (with the encore and RPI parks, the deluxe package). So for an example scenario of 5 years, you would pay total 8000+(900×4) = $11,600 total spent over 5 years, or $2320/year, or $193/month. And that is including the ability to stay at them every night of the year at that package level. If you expand that scenario to 10 years, the numbers split in half. So it does appear that one could save money, and while we still have jobs, fork over the large initial fee. This would really help us in budget forecast for camping fees. The downside is, in order to realize this savings, you do have to limit yourself and utilize the parks. But what we would do is probably stay at the parks about 3/4 of the time and the remaining time boondocks for free somewhere. The western US has many BLM or forest service lands where this is possible, and we intend to explore this option. Also, it’s all new to us anyway! Every park we go to will be in an area we haven’t yet explored, and so being limited to the parks isn’t really a negative in that sense.

So we decided this year to buy into a thousand trails “camping pass”, and camp solely at these parks to get a feel for what they are, to give us a better sense of whether we want to buy in to a full membership. Long Beach was our first utilization of this pass.

I would say the quality of this particular park was average. It was neither spectacular nor particularly bad. It served the purpose. And we love the beach, the trial right out the back of the park was utilized quite a few times in our weekend stay there. It intersected a paved trail that runs north-south and leads to Long Beach. We brought our bikes but decided the temperature and rain chance wasn’t worth the risk, so we drove in to Long Beach to be tourists for a day

And there was a bit of rain, made for some fun splashing around in our rubber boots.

We also took a trip up the peninsula to a town called Oysterville. We have been there years ago but decided it would be time for another visit and perhaps get some cool pics of the old architecture.

We continued on to arrive at Newport Thousand Trails. This turned out to be a wonderful stay, right near a lake with a nice hike around the perimeter, one which we did probably 5-7 times during our stay. The dog loved it as well.

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