Our next campground, Thousand Trails San Benito RV & Camping Resort in California.

Thousand Trails is a camping membership organization, where you can buy some level of membership, and stay for free for some number of nights at some of their campgrounds. There are several membership levels, and classes of campgrounds; it can get a bit confusing.

We started out with just the base level membership, allowing us to stay free at parks in the southwest area of the US, plus an add-on that includes a bunch of other parks around the country for a small fee. At that level, we could stay for 14 nights, then had to go out of the Thousand Trails system for a week. And we could only book a couple of months out.

This campground is fairly large and sprawling. Here’s the map:

Thousand Trails entrance:

We parked the coach inside the entrance, unhooked the truck, and went exploring to find a site. One interesting feature of Thousand Trails parks is you can pick your own site, first-come-first-served. Which can be frustrating if you can’t find a site you want, but can be nice if you luck out:

We found this nice empty campsite backing onto hills, but it turned out it was reserved; while short-term sites are first-come-first-served, people can pay a few thousand dollars to book a specific site for several months — something we didn’t know about beforehand, and rather annoying, since the best sites are taken with long term reservations:

Our second choice site was still very nice; a wide site, backing on to an RV storage area; not quite as nice as the hills, but at least there’s nobody living back there. It’s a back-in site, our second one:

We put out our rug and chairs again:

Hookups:

I went for a walk around the campground:

In addition to RV sites, there are lots of tent sites and rental cabins:

A scary narrow bridge, that we had to take the coach over:

Dog park:

Trees:

There are lots of deer in the park:

Gnome house:

Another narrow bridge, that we used when leaving:

The pool area is closed for the season:

There are hundreds of ground squirrels all over this park:

I also saw a cat:

Jenn tried playing a game on the outside TV (the first time we’ve used it), though the controller didn’t work well through the walls:

The following morning, we were greeted with two issues.

The first was the power was out to the campground, which is more of a minor inconvenience, since our batteries and solar will support pretty much everything, other than air conditioners, and we can run the generator to recharge.

The second was that the nice spot we were in apparently had a long-term reservation (like the first one we liked), though no marking as such, and the ranger that checked us in wasn’t aware of it. The person who had booked it showed up to let us know, then later the campground manager and a ranger arrived to ask us (very politely) to move. They helped me find an alternative site, and offered compensation (though we didn’t bother with that).

Annoyingly, the first spot we liked was vacant the whole time we were here, and the person from the second site also left a day or two later, perhaps due to the power outage.

But the alternative site was actually a bit nicer, with shady trees and a nicer view. So yes it was a hassle to have to move, but only took a few minutes.

Jenn driving our coach to the new site:

Our truck and coach in the new campsite; still plenty spacious:

Hookups:

We used our Blackstone griddle:

 A peek of the hill from the front door:

The power outage turned out to be quite significant; it was local to the campground, and they couldn’t get it repaired for several days. So for four days, we ran our generator for an hour each morning and evening, to recharge our batteries, and give us power for cooking and such:

Our three solar panels contributed a little throughout the day, though not much:

Charging:

Running the generator was a hassle, not something we expected when staying at a large campground. Especially one that is part of a large network.

Another frustration with Thousand Trails is that many of the parks are restricted to age 55+, especially in the Arizona area, where we’re spending this winter. I’m almost there, at 52, but not quite. While that may not be strictly enforced (I certainly could pass for 55+), we wouldn’t want to risk it.

But despite those caveats, we liked it enough that we have since purchased a premium membership, so we can book up to six months in advance, and go from park to park within the Thousand Trails system if we want. Plus our membership gives access to more parks at a significant discount, too.

We’ve calculated that if we stay at least half a year at TT parks, the membership will pay for itself within two years, then subsequent years will be gravy. Assuming we’re still doing the RV lifestyle in two years — we don’t have an end date, we’re going to keep doing it until we want to do something different. (And when we do stop, we can sell the membership, recouping part of the cost.)

A lot more text than usual in this post! Was it interesting? Let me know!