Campground grumblings… I don’t know if this blog will make it to the web. If you are reading it, then obviously it did – just know that I waffled on this a long time as to whether it should.
Happy thought of the day. One of my granddaughters and I were sitting on the edge of our sites concrete patio having a discussion when she suddently stood up, took a step forward and exlaimed “A four leaf clover!” Sure enough, there it was a couple of feet in front of her. We laminated it and marked it with the date and location for her keepsake box.
Early last summer, we joined Thousand Trails. And no, this really is not some sort of long complaint about TT and whether they are a good fit for you or not. It is somewhat about TT, perhaps more about industry in general and people who use parks as well as those who design them.
We’ve gone to a number of parks (not TT) where the campground hosts insisted on not only showing us to our spot, but guiding us into the spot. I always wondered just a bit why there were so insistent on the full escort. What follows is the reason why.
So, let me just jump in. We have been staying in, maybe six TT parks so far. Clearly, I’m not qualified to speak for even the majority of their parks. Yet there are clear trends. Every park we’ve been in has a range of sites. Some even have brand new spacious concrete pads with brand new asphalt roads. Many have older sites where everything is gravel often with crumbling asphalt roads. Sometimes, if the park is busy enough, all that are left are “buddy sites” where two sites are backed right up to each other – you are lucky if you have room enough between extended slides to walk between rigs. But even those are still better than Walmart.
Unfortunately, some parks with nice new sites reserve those for “paying customers”; particularly long term or annual RVs. One park we went to (Sedona) had nice new sites up on a hill (we weren’t allowed to use) and old sites down at the bottom – and there was no cell at the bottom. We were caravanning with our daughter who has to have decent cell for her work. We had to give up our reservations and move to a different, private, park the next day.
TT parks also don’t manage who uses which site at all. While most sites in many parks are quite reasonably sized, some of the older parks have quite a variety of lengths. Add to this that they seem to attempt to fill EVERY site. We went to one TT park and simply could not find two spots we could park our Class A RVs in. We did see 15-foot trailers parked in 60-foot-long sites and we did see two empty sites we had no chance of fitting into. The park staff were no help. They wouldn’t let us leave and come back the next day: if you leave during your reservation – you are out for the remainder – or so we were told. We had to scramble to find a place to stay for the duration of that reservation.
TT parks do not reserve sites. You enter the park, register, then drive around playing the equivalent of musical chairs with your 40-foot RV. If you get stuck in a bad spot – you can cruise, looking for people who are leaving the next day and hover outside their site the next morning waiting for them to leave. So far, we’ve been pretty lucky to find at least workable spots.
So not to be too negative, TT has been good for us, this year. Prior to the situation we are in now (Covid, caravanning), we never would have considered a membership. We prefer state/national parks and boondocking. All TT parks we were in had at least some full hookup and 50-amp sites. Some, we ended up on 30-amp, water sites as that were all there was left. Others, we choose 50-amp, water instead of 30 full hookups, because there was much more space between sites. There was always one or more working dump sites. Almost universally, staff have been friendly and helpful.
So, back to what’s wrong…. Some parks there were a significant number of sites blocked off because something needed fixing. Roads had potholes. Some sites were soft and rutted. Others had nice new areas we weren’t allowed to use. Other’s, like the one we are in now, had several older sections and a brand new one with wide concrete pads and new road. BUT, drainage was never properly considered in the initial design. Some sites, water runs off the hill above and spreads slimey mud throughout the site. There are no bumpers to keep someone from accidentally backing off the sites that aren’t pull throughs (saw someone do this and instantly sunk his Class A’s rear wheels up to the rims). To their credit, in this park, they continue to modify, maintain and upgrade the park to address issues on both the old and new areas. Today we are treated to concrete saws and grinders so they can install two new drains across the road right next to our sites. We’d rather put up with some noise along with improvements than to see them do nothing to fix problems.
So, switching to the other side of the issue. Campers or RVers or weekenders – take your pick. Some driveways are not long enough to fit a 25-foot long superduty truck in after parking the 42 ft fifth wheel,so people drive across the grass to park on the patio. Or, people bring ATVs and golf carts with aggressive tires and repeatedly drive across the grass until its ground almost entirely to mud. Or people can’t figure out how to park their RV without driving off the driveway, sometimes several feet. Or they back out of their spot, all the way across the road into the grass on the other side and spin out when they start forward. In other words, many people have no respect whatsoever for the campground property. This is further compounded by the fact that the in the newer section of the campground there are sprinkers and valves RIGHT NEXT TO THE STREET AND DRIVEWAY(who designs this stuff?). Thus, if someone does miss the driveway, the sprinkler heads or control boxes are crushed. This damage is ongoing – nearly every day I see another new example. It would take a crew several days a week just to keep up with grounds repair. In some places they’ve put up posts next to the driveways, and in some of those cases, the posts just get driven right over.
It’s not just TT parks either. This picture are from a Texas State park. This one, someone,
backing in a trailer or 5thwheel not only went way off the wide road, but drove right over the site post across the street. I realize a lot of people are newbies and newbies will make mistakes. We did – ended up with a creased storage door trying to negotiate a tight pullthrough at a campground in Canada. It was a pullthrough with a 90 degree turn and stumps hidden in overgrown brush, but we just didn’t look carefully enough before attempting to navigate into the site. I believe that when and RV is sold, it should come with a 30 minute, at a minimum, driving class. Show people on paper how to back up their rig or show a few Youtube videos, then take them out to a marked off area in the parking lot (lots of room these days) and help them back in as well as demonstrate how someone should spot for them. We did study how to navigate our 34 foot class A around corners long before we picked it up.
I also wonder if a bit of labeling would help. Just knowing how long a site is from the street to the back bumper would help. Of course, some people would ignore the numbers or simply not understand, at first, what the numbers mean. For example, if a site was labeled 40-65, then if the combined length of your RV and tow or towed was less than 40 or more then 65 feet, this this site is not for you. I know, too much to hope for.
So, I’m not sure what the takeaway here is, except a significant portion of RVers don’t respect the facilities, or don’t have the experience to not make the common mistakes. It is also that whomever designs park layouts could do so in a manner that minimized some of these issues which would, in turn, improve the quality of the park while reducing the maintenance and repair costs. Seems like a win all the way around.
