Not all RV spaces are created equal

Camping at an Oregon State Park

It’s no surprise to learn that all RV parks are not created equal, but it may surprise some, especially those new to RVing, that not all sites within a park are equal. They’re not.

Some spots are gravel, others gravel with concrete pads and still others are all asphalt.  In some parks, what you pay for a site determines the surface of your spot. Some sites have lawn, picnic tables and shade trees, yet in the same park, other RVers will find themselves wilting under a hot sun.

In some parks, the sites are different widths.  It never fails that park management will put the smallest rigs in the wider spots, while big rigs get sites so narrow they can barely drive through them. I’ve seen this happen at parks where every site pays the same rate.

Some parks leave plenty of room between spaces, which is nice. Others force rigs to  park so close together, you sometimes are unable to put out your slides; sometimes rigs are so close together, you can hear the people next door snoring or making other bodily noises.

Some pull throughs are so short, the back of the trailer or the front of the truck, sometimes both, extend into the street, making it difficult for other vehicles to get through.

Price doesn't seem to matter. Two of the most expensive parks we've stayed in had the worst facilities. In both cases, we would have not stayed at these places if we'd had other choices.

Some of the nicest parks we stayed at were the least expensive with clean, nice facilities and friendly managers.

 



The snowbirds are migrating

An emptying RV park

With days getting warmer all the time in southern Arizona, the snowbirds are going home. Yuma, where we’re at, has been in triple digit temps for several days now, though locals say these temps are unseasonably warm for this time of year. The temps are so warm that news reports say rattlesnakes are coming out of hibernation early.

Many of Yuma’s 90,000 snowbirds started going home in mid-March, and more are pulling out every day. It’s hard to get a handle on how many are left in the RV park we’re at, because some people leave their RVs here year ’round or else have park model homes. We pass about a dozen RV parks on the way to the hospital every day, and they also are turning into ghost towns. We recently drove through Quartszite, where we spent a week in January, and saw many of the city’s 28 RV parks totally empty.

 

Another sign the snowbirds are migrating is the lines at the Walmart pharmacy department. Back in February, lines to drop off prescriptions wound down the aisle, almost to the door. Lines to pick up prescriptions were equally long the other way. People easily stood in either line for an hour or more to be helped. Now there are no lines and prescriptions are ready in 15 minutes or less, instead of a day or two.

"Camping" in RV parks

Harris Beach campsite

Expensive does not necessarily mean good when it comes to RV parks. In fact, we have enjoyed our stays more in older, less expensive RV parks.

Probably, the nicest site we had was at Harris Beach State Park in Brookings, Oregon. It cost $22 per night, with a roomy site surrounded by shrubbery for privacy. You could even see the ocean when you stood on the top step into the trailer.

The most expensive site was a Thousand Trails park just south of Newport. It cost just over $40 for a night, but it was late and we didn’t care what the cost was. We were given their longest pull-through site but the trailer and pickup still hung out at both ends. Plus, the trailer separated the picnic table from the fire pit. Not that we used either one.

We also liked a small, older park in Needles, California, that bordered the Colorado River, which was smooth as glass when I walked Chester down there the next morning.

We even tried boondocking (dry camping in a self-contained rig) a couple of times. Both times were free. Once in the Spirit Mountain Casino RV lot and another time at a Flying J truck stop in California that allowed Good Sam members to overnight free. We quite enjoyed Spirit Mountain, but the truck stop was pretty miserable. We gave up trying to sleep about 4 a.m., walked across the grounds to a restaurant for breakfast, then pulled out.

Walmart is the most popular place for boondocking, but I've met people who've overnighted in a McDonald's parking lot after it was closed. We considered boondocking on BLM land here in Quartzsite, but decided we didn't want to give up the electric blanket since desert nights are still cold.

I’m also finding that all sites within a specific RV park are not created equal. Some have picnic tables, others don’t. Some are on level ground, others slant down a hill.

We’re also finding that the staff at all the parks are really super, and go out of their way to make sure we have a pleasant stay. Because of this, we would return to most of the ones we’ve stayed at so far.

I have been amazed at how easy it is to tell regular snowbirds from newbies, like us. Regular snowbirds wear shorts and t-shirts while we're still bundled up in jeans and heavy sweatshirts. Regular snowbirds put indoor-outdoor carpeting around their RV to cover the gravel and also tote along regular patio furniture. And regular snowbirds have special cafeteria trays, about double the size of the food trays we used in grade school, to eat off of at potlucks; we showed up with paper plates.