Thousand Trails: A Perfect Solution

When in the early stages of planning this new adventure, we quickly ran into a slight issue. Ian had an in-person job. We explored a few options, and decided the best course was to ask his boss if he could go full-remote. It was a nerve-wracking conversation for Ian, but we lucked out! His boss agreed. One more problem - We weren’t sure when Ian’s job would kick over to full remote. We knew we were moving out of our apartment at the end of May, but we weren’t sure about his timeline and if he’d need to be in San Diego for a bit longer. We decided to get a campsite for the first week of June and started looking for one. HOLY COW. Campsites in San Diego were WILD! I should have expected this, but nope. I was expecting to save money, and there I was, looking at increasing rent from our wildly overpriced apartment downtown to downsize to our trailer. I looked at all the options – staying at a harvest host an hour and a half away or parking in a Walmart parking lot – none of them really fit the requirements or seemed appealing. I checked with the Navy campgrounds – we were too late, and they were booked up. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the perfect solution – there was a campground in Oceanside, only a little bit away, and an easy drive.down to Ian’s work. It would cost us about $1800 for the two weeks we wanted to stay, but they also offered a membership. We got an early-year discount off the normal $670 price (but check around, they keep extending the discount for this year), so for $495, we could get a “Camping Pass” that lasts one year. Here are some quick details:

· No nightly fees at any campsite in the region you select

· Add additional regions for $90

· Max stay of 14 nights

· Book reservations 90 days in advance

There are some limitations, though:

· If you stay for more than 4 nights, you must stay out of the Thousand Trails system for 7 nights.

· The mid-country availability is pretty slim. There aren’t really campgrounds inside the border states and coastal states.

In addition, for $370, we added the Trails Collection Pass. This gave us access to nationwide campgrounds in partnership with Thousand Trails. These are a bit more limited, though. If you stay in a Trails Collection campsite for any length of time, you must stay out of the system for 7 nights.

You can imagine how this seemed like the perfect solution. For less than half the cost of staying at the Oceanside Thousand Trails, we got a year pass to stay at a ton of campgrounds with no nightly fees. It's been working great for us so far! We haven’t really struggled with availability – we booked a few pretty far in advance, like the Yosemite area and Tahoe for holiday weekends – but so far we’ve been able to stay everywhere we have wanted. If you plan on camping a lot, check out Thousand Trails!