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how do you find a decent site to stay in?

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Keith Oliver:
We are in Southern California for a month.  We have a site.  It has turned out to be pretty nice.  We spent 3 days away from this site, to visit friends who have a park model in El Centro.  The site we got there wasn't anything to take pictures of, but at least it was quiet and had enough space between the rigs

However, next time we come south, we would like to stay in a place that is just as nice as this one, but elsewhere, so today we did a little reconnoitering, down towards San Diego.  We took the big Woodalls book, and, as we had already seen the Palm Springs version of the Sunland Resorts, we looked at three of their places in the San Diego area, Escondido and El Cajon.  

What a disappointment!  None of them have any space between the rigs, all are right on noisy highways, one looked to be full of rigs right out of Christmas Vacation (remember Eddie: "messter's full Clark"), a place old rigs go to die.

How am I going to find a place my wife will want to go to if those were the best that San Diego has to offer.  How many other places are worse than SD for selection?

How do you guys find a decent site?

Joel Weiss:
Like many other folks we use http://www.rvparkreviews.com/ for recommendations if we've never been to an area before. We gave up on Woodalls a long time ago; IMHO the reviews there are heavily influenced by the amount of advertising a CG purchases.  Furthermore, most listings in Woodalls are simply based on a checklist, for example, is there a swimming pool? a game room? etc.  In other words, the ratings are based on having specific amenities, not on their quality or the overall quality of the CG.  

It's not that RVParkReviews is perfect; you often have to read between the lines to figure out if a CG got a "1" because someone couldn't get the wifi to work or if there was a real issue.  But we've never been burned by going to a CG with average reviews of ~7 or more.  Nothing beats actually seeing a place before you pay for a site, but that isn't always possible.  Our reservations in Port Aransas this winter are at a CG that we spent two weeks at in the Spring.  It still doesn't mean we'll like it for the winter, but at least we had a chance to explore our options.  I wouldn't say that the CG we chose is ideal, but it was the best compromise we could find in that area and that's where we wanted to spend the winter.

Keith Oliver:
Joel:

Good to see that on the site you suggested, the first reviewer of the Sunland "Vacationer" park "left within the first hour of setting up".  My impressions not that different.  The reviewer of the park we are in seems to be right on as well.

Joel Weiss:
Keith--

IMHO the best reviews on RVParkReviews are those that provide a decent explanation of the reasons for the rating given.  That way I can decide if the "problems noted" are germane to us.  For example, since we don't use CG bathrooms and rarely use the laundry comments about either are largely irrelevant other than as indicators of the overall condition of the CG.  

Also, some folks get so torqued off about little things that they give extremely low scores to places for reasons that strike me as downright silly.  There was one review of a beautiful CG in Grand Teton National Park in which the reviewer was totally incensed that the stupid trees blocked his satellite TV reception and there wasn't any over-the-air reception for his antenna.  In my subsequent review I suggested that IMHO the reason for going to a National Park wasn't to watch TV (although we did get satellite reception there, even though we had to settle for SD rather than HD)  ;D

But, all things considered, it is the most reliable guide to CG's that I have found.  A big plus is that it gives fair treatment to government CG's (federal, state, local) which are virtually ignored by Woodalls (since they don't buy advertising).

Joel

LarryNCarolynShirk:
Ask on the Forum helps.
Try Chula Vista RV Resort and San Diego KOA Campground.  We have had rallies in both.

Larry

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