Next Vacation Spot

   Since Gary and I highly enjoyed camping, we decided to take it a step further to see what we could do.

   Growing up, Gary and his family were very involved in Thousand Trails, a membership campground company which operates resort-living private campgrounds. Talking about his childhood memories, especially with his dad, got him excited to look into a membership for us and our future family.

    We made a few phone calls and drove to our nearest Thousand Trails campground, which is about 20 miles northeast from here. We were able to stay a free night to check it out. This specific campground was the most memorable to Gary although he's been to many since his family did a lot of traveling growing up.

   Our biggest concern of course was noise. However, when it reached about 7pm, it quieted down and by 10pm, it was dead silent. We were actually shocked, especially since so many people were there. Someone later explained to us the reasoning for this: everybody has a membership, therefore they are all respectful of one another. If any noise gets too loud in the night (parties, etc), the ranger on duty can kick them out, membership or not. Sweet. Alcohol isn't even allowed in the park since it's family oriented.

   Anyway, Gary and I headed over to the adult center that night where we swam in the heated pool and later soaked it up in the giant jacuzzi with other friendly adults. Speaking of friendly, everybody was SO friendly! People would happily wave driving or walking by and even strike up conversations. Pretty awesome.

 The next afternoon, we purchased a membership and here's why:

• The parks are huge. Our nearest park is 266 acres with many campgrounds. 
• You can choose your own campsite. By the lakes, by all the entertainment, out in the boonies, whatever.
• It's resort-style living, so it has miniature golf, pool tables, swimming pools and hot tubs, lake activities if by a lake (fishing, boating, etc), and many other awesome things.
• It's quiet at night with family-friendly rules
• We have one so close to us, we can go every other weekend if we want
• The camping is unlimited. We have 30 camping nights in a year, and it's only $3 per night after we've reached that limit.
• We can go to any campground. We didn't buy the nation membership, just the Southwest (CA, AZ, NV).
• Best of all, we got an amazing deal on the membership.

  As you can see, we'll greatly benefit from it and we are totally looking forward to all of the fun trips. Here are some pictures from the trip:

The spot we chose for our campsite

Beautiful stream running near us

The stream continued, plus the miniature golf course

The GIANT swimming pool.

Pond nearby with some fishing (and cute ducks)

Gary made breakfast that morning :)

  So, we decided next month we are going to take a big, week-long trip to a campground a bit further from here and we narrowed it down to these choices:

Non-beach:

Yosemite Lakes:

Lake Tahoe:

 Las Vegas: (because it's 6 miles from the strip)

OR beach:

Santa Barbara (lots of horseback riding):

Palm Springs (very popular):

San Diego (3 different San Diego locations):

 Gary says it's like having a free hotel and being able to go anywhere :)

 Also, if anyone at anytime wants to camp, let us know! You are welcome to join us for free. There are also many locations up north by Sacramento and San Fransisco.

 Okay, bed time. Bye!