Pio Pico Thousand Trails in Jamul, CA “closed” back in March due to Covid-19. We were told by 3 different rangers and twice by Dave Dargie, the membership sales person, that we could not return to our lease site till the governor opens things up. On May 15, Pio “opened” back up! We were planning to return that day until we learned there were about 80 reservations due to come in that day. Otay Lakes Rd is a curvy and dangerous road due to impatient drivers and “crotch-rockets”, and serious cyclists. Jamming the road with all kinds of RVs for a few miles in both directions as the RVs try to make their way to the TT check-in is a recipe for disaster. We decided to wait till a few extra days to let things settle down a bit since we were returning to our lease site vs a regular campsite. Our site would be there. 🙂
Upon return we discovered we COULD have returned a couple months ago to our lease site, as we originally thought! Due to the severe amount of miscommunication during the Covid-19 crisis, Phil, the preserve manager, said he’d be happy to extend our lease contract by the amount of time we were “kept out”. Therefore, we will stay till September 1.
Unfortunately, our power shut down the second morning we were here. All we were doing was watching TV at the time! (Extremely low draw for power!) Obviously the power situation did not get properly fixed during February and March. We asked if we could move onto an available 50-amp lease site due to the power situation. Phil said we’d figure things out when he gets back next week. Lili checked the computer grid and came up with a couple sites that she thought would work as of June 1. But of course Dave Dargie said “All sites are taken” when he was called. (They are not.) I told Lil that was what he would say. He is one of the ones who told us in no uncertain terms that we could not return prior to May 15, and basically, “too bad” if we didn’t get to use a couple months of our lease time that we planned to use even though it was TT and the state of California not letting us back in to use our time due to Covid-19.
Lili offered us a “regular” membership site that is a nice, 50-amp site where we could stay for the 3 months we have left on our lease. We already know we are not going to renew the lease, so we thought this would be a reasonable solution. 50-amp will be important to have if we stay here all of July and August. We aren’t sure about the cell and wi-fi signals in the new site, but the reception shouldn’t be any worse than it is now. Having power for full AC when it gets hot during the summer will be nice. But before we could get moved to the new site after the weekend, one of the rangers put someone in the site even though we had a “closed for maintenance” tag on the pedestal! Supposedly it is someone who gets pretty nasty and will work with them, so we will wait till they leave on June 16. We will be ready to take possession of the site immediately. Luckily, our power has been OK for the last 5 days or so!
Since we have our lease time restored, we cancelled our reservations at Verde Ranch up in Camp Verde, AZ. This will save us $1000! It will be nice to just stay put here till September without moving out at all, and be able to see our grandkids for the summer!
UPDATE:
We are now in our new “lease” site E-10. 50-amp power is GREAT! Wifi is stronger here, but the phone signal is still very weak. We are so much happier with this site. We brought our fence and pavers over to the new site to make it “home” for the next three months.
The pool opened this last week. There are 3 two-hour sessions each day with a limit of 10 people each time. The pool is closed for an hour in between each session for cleaning. It’s been quite nice to have such a limit.
It has worked out pretty well till today, June 17. Supposedly, about 6 staff workers have just tested positive for Covid-19! The pool is now closed indefinitely, and the park itself will be closed again as of tomorrow for at least two weeks. Today was the last for people with reservations to arrive! The park is FULL. Looks like they actually cancelled weekend cabin rentals. Yea! That’s where some real partying happens with absolutely NO social distancing taking place! Seems to be no limit to the number of people and vehicles permitted with cabin rentals. Below are some of the cabins over Memorial Weekend! One group got so rowdy that they busted one of the front windows of the cabin!
With the park pool closed, we are back to using our inflatable pool with the grandkids! Nice to know we have this for our relaxing respite when the temperatures get up into the 80’s and 90’s this summer if the park pool is unreliable for use or simply remains closed.
