Best Campgrounds of 2020 and 2021 Plans

Rancho Cordova, CA Elks Lodge

What can I say?  2020 had a lot of bummer moments.  With Covid our plans, like others, had many changes and we opted to stick mostly to CA.  There were some silver linings though.  We gained another daughter-in-law and our first grandchild!

Since we stayed mostly in CA, we decided to try out as many of the Thousand Trails Parks as we could.  Normally we only stay in the one by Placerville when we are home for the holidays. I added all the Elks Lodges that had camping on the coast too.  Hardly any boondocking or other places we normally seek out, but not bad.  This was a very different year for us.

 Read on to see how this changed our numbers.

 

When looking for campsites, we prefer privacy, easy access, gorgeous views, on or very near water for fishing and kayaking, nearby hiking and biking trails, not too far from towns for amenities, entertainment, good food and water/dump.  We also love areas with history, breweries and other fun things.  Since Steve works from the rig, all of these spots have great Verizon cell signal unless otherwise noted. We also love to boondock and love FREE camping.  If we have to pay, anything  in the Twenties is what we shoot for.  Anything above $30 stings a bit but sometimes that's what it is.

Here are our favorite camping spots of 2020 (in no particular order):

1. Anza Borrego Desert, CA
FREE. Easy to get to on BLM land, right off a paved road..  This spot was large and flat and perfect for visiting Borrego Springs area.  Good Verizon as well.  Water and dump at the Red Earth Casino nearby.

    

 Great boondocking, hiking and sight-seeing.

2.  Alabama Hills - Lone Pine, CA
FREE.  I've been waiting to go here for years!  It can be hard to get one of the awesome spots up against the rocks.  Roads near the rocks can be sandy, rocky and very uneven.  We persevered and got a great spot!  So much hiking!!  The Movie Museum in town and the Manzanar Internment Camp are must dos!

    
                Life Rocks!                                 Mt. Whitney                          Several Arch Rocks

3. Lost Dutchman State Park, Apache Junction, AZ    

Beautiful, sparkling clean campsites, nicely spaced with a spectacular view of the Superstition Mountains and great hiking!  $30 to camp with electric and water ($20 with no utilities).  This is an all-time favorite and is always on our list! An annual stop for us.  If you get lucky being here at the perfect time in March/April , you may hit the peak bloom.  Spectacular!
    
                                         So much hiking, kayakingand exploring!

4. King Rd, AZ
FREE camping on BLM land between Quartzsite and Yuma.  All the beauty of the KoFa Mountains but none of the crazy crowds.  Fantastic Verizon!  

    

Plenty of hiking, fun over in Q and lots to do in Yuma.

5. Lake Pleasant Regional Park, AZ 
Less than an hour from Phoenix, but so peaceful.  Plenty of hiking and kayaking on the lake to keep you busy.  $22, no hookups but other loops offer more.

    

6. Sweetwater Regional Park - San Diego, CA 

This park we heard about from other RVers.  It's a great place to stay for visiting San Diego.  We spent 10 days here.  $30 for FHUs on large, private spots overlooking San Diego.  So much to see in this city.  We biked, went to the Zoo & USS Midway and many other landmark areas.  AWESOME!

      
   USS Midway Aircraft Carrier                San Diego Zoo                    Sweetwater Campground

7.  Old Rim Rd - Payson, AZ

FREE boondocking on National Forest land.  At this particular spot there are marked sites that are very  spread out and private.  The Mogollon Rim is well over 5000 ft elevation and perfect for summer stays. Lots of hiking, kayaking and watching the Elk.  Just plain relaxing!     

     Kayaking Willow Springs  The Rim is on the other side of the trees.   Sunset on the Rim!

8. Texas Springs Campground - Death Valley, CA

$16 gets you a nice site with water and dump.  So much to do in Death Valley!

      

Honorable Mention:

We are not big on private parks, Thousand Trails or Elks as a first choice.  This was a quirky year so we made the best of it.  We find Elks to work out when we need to be in a big city or expensive area.

-Elks Lodge, Monterey, CA: Small park, not too level.  Clean, quiet, awesome location, kayaking.

-Elks Lodge Napa, CA: Great location for wine tasting and kayaking.

-Elks Santa Barbara, CA: Great location for exploring the beach and area.

-Thousand Trails Groveland, CA: Great location in Yosemite NP.

-Thousand Trails Idyllwild, CA: Great location for hiking.

-Thousand Trails Ponderosa, CA: Great location near Placerville on the river.

For those that might be interested, here's a breakdown of the places we stayed, and the costs:

	Stays	Nights	Total	AVG (per night cost)
County Park	4	20	$527.00	$26.35
Elks	22	154	$3689.50	$23.95
Fairgrounds	2	2	$45.00	$22.50
State Park	1	7	$140.00	$20.00
National Park	1	2	$32.00	$16.00
Thousand Trails*	14	93	$600.00	$6.45
Boondocking**	4	51	$0	$0
BLM	4	26	$0	$0
National Forest	1	9	$0	$0
Walmart	1	0	$0	$0
State Rec	0	0	$0	$0
National Rec	0	0	$0	$0
Private Park	0	0	$0	$0

* We renewed our Thousand Trails membership for $600/yr in September of 2020.

** Boondocking for us is anywhere we stay for free which is not an organized campground.  It can include time at family and friends and other areas. This year we spent one night at a Casino and 1 night at a hotel (which I didn't count the stay or cost at $100). Some of our boondocking will be at BLM, National Forest, etc, but I give them a separate category because we generally spend a lot of time at them and I like to keep track of that.  Sometimes there can be a small fee to camp at them but most of the time it is free.

We traveled 5,845 miles and had 54 stops averaging 6.7 days a stop.

We have 155,000 miles on the truck.

Yearly Comparison
2014 - (need to add)
2015 - (need to add)
2016 - Yearly Campsite Total: $3494.50
            Daily Average: $9.57
2017 - Yearly Campsite Total: $5090.50
            Daily Average: $13.94
2018 - Yearly Campsite Total: $4038.00
            Daily Average: $11.06

2019 - Yearly Campsite Total: $5530.00

            Daily Average: $15.15 

2020 - Yearly Campsite Total: $5075.50

            Daily Average: $13.90

What was different?

Wow, I was surprised to see how much we spent.  Well, California is an expensive state.  Guess it was a good thing we had that Thousand Trails.
We boondocked MUCH less and stayed at more Thousand Trails and  Elks Lodges due to another sons wedding and the birth of our grandson. Covid kept us in place in Monterey, CA for 85 days.

We don't care for memberships or private parks but we needed a back up place to stay since the Placerville, CA Elks Lodge has been full on more occasions so we renewed our Thousand Trails Membership as we are "back home" for 6 weeks.

Plans for 2021:
Our plans have changed already and we haven't even left CA yet!  Steve's eye surgery has us here until we get the doctor's OK to travel. Probably Between the 7th and 14th of Jan.  Quartzsite and King Rd. will probably be out.  We will spend the remainder of Jan, Feb & Mar in Arizona going back to CA for Jaxon's First Birthday.  Then we will spend April - May in the upper gulf states and celebrate our nieces wedding in Florida in May.  After the wedding we will meander through the middle part of the midwest states and pop into Colorado in Sept. We will get back to Arizona Oct before returning  to CA for the holidays.

We're really missing the Superstition Mountains in AZ right now.  

This isn't my picture but, yes, it IS this amazing.

Safe Travels where ever you end up!

Goodbye 2020!

Placerville, CA

Elks Lodge

We are back to Placerville (a 20 minute drive) at the Elks Lodge as we have to be one week out before we can get back in to a Thousand Trails Park (with the zone pass we have).

Lake Tahoe

The weather was fantastic and dry after some snowfall so we took a drive up to Tahoe to do some hiking and check on one of our geocaches.  We started out with a favorite breakfast of Linguica and Eggs.  We can always find this Portuguese sausage when we're back home.

On the way up the hill there was still some fall color left to see.

We climb from 2000 feet in Placerville up to 8000 feet.  The Aspen have long lost their leaves and the sun was warm and bright.

We couldn't take the truck back on this dirt road as the snow was thick and had icy spots.  We watched plenty of other trucks driving back to cut down Christmas trees and they were sliding all around, even in 4 wheel drive.  I'm glad we hiked back.

   

I love how the Aspen look in black and white.

I love these huge trees!

Ice on the Carson River near Rts. 88/89.

We drove through Placerville to see the Christmas Trees that line Hwy 50 and see the decorations along Main St.  Due to Covid the horse and buggy rides were cancelled.  They still had the Hangtown crew though.

We finally got to see our son Brennan & Alex's new house.  It's really cute and has plenty of bedrooms for babies (ha, ha!!)

Really nice home.  Congrats!

Back at the Elks we watched as a tree crew was out to remove part of a large dead oak.  They insisted we didn't need to move our rigs.  I sat out front with my coffee and watched them as they carefully and perfectly dropped the dead branches.

These are the large chunks of the branches they took down and the rest of the tree.

Look how close it was to this vintage trailer.

Coloma, CA

Thousand Trails Resort

Back for our last 2 weeks and we have a real nice spot.  It's the last one next to the premier riverfront sites that cost extra.  We had a nice view out the windows of the river.

We had some really nosey neighbors though  :-)

Twins.  Did they chew out the window?  A little Duct Tape and it's all good!

We had cold but sunny days and morning fog that hung over the hills.

Some die-hards out paddling.

The Family Christmas card with Diana, Jaxon & Ryan.

My Dad and Mom

A favorite Italian Christmas treat is Panettone.  It's a sweet bread that is delicious toasted with butter.  A great way to start the day with some bacon.

Our RV friends Ron & Rene of R and R were in town so we met up for a hike at Folsom Lake.

Wow, the lake level is very, very low.  There are remnants of old roads, buildings and a bridge that are visible if it goes low enough.  Last time it happened was in 2014.

Hurley and Rufus loved running around and exploring.

What a pretty little waterfall we discovered back in the cove.

Those are the boat slips in the marina.  They are sitting on dry ground!  Just a small creek running through what is usually a large cove.

Low water didn't stop this guy fishing from his kayak.  He wasn't catching anything but it sure was a great sunny day to be out.

We came upon this painted rock hiding in some grass.

Someone took a lot of time to design this little homestead out of driftwood.

With our hike all finished we enjoyed some homemade cookies that Rene brought.  Delicious!

We have had a great time back home.  Busy as usual.  We only have our eye appointments, Christmas dinner with my parents then we leave for Arizona with a visit to see our grandson on the way.

Well my eye check went fine the next day but I was beginning to wonder what was taking Steve so long.  I was just about to check on him when he walked out to the truck.  He didn't have good news.  Steve failed his eye test so the doctor did more checking and thought he had a detached retina.  Not good.  This was December 23rd.  He set Steve up with an emergency appointment since the holiday was coming and he is aware of our travels.  He had surgery on December 24th.  No Christmas with my folks.  Instead we spent the  night in a hotel as he wasn't allowed to go above 500ft elevation.  This caused lots of chaos with dog sitting, asking to stay a couple days longer at our current park, finding a new place etc. Once he was settled in I drove up and down, back and forth from Sacramento to the trailer and back.  My Mom sent me with a cooler filled with Christmas Lasagna, garlic bread, etc.  That was nice too! Since it was going to be days, maybe weeks until he could go above 500 feet, we decided I'd move the trailer myself and drive it down to an Elks Lodge closer to Sacramento.  Thankfully our friend, Rick, came down for moral support and to help me out.  So nice as it was 1 1/2 hours round trip, in the rain, on Christmas!  Thankful to have great friends and family!

Rancho Cordova, CA

Elks Lodge

So this is where we spent the next 2 weeks.  It's in the industrial area with a salvage yard directly behind us.  

What a lovely view.  We really didn't care.  We were thankful to have somewhere to stay while Steve recouped and we had more doctor appointments.  His recovery went smooth but took longer than we hoped so we had to push back our Arizona plans.  Two more weeks here.

We spent New Years having Lentils with Sausage (for good luck!). 

We had a little party then called it a night!

I sure hope 2021 is going to be a smoother year!!

Looking forward to seeing this cutie as soon as Steve is released.