Back in July we headed to Florence for a 50th family reunion and to get Miette and Brier to Florence, since its been so stinking long since Miette has been there and Brier never has. We stayed at the Thousand Trails in Florence. The campground is couple minutes south of the Siuslaw River bridge. Its on the same road that goes to the Dunes recreation area.
Overall, the campground was good. Tall pine and fir trees, lots of shady sites (actually, most of the sites looked shady). The downside to our stay and our bad electrical connection. The Airstream was giving a slight shock to us. After a couple hours of troubleshooting and by process of elimination, it turned out to be faulty campground electrical. We didn’t have an electrical tester, but the folks who tested it just after we pulled out and the end of our stay tested it and kept on moving. We kept the Airstream unplugged instead of moving because we were next to family and it was a such a large and shady spot.
The campground was at a good location. There was no ocean views and wasn’t accessible to the ocean by foot, unless you wanted to walk for an hour or two. But it was only a couple minutes out of town. One thing I’m not digging about the Thousand Trails is the dusty gravel roads they have. These campground are old (obviously, the electrical is old). If you have a clean rig and RV going in, you will not going out; at least in the summer time. It’d be nice if they could spray the roads to keep the dust down. The loops are kinda tight for a long setup, especially if the neighbors aren’t being real careful about parking their rigs; some weren’t leaving a ton of room.
The amenities weren’t great. The pool was a pool. Nothing special. The lodge wasn’t anything to write home about. But there’s enough to do around the area that made this a non-issue. These aren’t really “resorts”. If you have that mindset going in, you won’t heading out. Its just a good, private place to park your RV for a few days. The bathroom facilities were decent but not as nice as Little Diamond (Newport, Washington). The staff wanted me to wait for them to clean before I took a shower. I politely said I’ll only be 5 minutes and they could start in the meantime. So there’s a lack of customer service issue that seems to be a theme with Thousand Trails, at least the two I’ve been to recently. There was also some sort of confrontation between two staff members. Sounded like someone was getting fired and the one being fired wasn’t having it. “Give me your key and radio” was repeated to a guy replying with “are you firing me? Are you firing me?” and so on. A little awkward for the guests to encounter when trying to just check in.
Oh well. I’m sure they worked it out. Maybe.
