Review — Home is Where My Cat is

I’ve spent the greater part of a week attempting to quantify how to review parks in a fair and balanced manner and actually the reflection (and a discussion with Jakki) taught me a little about what reviews actually mean to me. I talked about how some parks seemed to have it together for the most part, but there was just a missing or obnoxious element, that soured the stay. We recounted how some parks had staff who initially rubbed us the wrong way and as time progressed, became… friends, maybe, to us.

The only thing I miss about Thermal, California is the color of the sky.

Jakki was quick to remind me that what I care about most deeply is the passion that goes into something. There’s something special about that spark, I guess. That energy fills rooms. It shows up in art, in craftsmanship, in finish. Even when a park is in the midst of being renovated, it’s easy to spot the difference between someone who is proud of what they’re going to be vs someone who has a beautiful park and doesn’t care anymore.

The answer to how to quantify reviews so that they’re fair and balanced is: I don’t care.

Campendium is a better resource. We don’t write this blog to appease anyone or earn ad revenue. We pay for the hosting and update the site as a labor of love. The way it should be.

But surely there are tangible things that are important to me. I know there are definitely things that are make-or-break for Jakki. Things like good internet options, site size and accessibility, shower facilities, reasonable weather, access to society, isolation from society. Those last two don’t conflict, I promise.

We made the decision to curtail our stay in Antique Store Town (Boulder City), Nevada by a day due to risk of high winds and were lucky to be able to reserve the very spot that Jakki had initially booked months prior. There are likely people who thrive on movement (I’m looking at you, van-lifers), but it’s a stress for me. We’re driving a large and largely inflexible house that probably weighs something just shy of 20,000 pounds with a relatively-speaking tiny 7.4 liter V8 engine and a 4-speed automatic rear wheel drive transmission.

Goodbye, Boulder City. And thank you for the Star Trek Pez Collection.

We don’t maneuver well. Slowing down to stop without completely melting the brakes is something akin to Arrested Development’s Bluth Company Stair Car. Driving up mountains is performed around 40 miles per hour while commuter cars make egregiously dangerous moves around us when the passing lanes dissipate. In this vehicle, roundabouts must be taken at a visually estimated 15 miles per hour… because our speedometer doesn’t work.

But I drive it like a boss.

Tangents like this are precisely why I’m not going to worry about a review system. But I digress.

When we arrived, something about this place felt very different. Sure, it’s the center point of some stunning geological features, but that’s hardly new terrain for us especially after our time in Colorado. The sign prominently advertising the cleverly devised Southern Utah RV Resort (which must have come to fruition through some sublime search engine optimization work) looks so… different. Genuinely, it looks like a wedding announcement idea likely constructed of reclaimed pallet wood and shiplap straight from a Pinterest board.

If there is a single flaw to this park, and I feel like I’m giving away the results of the review by saying this, it is that the check-in parking is on a downhill slant. After check-in at what may well be the most beautiful front office building that we’ve ever encountered, we traversed the generously wide roads to our site, a stark contrast to our experiences at Oasis Palms (which I pick on because of recency) and many other parks we’ve encountered. Even the previously broad roads for our stay in Boulder City were put to shame here; I have no doubt that three full-size RVs could sit side-by-side on these roads but they’re so vast that you might still be able to drive a car around them.

I know that I’m gushing. Deal with it. This place is amazing.

You’ll notice that none of these sites are packed together like sardines.

We parked on gravel. It’s a relatively level site and I prefer concrete slabs, but I understand why you might not, especially since this park was built on clay. It’s a strange thing to consider but the way we’ve parked in this site is a first of us. Granted, we haven’t exactly been traveling for 20 years but we feel like a cast iron skillet (well-seasoned, get it?) what it comes to park experiences. No, this is one of 5 sites in the park (and maybe THE WORLD!) that is a pull-in site. Not a back-in. Not a pull-thru (our personal favorites).

Ok, maybe not the world. These sites are probably a hold-over from a time before the mass adoption of travel-trailers and fifth wheels, when you’d pull your Winnebago in and disembark your toad. It’s immensely convenient and saves you the hustle and hassle of hastily un-hitching your hooptie while your neighbors are now blocked in across 4 spots and the person who checked in just behind you in the office now waits impatiently to do the same. I mean, not here, because again the roads are W I D E.

The water pressure is sublime. It’s actually been a few months since we had more than the bare minimum trickle. This godsend extends to the other facilities as well. Electric and sewer are pretty standard across the board. We haven’t managed to trip our breaker, as we have in a few other locations (mostly state parks) but it all looks very new, with 30 and 50 AMP options both represented.

Our site is 60 feet long and 30 feet wide. On paper, this doesn’t seem like a lot but compared to some of the more anemic offerings <cough>OASIS PALMS</cough> it feels expansive. A lone tree on our site will provide lovely shade over the plastic picnic table in 30 years. Maybe we’ll see it again.

Signal Peak, just off the Exit you would take to get to SUR.

It’s a true pleasure to park the pull-in sites, by the way, because they’re smartly facing Signal Peak of the Pine Valley Mountains. If you’re fortunate enough to own a Sunguard instead of a simple curtain, you’re privy to some lovely day views of a gorgeous mountain range, especially in an acutely uncommon post-snowfall scenario; Washington Utah averages 1.5 inches of snowfall per year -- We had 4 in two days. In March. When the average should be .2 inches. I suppose they’re averages for a reason.

The mountains to the south are just as gorgeous, if a bit further away.

We were located approximately 100 yards from the highway and mercifully we’re not level with it. I think this has done a lot to mitigate road noise, but I’d love to see a tree line to filter just a little more out. Utahans don’t seem to use their horns often but they do seem to run slower than the posted speed limits, so engine braking is not uncommon, and it does not go unheard. Don’t misunderstand, I’m pro-engine braking and I think ordinances against it are silly and even dangerous, but I think it’s up to cities or even businesses (and I’m not blaming these particular park owners) to come up with solutions to mute the sound that don’t involve placing yet another burden on Truckers. Or their brakes.

The highway is close. And it gets loud. We were probably 50 feet from the RVs closest to the highway.

Children aren’t a part of our lives, but as SUR is marketed more as a vacation park than a full-time residence there exists a covered picnic area, middling playground, a half-court basketball/tennis court hybrid (with a cage), and a small green area for corn-holing. Or bean bag toss. Whatever, you know what I mean. Those facilities are often populated, so it’s nice that they’re being appreciated and not sitting idle. I don’t want to seem crass, but I genuinely don’t care about children, but I thought it was worth mentioning because it’s directly adjacent to…

The bathrooms.

It’s a new park (or at least seems like a new one) and there are only one men’s bathroom and one women’s bathroom for all of the spots (and honestly, there aren’t THAT many spots), but it’s made clear that the expectation going into the development is that most visitors will be using their own facilities. The Men’s room has two toilet stalls, a urinal, and two shower stalls. Two shower stalls with right angle entry from behind a LOCKABLE DOOR. I cannot explain to you the comfort that this brings me. I know it’s not difficult to unlock the door but there’s a door and not just a curtain to push aside. I mean, there’s also a curtain for the shower. The design of the shower? Definitely looks like more pinterest-inspired aesthetic. The water pressure from the shower? Divine.

Nearby, it doesn’t feel like there is anything going on. As of 2021, there are two larger fueling stations, hotel, and a diner about a half a mile down the road. A monolithic landmark sign exists to advertise the fueling stations, signaling a day when traversing the currently anemic road will become more complicated with the addition of other businesses, not even addressing the worst 90 degree right turn in the history of US streets. It’s got a massive hump in it. Take it slow. Seriously. This isn’t a knock against the park, but it’s very unfortunate.

In the other direction, things become strictly residential. As a result, SUR feels both ambiguously disconnected from the rest of the world and paradoxically still a part of it. Even better still, just 1.7 miles away as the crow flies, there is a large chain grocery store and a bevy of fast food options. Actually, there are a lot of retail options, including a Best Buy, which is always a source of comfort for me. And it doesn’t end there. Washington, UT and the neighboring St. George are fully functioning cities with no end to options and availability. Probably the only thing you can’t buy there at the time of this review is a Playstation 5.

I mentioned earlier that feeling far away from the city and being close to the city at the same time are not contradictions and I stand by it. The 3.3 miles it takes to get to the Albertson’s is trivial, meaning grocery shopping isn’t quite the same ordeal it has been for the last 6 months of travels.

The same Signal Peak from the front door of Albertsons. Notice the Best Buy.

I love riding, it would be blatant dishonesty to say that it’s an inconvenience for me to spend any time on The Defiant, but the roads we traversed to shop were straight and boring, and in the case of Arizona, dangerous due to reckless drivers. In Coaldale, CO, it was a half an hour ride that was exciting and twisty next to a beautiful river to get to a legitimate grocery store: A Safeway, if memory serves. In South Fork, CO, it was 20 minutes of boredom to get to the nearest full-service grocer and 45 minutes of excruciating boredom if you didn’t want to overpay by 20 percent.

Jakki and I share different but very important duties when it comes to our travel; She’s a logistical magician and planner not at heart but starting at the very fiber of her being while I am an agent of chaos and change. We have roles, and while I pilot our vessel and dock at the front office, Jakki handles initial contact with the staff. While she’s inside, I try to recuperate just enough energy to complete our landing procedure and checklist. This time, Jakki returned with complimentary cookies.

For this reason, I don’t often make contact with the staff until 2 or 3 days after, primarily because I have to recover from what maneuvering this mid-sized monstrosity with my full attention does to my back. I know, I know. I’m old. I’m always a surprise when I show up to the desk looking for a package that they’ve received unwittingly for me and in a couple of cases, I know I’ve gotten some weird looks from some park staff before they encounter me. I know that solitude isn’t an uncommon feature in the nomad category, and that’s a plausible explanation for why I’ve never been confronted.

I believe we’d been here for 3 days before I finally stopped in to the office to retrieve packages and after introducing myself, the staff immediately knew who I was. The interactions are pleasant and professional and also friendly, a difficult mix. The current staff as of March 2021 is just a fantastic fit for this and I’m sure that they’ll be dearly missed when they decide to move on.

It feels distasteful to continue to write about Covid-19 but I still feel it’s relevant to the experiences. I miss the sense of community that the lifestyle we’ve chosen afford us. As a traveling motorcycle rider, my sense of community comes down to the hand signal most of us pass among each other as an acknowledgement that we’re all in imminent danger and still love this enough to continue doing it. Or the tap on the helmet to indicate that there are police abound. But in RV parks, it’s nice to have a quiet conversation with your neighbors about the sights and parks nearby, photo opportunities around a dirt road you’d never venture down without guidance, and wonderful but under-marketed food nearby. My love of the H-E-B chain of grocery megamarkets in Texas stems entirely from a “by the way” conversation with a neighbor about steaks. I do not regret it for a moment. I will always investigate a recommendation, especially regarding steaks.

Clem ended up approving of Pizzaria Limone’s offerings.

The regulars of this park still gather and reunite as family. Ethically speaking, I cannot condone this: we’re still in the midst of a pandemic. But in the way I’ve witnessed their public interactions, these people are family. Their children play together. I would not be surprised if they share meals. They just come back together. This park has been open for a year and a half. We will never be that way for a park. I am too much of an observer to ever let go. And yet, I can already feel the pull of this resort.

I couldn’t call this place home, don’t mistake my infatuation with pleonasm as a lack of enthusiasm; I’m still a scruffy vagrant at heart and there’s still so much to explore, but this stay effortlessly reset my compass so that Magnetic North points to Southern Utah RV Resort.

It’s the little things. And the big things.

Living the way that we do, it’s fascinating to check in with yourself to determine what is a good or a bad experience. I think it’s easy to become complacent with the experiences when you put on your monocle and stay in mid-to-high end parks. We’ve only been to a couple of parks where something as simple as having a sewer line or running water wasn’t available, but I still don’t look at those experiences negatively.

Electricity was the only site feature in this Southern Colorado State Park.

It’s also easy to get wrapped up in the struggle that you know the smaller parks are going through in comparison to the larger networks of campgrounds, KOA for example. You know that if anything goes downhill, it’s a struggle to fix it. You know that you’re spending that time and money against a diminishing return. A lot of places might just settle in and that’s just the way things are. Certain shared bathrooms we’ve been a party to have definitely had that vibe.

BUT.
But.

We have definitely stayed places that didn’t have anything going on. The bathrooms were far and anemic, campground style. In a couple of situations, I watched people with trucks large enough to chariot for Zeus get 5th wheel trailers stuck in poorly designed spaces. It’s hard for me to remember our very recent stay in Thermal, California with any sort of favoritism and yet the State Park we stayed at near Carlsbad, New Mexico still ranks among my most fond memories of places we’ve been. It took no fewer than 3 miles to get from the spot we booked in Carlsbad to the road. That is not an exaggeration.

Internet availability certainly plays a large part of that. We’re fortunate enough to carry connections with each of the 3 big cellular providers and that has been a lifesaver. In most cases, we’ll arrive to a decent Verizon connection, a good AT&T connection, and no Sprint/T-mobile presence at all. While that might immediately make you wonder out loud, “Why not just drop the Sprint connection and deal with the other two?” sometimes that Sprint connection has been the thin line between viability in a spot and having to lose our deposit for two months because work couldn’t be done.

Thermal can be a beautiful place and I took some beautiful photos. But there isn’t much to the town. Mecca, not too far in the east offers great parks and a beautiful Box Canyon. Palm Springs, Indio, and all of the towns nearby make sure there’s plenty on offer if you need anything. And I do mean anything.

No, really. Sunrise and Sunset here are stunning.

Oasis Palms RV Resort has all of the makings of a great stay, depending on where you’re situated. We stayed in site R11 which backs up against a small piece of land against the pond. Unfortunately, the site was dug against a hill, so our 33 ft Class A was close the to limit of what would fit in the site. Our motorcycle balanced on the edge of the concrete just in front of the RV, making the total limit of RV size probably close to 36-37 feet. There was a small “yard” occupied by a medium-sized orange tree, preventing a full-sized vehicle from parking in that spot but we had plenty of people park in front of our unit and pick oranges from that tree.

I’m kicking myself over not having that one slice of photo.

It’s distressing to watch someone pull up and block my bike and carry ladders and duffel bags to the side of your RV, at least if you’re paranoia-motivated like I am. But that’s just a part of the “experience.” As is the complete lack of parking in the long-term stay loop. People have pretty much just resigned to parking in the middle of the traversable road. If you’re leaving the park at 0700 like we did, it’s very likely you won’t be able to take your rig through the gauntlet. Instead, I made a 3 point turn over the tent camp sites in front of us, which were unoccupied over the winter.

The water is very brown. Very brown. But this beautiful mountain hangs over Oasis Palms RV Resort.

I have to say that it’s difficult to feel as negatively about this park as I do. Most of the staff interactions we had were a positive experience. Most of them. And there’s a gorgeous mountain just west of the park, marking a 24-hour backdrop over what would normally be a very boring and ugly desert park. A berm exists to mitigate road noise, and I’m hoping it was helping because it has never been louder in our home. A lot of military jets (including my favorite, the F-16) flew directly overhead. More than a few helicopters would find their way over us as well. Sometimes the sound could be overwhelming enough to interrupt a phone call.

And I’m thankful that we could make phone calls.

When we book sites… or really, I should say, When Jakki books sites, one of the most important considerations is the availability of internet connections, which is very different from cell phone signal quality. Most of the resources we use when researching sites includes a little signal indicator to express the quality of cellular service where you’re staying. When we parked and settled in, we began our customary internet speed tests to determine what we’d be reserving for Jakki’s work and what our capabilities are going to be.

Panic set in. No joke.

We both sat wide-eyed and terrified. We were immediately convinced that we’d have to abandon our deposits and move on. Despite our phones pulling up 4 bars of LTE service, we couldn’t even complete the download portion of the SpeedTest. Immediately, I looked up everything I could about signal quality and noise to find a solution that would allow us at least passable internet service. I dragged our Verizon hotspot everywhere around the park. There were a couple of locations that offered some really great Verizon service. But nothing else. Our Sprint connection wasn’t working either.

I placed each of our hotspots in every conceivable place, thanks to the MiMo antennas that we invested in for our Jetpack and Nighthawk. In only one place in the RV, the Verizon connection was reasonable… in the afternoon to early evening. Think 5 Mbps down, 2.5 Mbps up. Our AT&T connection never showed up to the party. The Sprint connection was our lifesaver; if I dangled the device from a USB cable hanging out of the cabinet that we keep the printer in, we had “decent” service, meaning about 10 Mbps down and maybe 3 Mbps up. That was our lifeblood for 2 months.

No, seriously. It was bad. This is the kind of thing you experience when you’re not holding your providers accountable for their service goals or when you make it absurdly expensive to file FCC complaints.

As far as winter weather goes, Thermal lives up to its name. During the January and February months (the most brutal months for Minnesotans) we saw lows as low as 34F and highs in the mid-80s. It rained twice. We experienced two wildfires not too far from where we were, and one massive car accident that happened on the highway a mere 90-100 feet away from the front end of our RV. Why is that important? The engine from the car that was hit by a pickup truck was ejected more than 150 feet from the site of the accident.

If you have dogs, the park fancies itself a free-range park. Not everyone’s animals are up for that kind of test. Be aware. There is a very generous dog run that most dogs will find some enjoyment out of stretching their legs in. Not all of the owners have been kind enough to pick up after their animals, however.

I believe the closest restaurant to be a Del Taco some 7 miles up the 86. There was also a Burger/Pizza/Taco place in the gas station/truck stop nearby, a Starbucks, and a Denny’s that doesn’t look like it will be re-opening any time soon. Coachella proper, however, offers some great food, including a good burger that accompanied the best onion rings I’ve had in a very long time. Indio and Palm Springs offer so much food that I think it may be impossible to dine at every restaurant just between those two towns. We don’t eat out often, but we did manage a couple of very tasty visits to Grill-a-Burger. I saw at least one Korean BBQ restaurant that I wanted to visit, but Covid… you know how it is. Hopefully they’ll still be there when we return to Southern California.

The Box Canyon is beautiful. I thought this photo would be a nice way to break this up.

The reality remains, however, that there are no accessible delivery options for food. It’s not a big hit when we consider the “score” in its entirety, but I think some of us like the option to get lazy once in a while, and it simply doesn’t exist here. Full grocery stores require at least a half an hour of hard travel. Make it 40 minutes if you’re dedicated to the speed limit. There are several meat markets nearby, and while your options open up significantly if you’re fluent in Spanish, there’s still no replacing the utility and pricing of a full-on grocery.

I guess while I’ve been on a 2-page long negativity streak, it’s also worth noting that local water is toxic. Oasis Palms offers 3 spots to fill up your water by way of a reverse osmosis filter. If you have your own, this isn’t much of an issue for you, but for us, that meant buying a couple gallon jugs of water and refilling. This is also desert California. Not far from Death Valley. We were doing a gallon and a half to two gallons a day between drinking and cooking. They said it was fine to wash your dishes in, but I made sure to vinegar and a-salt my tea kettle.

The bathrooms are serviceable. But they get everything wrong. On the men’s side, the room is HUGE but there are only 3 showers and 3 toilet stalls. The showers themselves aren’t anything to write home about, except the lack of a close curtain to the shower itself means that you’re spraying water everywhere. On the floor. On your clothes. On the curtain that you can see through when it’s bright enough.

There are signs up in the bathroom/laundry area (and there aren’t enough machines, but there really never are) warning the residents/visitors that the water has not been adequately tested. It’s more than mildly disconcerting; I have a little leftover anxiety about being poisoned. Look up the Salton Sea if you’re interested. It’s only getting worse from here if no one does anything about it.

This photo of the Salton Sea is the one that made me feel like a photographer for the first time in my life.

Jakki and I have very different criteria for what a good or bad stay is. At the end of the day (or this review) it’s impossible to ignore the feeling of anxiety that I STILL feel about this stay. On two occasions on days when I left to go shopping for the week, we had completely lost internet service and one of those times was just before Jakki was running a large, important Zoom call. I made it home just in time to fix it by about 4 minutes, because again, it’s 30 long, boring minutes to the closest grocery store.

It wasn’t rare for the office to be closed during hours it was advertised to be open. The main interactions we experienced were with a person who doesn’t really have a grasp of what customer service is. I’m trying not to be mean, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to enter the office and that he would just be watching a movie and drinking a beer. In one particular case, that same person almost hit me (on my motorcycle) with a truck when he attempted to leave the corner store (by coming to speed on the dirt shoulder and then quickly merging onto the road, or more specifically, into me). I would not be surprised to find out that he had been drinking before driving, nor would I be surprised to find out he was buying more beer. Turns out, potentially killing me leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Toward the end of our stay, an older couple arrived after 5PM and waited for 2 hours when we arrived. They’d taken on a little too much road for one day and arrived exhausted without a reservation, hoping for just a night. Jakki, being the nosey goodie-two-shoes that she is helped them book online (from her phone) and showed them to their spot for the night. No one was answering the number on the office door.

Overall, I can’t give it better than a 2 out of 5. I think this place works great as a home base if you’re into the Coachella world. If you’re retired and looking for a place to get away from the world… this may still not be the best choice for you. When we spoke about it, Jakki was more generous with a 3 out of 5, citing unmetered electricity (which WAS nice, I’ll admit) and very fair booking prices.

I’ll never get over feeling like I didn’t have my own safe space there.

A Pinterest-inspired Park - Southern Utah RV Resort Review

It’s the little things. And the big things. -- Oasis Palms RV Resort in Thermal, California