Thousand Trails Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch

We had booked our stay at Blue Mesa many months ago so we'd know that we had a place to stay for the Fourth of July holiday. Holidays can be tough to book in campgrounds, as many people make their plans way in advance (and we usually do *not*). Adding to that complexity is that our membership in Thousand Trails (TT) only allows us to hold one holiday reservation at a time, which is challenging since the summer has three holidays. If we were going to be in TT for Memorial Day, we would not be allowed to attempt to book a stay for the 4th until our Memorial Day stay started, which would be less than 60 days out, making it questionable on whether we could get a reservation. This year, we had planned to be in the Kodachrome State Park for Memorial Day (though we ended up at the Harvest Host farm in Spanish Fork), the 4th in Thousand Trails Blue Mesa, and Labor Day at Paul Wolff campground in Elgin, Illinois. 

Thousand Trails is now assigning campsites which many members are not happy about, but we have found it working for us so far, better than the "first come, first served" gamble that we used to experience. We never knew at the end of a driving day what we would find available at the campground. Many times we'd see small rigs parked in huge sites, and what was left for us was a tiny site that we would need to shoe-horn ourselves into. We would try to get to the campground as soon as possible after the allowed check-in time started so we'd have the best options. Sometimes we would move to a better site the next morning after folks checked out, but most of the time it wasn't worth the hassle after we'd gotten parked. Many people are indicating that they are not getting sites that they want with the assigned sites, but we aren't really particular, other than that we fit into the site, and that it preferably has 50A. I indicate that when we make our booking, and so far, we've gotten sites we like with the campground doing the assignment.

For this Thousand Trails campground, we had spoken with another TT member and they indicated that it is good to contact the campground and make sure that they know the size of your rig before arrival. Although it is in our profile, I did call, and the person with whom I spoke indicated that we had a "really good site!" That sounded promising!

Sure enough, Gracie is in a very nice pull-through site.

We took a walk through the campground...

In the family center, there are games -- pool, ping pong, foosball, as well as old style video games.

Sign at the highway for the campground

Another view of Gracie (on the right side of the picture) -- you can see the big hill right near us. The small building in the foreground is a cabana -- our site is indicated as a "cabana site" -- we have one of those next to Gracie too. It has a picnic table located inside it.

We walked up to the top of the campground -- it was more of an uphill than we were anticipating...

... but we got views down through the campground toward the Blue Mesa Reservoir.

Another view of the reservoir

A view toward the west from the "top" of the campground. There are cottages that can be rented along the top of the campground and I'm sure that they have nice views from their front porches.

Blue Mesa was only recently acquired by Thousand Trails (in 2020 or 2019?). This poster was used to announce the new acquisition in other campgrounds in the Thousand Trails system. Now they have a copy of it in the Welcome Center here at Blue Mesa.

A view of a small fishing pond (left) and Blue Mesa Reservoir (beyond, center) from the parking area in front of the Welcome Center.

We are enjoying the cooler weather and a longer stay (15 days total) here at Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch!