Thousand Trails Medina Lake

We had stayed at Thousand Trails Medina Lake in 2024 before the Eclipse Rally in April. This year, we just were staying two nights before continuing west...

Thousand Trails has changed to "assigned sites" -- so we had reserved and were allocated a 50A Full Hook Up (FHU) site. It was relatively near the entrance to the park (this is a park that covers a couple of hundred acres) - so we didn't have to drive far inside the park to get to our site.

Not having to drive far is a good thing in Thousand Trails parks. Most of them are not "up" on infrastructure maintenance -- I don't know if you can see the potholes in this picture taken in front of our site...

... here's another pothole, looking the other way in front of our site. I call it "Thousand Trails, saving money on new speed bumps by creative use of potholes!"

There are also a large number of deer in this park.

When we were parking in our site, evidently there were quite a large number behind the back of the site. Carl could see them in the rearview mirrors -- I was busy trying to ensure that we didn't hit any of the trees or other obstacles around the site, so I didn't see them until we were parked, and by then, a number had left the area.

On our last evening, this buck and a doe came right by our rig -- I took this picture out of the window by our desk. They are not very scared of the campers -- they can certainly bound away much more quickly than we can drive on the roads!

Even with the infrastructure issues at Thousand Trails parks, they are still a good value for us as we can stay with no additional charges beyond our annual dues, which are $462.88/year (our dues were frozen when Dwayne's dad turned 65, so we pay less dues than many people do). If we wanted to do so, we could move from Thousand Trails park to Thousand Trails park, staying every night of the year at parks in the system, averaging less than $2/night for our campground stays ($462.88/365). Unfortunately, there are not Thousand Trails parks in all parts of the country - they are concentrated on the coasts and southwest - but it is nice to be able to use them when we can. For 2025, we have spent a total of 46 nights in Thousand Trails parks, so our cost has averaged out to $10.06/night.