Onwards to Indiana

We had a quiet day yesterday, just staying at the campground... Dwayne fixed a water hose that sprung a leak (we think that the water pressure was high in the campground - the hose was deformed up near the faucet end). I put a new item on the blog page - did anyone notice? Provinces and States visited by Miss Doozie... we added two - West Virginia and Kentucky - just in the past week or so...

We left Three Springs Campground and Kentucky this morning. With a brief stop at a rest area along I-74 to join the livestream of our church's service, we arrived at Horseshoe Lakes Thousand Trails campground about mid afternoon.

We got a pullthru site with a view of one of the lakes out our front window....

Really a great site, other than that there is a fall off into a valley just outside our "public" side, so we don't have a lot of space before the ground starts falling away. But... plenty of room for us to move alongside the bus and get into compartments.

We like staying at Thousand Trails campgrounds because:

• We've already paid for the year, so each night we stay reduces the per-night cost. The yearly dues plus our "family courtesy card" costs about $525/year, so if we stay only one night, that's an expensive night! By the end of this stay (7 nights) our Thousand Trails cost will be $15.10/night - which, since our goal is to be under $15/night, means that we're doing good on that target!
• We can make and change reservations online without getting change or cancellation penalties, so for this stay, I had originally thought we would arrive last Thursday, but once I knew more what our plans would be, I could just go online and alter the arrival date - no additional cost.

We *don't* like staying at Thousand Trails campgrounds because:

• Although you indicate when you make a reservation how large your rig is, they don't reserve any specific campsite, so it is possible that if you arrive late or on a weekend, you might not find a site that you can fit into. Some of the campgrounds have an "overflow" area where you can park until a site becomes available. It can be annoying to drive around and see little pop-up trailers in a site that our 43' bus could fit in, and a site nearby that is just 20-25' long that is not occupied (but which we could not use).
• Some of the campgrounds are in poor shape - particularly the roads into and within the campgrounds and other infrastructure is sometimes poor as well (electric boxes).
• Thousand Trails bills its campgrounds as "Preserves" or "Resorts" - which sometimes are grander titles than the reality (see "roads" just before). They will charge "guests" to come into the campground, even if they are just coming to visit us and not going to use any of the facilities of the campground. Each campground is different in its rules - some allow you to have up to "x" number of guests (5) for no charge but over that there is a charge. Some charge you for every guest. This one charges $5+tax for each guest car. Some charge for 50A sites ($3-$5/day) on top of the dues, some do not (this one has no extra charges for 50A).

Overall, the positives outweigh the negatives for us.