roadtripper8083503

We lucked out and snagged a cancellation. This place was completely full! They admit they grossly underestimated the amount of interest in this park when planning for it. They could triple the size and still be full. So lucky to have access to this park given most in the area are 55+, making it very difficult for families to find a place to stay. Access to all base facilities. Only on-site facilities were office, a common area with books and games, a laundry room with free laundry, restrooms and showers. Easy, pull-through site that was almost perfectly level. Easy in and out. The jets will promptly wake you up, they are loud, but it is expected on an Air Force Base. Overall, nice park, grateful to have access to it.

We love this RV Resort! We found it several years ago shortly after it opened and we've been coming back ever since. There are several RV parks in this area. We also love Dead Horse State Park in Cottonwood. Verde Ranch RV Resort is still reasonably priced and offers a lot. Their wifi is good, sometimes it even works better than our hotspots (Verizon & AT&T). We checked in online and went directly to our site. Roads are wide and sites are wide and long. Our pull-through site fit our 45' toy hauler, dually truck, and Jeep with plenty of room left over. No picnic table, though, some have them, some don't. Nice clubhouse with outdoor heated pool (but heater was broken during our stay) and two hot tubs (one for adults, one for kids, not designated that way, just how it was). There are lots of fulltime families here, so it's a great place to meet other kids and families. Nice playground and ball courts. Several laundry rooms. Several vendors who will come to site and pick up laundry, wash/wax vehicles, etc. No propane on site. ATV rentals at the office. RV repair shop across the highway (we didn't use, so not sure details). Self-service and automatic car and RV wash across the highway. Sedona is about 30 minutes away. Cottonwood is about 15 minutes. Jerome is about 30 minutes. This place has been found out and all sites were full during our stay, so book early.

This is a brand new RV Park, just opened March 3, 2018. We happened to see it as we were driving on I-35 to Dallas. We had spent hours searching for an RV Park with availability within 100 miles of Austin during Spring Break, but every single one was full or could not accommodate our big rig. Finding this brand new, yet-to-be advertised RV Park was the work of my guardian angels. I managed to dig up their phone number and made a reservation for one week. The daily rate is $49 and the weekly rate is $175. There is also a monthly rate. Only half of the RV Park is finished with full hookup sites, gravel sites with concrete pads. The layout flows well. There is a beautiful stone privacy wall surrounding the park. Landscaping is minimal at this point, although there are patches of grass between sites and along the park perimeter. Sites are wide enough to put out slides, but not exactly spacious. We were one of only a handful of RVs in the park, so we were fine, but if it were full, it would feel pretty close together. The main office is also where the bath house and laundry room are. There are 6 washers ($2) and 6 dryers ($1.50), and just one week after opening, 3 washers and 1 dryer were broken. There is no wifi or cable. Our Verizon phone and jetpack picked up signal, but it cycled between 2 bars LTE, 3 bars 3G, even down to no bars 1X occasionally. Antenna reception picks up all the major network channels from Austin, which is about 45 minutes down the road. I-35 is literally right outside the RV Park, making it very convenient, but also very noisy. It sits on top of a hill with views for miles all around. You can watch the sunrise and the sunset. It can be breezy, but that will feel nice during the summer I’m sure. Overall, this is a good, basic RV Park to use as a base for exploring Austin and Texas Hill Country or an extended stay for work. It’s a bit pricey for an overnight stay. The owners are new to this and I gave her some resources and mentioned Passport America, but as of now, they are not affiliated. I believe they offer a 10% discount off the nightly rate for Good Sam, military, and the like.

Rate reflected is weekly rate. We arrived around dark and were greeted at the stop sign, given an information packet, and escorted to our site. Hookups were easy. Transitions from road to site were abrupt. Our neighbors were long-termers and were really noisy, but that's not the resort's fault. Lots of people doing maintenance, washing vehicles, and building things at their sites, kindof surprising for a resort. The clubhouse has a beautiful deck and is up high. The bathrooms are up there and there is a laundry room in each bathroom. I've never been a fan of that because if I need hubby to grab the laundry, he can't when it's in the ladies room. In our case here, he had to do the laundry in the mens room because the ladies room laundry was always busy. Tried to use the elevator to take the laundry up but couldn't figure out how to get it to work, so had to haul it up all.those.stairs. The big playground was great, especially for our older boys. It's hard to find playgrounds that have equipment for older kids. The pool was not heated and was absolutely freezing, but beautiful. The hot tub was disgusting with a foul odor when we first arrived, but the next day was clean with people enjoying it. After seeing (and smelling) it the day before, we weren't going to risk it. A splash pad is being built and they broke ground while we were there. It should be nice when done.

Nice location on Galveston Island. Out of town, so very quiet. Not really anything to do within walking distance, a burger joint and a bar is all. Galveston Island State Park is a few miles away and offers beachcombing, kayaking, and bird watching. The beach has several public access points with paid parking. Galveston is a few miles away and has everything you need. Lots of good places to eat. Definitely try The Mosquito Cafe and sister bakery Patty Cakes. The lemonade cake is to die for. Take the short, free ferry to Port Boliver and keep an eye out for dolphins. Go over to Pelican Island to see the submarine and the sunken ship. Houston and Space Center Houston are just an hour or so away. Stop at Buc-ee's to and from for a refreshing drink and snack.

The road in is gravel and was a little washboard, not sure why they don't use the entry access directly in front of the registration building, maybe due to traffic, but it would make more sense. The entrance from the highway is before you see the RV park (coming from Kanab), look for the flags. My GPS couldn't find Grand Plateau so I had to direct to Dark Skies across the highway and almost missed the entry because it's so far away from the campground. Check-in staff was pleasant, nice little clubhouse/lounge behind check-in, heated pool outside (but heater was broken during our stay) and hot tub. Super nice restrooms, showers, and laundry room building down the hill in the RV area. Nice little playground that kept my 4-year-old from being so bored. Lots to do in the area, we've visited several times and find different things to do each time. Drive Cottonwood Road all the way up (Candyland is AMAZING), then visit Grosvenor Arch, then go up to the pavement and turn left past the (what looks like a) failed housing development onto a dirt road, go down a mile or two (or few, can't remember) to Willis Creek Slot Canyon. Hike the toadstools, explore Coral Pink Sand Dunes, walk through the belly of the dragon and climb up to Moqui Caves. For an incredible experience, do a half-day canyoneering guided tour with any of the tour companies in town. We went with Red Desert Adventures becaue they had the available day we needed and it was a bucket-list thing for me to do with my two teen boys. We rappelled down into a canyon, then hiked through a slot canyon that rivals Antelope Canyon (this one was better in my opinion) and learned how to "scoot" across an obstacle and "stub" down 10-foot drops. I'll attach some photos, highly recommend!

Rate reflects weekly rate. There are only a handful of site for rent as this is actually a 55+ retirement community with homes, trailers, tiny homes, and RVs. There is one cul-de-sac that has sites for rent. Sites are spacious and back to the golf course. Use the blue water spigot, ours was dug out because the spigot is pretty low. Within walking distance is the clubhouse with many scheduled events and the pool area complete with heated pool and hot tub. Literally across the river is Mexico, but we were never worried about anything. We felt safe and welcomed, even being in our 40s with three kids. We used the pool and loved it. We never used any other facilities, so I can't comment on those.

The location is great. The resort is in a seemingly safe, gated community with neighborhood watch. Resaca de la Palma State Park is basically across the street and offers serious bird watching. Be sure to go to Oliveira Park just before sunset to see (and hear) the parrots coming in to roost. Brownsville is a lovely town. Gladys Porter Zoo is one of the best zoos we've visited nationwide. Skip South Padre Island and head to Boca Chica Beach. The beach is unfortunately trashed because people apparently can throw their trash everywhere except in any of the many trash cans that line the beach. There is no development out there, you can drive on the beach, and I bet its amazing during sea turtle season. SpaceX is building a new launch pad out there, so that will be pretty incredible to see huge Falcon Heavies launching from there one day soon.

Pros: The staff are super nice, sites are really long, park is laid out well, location is very remote (dark skies).
Cons: Wifi was down, lots of extra charges, fuel is 20 minutes away, no propane, VERY remote.

It depends what your reason for going here is. We were hoping for lots of Jeep/off-road and hiking trails, but we also like a little bit of civilization. We didn't find any of that here. We did follow the host's directions to the black dam geodes and found a lot of them, although it was 2 hours away. Maybe it's fine if you just want to chill at the campground, but if you want to be out and about, finding fuel can be downright difficult. And when we asked where to refill our propane in the office, the response was, "What do you mean?" Uh, all these people in campers and no one has ever needed propane? Sites are long but it's like a long pull-thru site with 2 sets of utilities in the center and 2 RVs per site side-by-side. Wifi was down during our entire stay, we brought our own Starlink and it worked fine. I felt like all of the extra charges were unnecessary, there is a charge of $5 per person per day over 2 people, and they charge for electricity. So, our weekly site rate was $164, but we were charged another $115 for our kids and electricity, it would've been more for electricity because they tried to charge me for more than I used (2,000kw more), but I had taken a picture of the meter upon our arrival, so I was able to prove that the number they had and the number on the meter upon arrival were different. I mean, don't charge extra for kids AND extra for electricity, that's double-charging. For that reason alone, I'd never stay here again, but add the facts that this place is in the middle of absolutely nowhere with nothing to do other than stargaze, we definitely won't go back.

This campground has it all – full hookups, great cell service, great antenna TV, and great amenities. We had 50 amp electric, water, and sewer, with a fire pit and picnic table, all network channels over-the-air, excellent AT&T and Verizon coverage, a swimming pool, a playground, and a 3 washer/3 dryer laundry room.

The gravel driveway is right off the interstate’s frontage road, but it goes far enough back that road noise can only be heard during overcast weather conditions. We never heard a train, hallelujah. We stayed in the newer part of the park at the front, which meant we had no shade trees and we had to either drive or walk up the steep hill to the main building where the pool and laundry were located.

Fire pit is located behind the site, please keep it there. Although sites are spaced out okay, our neighbors moved their fire ring to within 10 feet of our RV and smoked us out the entire weekend they were there. We even had ash inside our RV. Don’t be “those” neighbors.

This campground is inside Lake Powell National Recreation Area, so there is a fee to get in. It was either $20 or $30 per vehicle for up to one week, but we have a pass, so I didn't really pay attention. As far as I can tell, this was not included in the campground rate, but I'm not sure, I forgot to ask. We were placed in the C loop and told them we have a 45' toy hauler. I didn't check out the other loops, so I can't speak for them. In the C loop, there are "pull-thru" sites along the outer perimeter and back-ins on the interior of the loop. The "pull-thrus" are the U shaped lay-bys, not straight-through pull-thrus. I say this because this can create obstacles for larger rigs like ours. For example, site C18 would NOT have been accessible for us because there is a very tall pole on the right side of the entrance and the site sign on the left side of the entrance, and there's no way we could've maneuvered our big-ass setup through those two obstacles without causing damage. Also, had there been anyone in C18 when we got there, we would've had issues, because due to trees, we had to drive across part of site C18 to enter C20 as straight as possible to avoid hitting trees. The other pull-thrus didn't have trees like C20 did and there was a moment when we thought we may have to request another site, but we managed to place the RV just perfectly where our slide didn't hit the tree on the side, but we had to trim a few branches on the tree in front in order to unhitch without scratching up the roof of our truck. When we left, we had to back up a bit to be able to clear the trees and make the curve necessary to get out, and we ended up hitting the tree in the back. So, yes, a big rig will fit, but it can be very stressful. Our hotspots worked well. The view of the lake was beautiful. Close to Page. We rented a pontoon boat at the marina (Stateline does rentals, not Wahweap), and the time zone is Arizona. The phones kept bouncing between Arizona and Utah, but the marina is on Arizona time even though it's technically in Utah. We would recommend hiring a boat tour instead of renting a boat because it took an hour to do all the paperwork/inspections, then with all the no-wake-zones, we were only able to explore Navajo Canyon before returning after 4 hours on the water, you have to fuel up the boat and half a tank cost us $117 (and the guy at the fuel station said prices were going up), we were clock-watching the entire time because the marina closes at 4pm sharp and if you're one minute late, they'll charge you for an additional day (another $500 or so plus a $50 fee). We got back early and our rental ended up costing around $800 after rental fee, taxes, $50 insurance, and $117 gas. Pretty sure a stress-free boat tour for all 5 of us would've been less than that.

The roads to and inside the park were easily navigable with our 40’ 5th wheel. There is a new online reservation system in the works that will allow you to reserve specific sites, but at this time, it’s still about a year out. So, you don’t know which site you will be in until check-in. Honestly, I didn’t like this idea, but it turned out to work best that way. We were assigned site #181 and they told us that if it didn’t work, to pick any site just to call them before setting up to ensure they hadn’t assigned it to someone else in the meantime. We tried backing into site #181 but, due to the hill at the front of the site, our 40’ 5th wheel bottomed out. Deciding not to damage our RV, we drove around the loop and were easily able to back into site #166. It was a bit shorter, but we backed up until the wheels reached the concrete partition and had enough room to park our truck sideways at the front of the site. The site was almost completely level already and is much more private and wooded. We called the office and they confirmed it had not been assigned to anyone else and switched us to that site. We just had to run back up to the office to get a new vehicle pass.

In addition to the campsite fee ($30 per night), they charge a $7 per adult over 12 years old per day. It may be beneficial to buy a Texas State Park Pass. Internet connection with Verizon was great, streaming quality. We also picked up over 70 antenna channels. Each site has a firepit, but the office doesn’t sell firewood. We found enough dead wood laying around our site to have two nice fires and a neighbor gifted us a bag of firewood that provided two more fires, before we realized that collecting firewood is prohibited. I can understand not chopping down trees, but burning dead wood already laying around helps keep the sites clean and prevents invasive infestation from outside sources. Most state and national parks encourage this, and we noticed that rangers are leaving wood from flood damage cleanup in the vacant sites. The road noise was much louder than I expected for a state park. The highway just outside the park provides a shortcut between Hwy 67 and I-20, so it was very busy during the day but quieted down at night. Shopping and restaurants are only minutes away.