Austonia RV Resort

We stayed here while my husband flew out of Austin. There are beautiful oak trees on the property and fields across the narrow road. There is a very noisy highway close by. We had good Verizon and AT&T coverage.

They are building an amazing RV Park, so understand that this is a work in progress. The owners are awesome and friendly. It's only 10-15 minutes from downtown and we rarely had to sit in traffic. We extended our stay because it was peaceful and Austin is so fun. We LOVED the beautiful neighbor cows!

I saw the comment that someone was bothered by the highway noise, I honestly didn't notice it much unless a loud truck went by, but it didn't bother me at all. This really is a great location and not far from the airport. Space away from the city, but SO close to access! I'm so excited to go back and see the progress!

The new RV park just opened Sep ‘21 with full concrete pads and patio, big shade trees, and great WiFi.

Only a minor amount of road noise, but it's otherwise quiet. Hookups worked fine. Paved pads are mostly level. Would recommend, especially if visiting COTA. Solid Wi-Fi and blazing fast T-Mobile 5G (over 500Mbps down).

Spacious RV sites with dispersed mature trees that give some of the sites some shade. Roads, sites, and seating pads are all level concrete and long sites, so very easy to set up the rig. Some people seem to be staying there on a monthly rate for work in town, but all looked well maintained. Some road noise at a distant, but nothing bad. I was a little concerned about airplanes, but they were not a problem at all. Only 1st phase of construction is completed, so no other structured facilities yet (no bathroom/showers/laundry), but did not need them. I think it will be a nice RV park once completed. I liked that booking, check in, and communications were all done online. WIFI was great and I also had great Verizon cell coverage. About 15-20 minutes to downtown Austin and 10-15 to McKinney Falls state park.

We are just staying for one night, but I would definitely return. There is good spacing between the sites, lots of oak trees. All the sites are cement pull through. Owners are very friendly. We were greeted immediately and escorted to our site. Park is still being expanded. This is a terrific, family owned RV park in a fabulous location near Austin.

We had reservations to stay at this park for a few months. Within the first day, however, we ended up having to make plans to leave because not only were we lied to about our specific reservation, but it also became clear that what the park claimed to offer was all lies, too. First let’s talk amenities and atmosphere, and then I’ll explain how we were lied to before and after making our reservation, and ended up having to leave and were charged a daily rate due to no fault of our own instead of the monthly rate we had booked.

“Blazing fast internet” – Most days we couldn’t actually connect to the internet. On any of our devices, it would bump us off immediately. When we could connect, there was not enough through-put to stream a TV show, much less take a Zoom meeting. We found the internet to be unusable and recorded very slow speeds on both Ookla and Google speed tests. In addition, the cell service in the area on all three providers is very shaky, most likely due to the high number of people in the area. If you are a remote worker, do not think you’re going to come here and have fast internet provided be either the park or by own cell services. You will not.

“Bike paths” and “walking paths” – We asked the manager Tiffany on our first day to point us to the bike paths and walking paths. She told us that the paths don’t exist anymore due to the construction of the new part of the park and we weren’t allowed to walk through any of that part of the property when the construction is going on. She said we were free to walk wherever we wanted to on the grounds otherwise, though there are no paths. She suggested we bike on the county road, which is all of about a half mile long and has traffic. (More on what happens on this dead-end county road later – sneak preview: it includes meth heads and high-speed chases.)

“Ponds” – There is one pond and it is blocked off by construction. We did manage to walk back to it a couple times outside of construction (which starts every morning and goes all day except weekends). When we got to the pond we discovered piles of junk and wood around it. The pond itself is stagnant and full of algae. It’s not exactly scenic. On the path to the “pond” you’ll also find a truck topper and all sorts of other garbage. The whole situation looks NOTHING like the photos on the website.

“Garbage + recycle service” – There is exactly 1 medium-sized garbage dumpster and 1 medium-sized recycling dumpster for the entire park. Most days they are both overflowing and completely disgusting. Supposedly, your garbage can be picked up every day from your site. But in the 13 days we were there, on more than one morning the garbage was not picked up from the sites and left to sit out all day and overnight until finally being picked up the following morning.

“Tranquil” and “space to breathe in nature” – While the jets from the airport are surprisingly quiet here, the frequent low-flying helicopters are not. They are really loud. The highway is also visible from this park and the traffic noise is constant. Also, the construction sound is constant. Oh, and people running power tools on their sites, which happened regularly during our 13 days. Also, many of the residents in the park are construction workers at Tesla and work all different shifts so there is constant idling of diesel trucks at all hours of the night and early morning. Tiffany said she and the owners were unfamiliar with the concept of “workers” staying at RV parks until they all started coming to stay with them which makes me wonder how the owners could have been full-time RVers (as claimed on the website) and never have encountered “workers.” ALSO, the property right next to the RV park burns their trash in their front yard, so if you are on the east side of the park, be ready to have that smell and smoke coming into your spot. Not what I want to “breathe in nature.”

As far as the “more amenities coming soon” – the coffee shop is no longer in operation, and the current construction is all more RV spots. There is no bath house or community areas under construction. There is no chance that this park will have any more amenities in the near future.

Now, onto the “rules and policies” and how we were lied to. We have a 44-foot toy hauler that we pull with a truck. We also have a 10-foot cargo trailer that we pull with a second smaller truck. Some parks allow space for this kind of setup and some don’t, so I ALWAYS call ahead before making a reservation to find out the policies. I called and was told in no uncertain terms that we would be fine
We also visited the park TWICE before the day we arrived with our RV and trailer and were told by Tiffany on both occasions that our setup would be fine and that if we couldn’t fit everything on our site, we could just put one of our trucks in the overflow parking by the office.

However, on the day we arrived, we were told a different story. Suddenly it wasn’t allowed to have a second trailer on a spot. She said the rules changed since we last spoke (which was only a week earlier). She said we could try to put it on our spot and see if the owners noticed and complained to her. She told us to put our truck in the parking by the office.

The next day she told us the owners had indeed noticed and wanted the trailer gone. They offered to “valet tow” it to a storage area that you can’t even see from the RV park and that is not secured (again, more on the meth heads in the neighborhood later). We would have no access to our trailer or the things that are in it (we are full time RVers and keep essential things in that trailer). She also said we couldn’t keep our truck in the parking by the office because that was not allowed either, as it turns out. When we pointed out that there were MULTIPLE other RVs with cargo trailers on their sites, she couldn’t really explain why that was okay. She said they were dealing with some of the situations, but multiple sites still had second trailers when we left 13 days later. Some had even arrived AFTER us and were able to have the trailers on their sites, in both short-term and long-term sections.

When we said we weren’t okay with having our trailer parked somewhere out of site and out of reach, and also not safe, then it was made clear that we would not be able to stay at the park. We managed to squeeze our trucks and trailers onto our site and were told it was acceptable as long as we were leaving soon. We couldn’t even get into our cargo trailer because our stuff was so tight on the spot. Tiffany seemed mystified by why we were upset by the whole thing and kept saying she hoped we got over our upset – which is a ridiculous thing for someone to say to us when she had lied to us and forced us into a situation where we had nowhere to go and couldn’t stay at the park either.

I told Tiffany we did indeed want to cancel our remaining reservation. We had only booked this park because the monthly rate makes it a better price (~$33 per night or ~$1,000 per month). She did cancel the rest of our reservation and we left as soon as we could – we stayed 13 nights due to appointments and obligations we couldn’t rearrange so last notice – and we were charged the nightly rate of $55 despite the fact that we were leaving because of the park’s “policy change” that they never bothered to notify us about. We got 1 night “free” for our first week. I couldn’t believe they were charging us a nightly rate since we would never have come here if we were told the truth at any point. We inquired 3 times in advance and were lied to each time. We ended up paying a premium for their repeated lies.

And it would be one thing if the rules were all stated and enforced, but they are not. Smokers are not allowed, and yet people use them. Construction is not allowed, and yet we personally witnessed people using power tools. Three dogs are the limit, and yet we saw a couple walking 4 large dogs on a daily basis for part of our stay. Rig washing isn’t allowed and yet our neighbor told us they all wash their rigs and more than one of the Tesla workers has power washer setups. We were told we couldn’t park in the overflow near the office, but toward the end of our stay there was a car parked there for multiple days, 24 hours a day. There’s no rhyme or reason to the enforcement so you never know if the rug will be pulled out from under you at this place. It’s a horrible way to treat your customers.

This park might be a great fit for you if you work at Tesla and need a convenient place to come home to. If you have kids, there is nowhere for them to play though and if you’re a remote worker, the internet and cell service are not up to supporting work. There are no social activities here or even places for people to gather to be social. It’s just less expensive housing for people who work in Austin or thereabouts. It’s absolutely not a “resort.”

Oh, and don’t let me forget – while we were there (only 13 days, mind you) there was a high-speed chase on the county road. The person fleeing the police ended up crashing at the end of the road, just down from the park. When we went to talk with the police officer about what happened, she told us that the road is a regular problem for them – the people who live just past the RV park regularly complain about strange people parking on the road at night and it’s a known place for meth heads to go. When we looked around, we realized all the homes have security cameras and gates set up. It’s not actually a great neighborhood at all.

We had a good stay here when we visited Austin for a few days. The park is new and undergoing construction to expand. We did not notice a lot of construction noise but we were in the middle of the existing park. The current area is all concrete pads for sites and they are very spacious. Arrived early afternoon and we were escorted to our site. Park roads were very maneuverable. The WiFi was adequate for our use of simple surfing. Very few amenities right now as the park is still undergoing construction (no bathhouse, no walking/bike paths). The location was convenient for our visit to Austin and also very close to the airport. Would stay here again.

This was our second visit. Can’t wait to come back. The park is quiet and a great location for visiting Austin.

We booked on Thanksgiving day. When we got to our site another Rig was in our spot. They responded within minutes and had us another spot. We definitely will stay again.