Our first Thousand Trails Campsite: Ocean City, Washington

When we bought our Leisure Travel Van in October, it came with a complimentary 1 year membership to Thousand Trails. Thousand Trails is a membership program that has something like 80 campgrounds around the country and with certain levels of membership you can stay at them for free with your yearly fee.

Our first Thousand Trails experience was on the second night of our drive to Tampa. We left Cape Flattery and drove a few hours down Highway 101 to Ocean City, in southwestern Washington. The campground here is called Oceana.

When we first pulled in, the guest checkin desk was actually unoccupied as the person running it had popped out to the shop down the road, but they were back within a few minutes and got us checked in. One of the interesting things about Thousand Trails is that you don’t reserve a specific site, just a space within the park. Once you arrive it’s first come first served for sites. Which is fine for us but if you’re coming with a group could be tricky to get spots together guaranteed.

We arrived on December 3 after a few days of heavy rain and the campground was definitely showing it. Flooded in parts, our campsite had a puddle where the hookups were, thankfully I have some good waterproof hiking boots to stand in while I hooked up our water and electric.

After getting set up we headed out to the beach while it was dry, just a short 5-ish minute walk from our campsite. Dogs are allowed both within the campground and on the beach, Loki was very happy to get to run on the beach after being cooped up in the van for a few days.

In the morning we headed over to the bathrooms and availed ourselves of the free shower to have a long, hot shower before getting back on the road.

It wasn’t a long stay but between the fun on the beach and the hot showers, our first night at a Thousand Trails campground was definitely worth it for us.