Sea — Home is Where My Cat is

It’s the little things. And the big things.

Living the way that we do, it’s fascinating to check in with yourself to determine what is a good or a bad experience. I think it’s easy to become complacent with the experiences when you put on your monocle and stay in mid-to-high end parks. We’ve only been to a couple of parks where something as simple as having a sewer line or running water wasn’t available, but I still don’t look at those experiences negatively.

Electricity was the only site feature in this Southern Colorado State Park.

It’s also easy to get wrapped up in the struggle that you know the smaller parks are going through in comparison to the larger networks of campgrounds, KOA for example. You know that if anything goes downhill, it’s a struggle to fix it. You know that you’re spending that time and money against a diminishing return. A lot of places might just settle in and that’s just the way things are. Certain shared bathrooms we’ve been a party to have definitely had that vibe.

BUT.
But.

We have definitely stayed places that didn’t have anything going on. The bathrooms were far and anemic, campground style. In a couple of situations, I watched people with trucks large enough to chariot for Zeus get 5th wheel trailers stuck in poorly designed spaces. It’s hard for me to remember our very recent stay in Thermal, California with any sort of favoritism and yet the State Park we stayed at near Carlsbad, New Mexico still ranks among my most fond memories of places we’ve been. It took no fewer than 3 miles to get from the spot we booked in Carlsbad to the road. That is not an exaggeration.

Internet availability certainly plays a large part of that. We’re fortunate enough to carry connections with each of the 3 big cellular providers and that has been a lifesaver. In most cases, we’ll arrive to a decent Verizon connection, a good AT&T connection, and no Sprint/T-mobile presence at all. While that might immediately make you wonder out loud, “Why not just drop the Sprint connection and deal with the other two?” sometimes that Sprint connection has been the thin line between viability in a spot and having to lose our deposit for two months because work couldn’t be done.

Thermal can be a beautiful place and I took some beautiful photos. But there isn’t much to the town. Mecca, not too far in the east offers great parks and a beautiful Box Canyon. Palm Springs, Indio, and all of the towns nearby make sure there’s plenty on offer if you need anything. And I do mean anything.

No, really. Sunrise and Sunset here are stunning.

Oasis Palms RV Resort has all of the makings of a great stay, depending on where you’re situated. We stayed in site R11 which backs up against a small piece of land against the pond. Unfortunately, the site was dug against a hill, so our 33 ft Class A was close the to limit of what would fit in the site. Our motorcycle balanced on the edge of the concrete just in front of the RV, making the total limit of RV size probably close to 36-37 feet. There was a small “yard” occupied by a medium-sized orange tree, preventing a full-sized vehicle from parking in that spot but we had plenty of people park in front of our unit and pick oranges from that tree.

I’m kicking myself over not having that one slice of photo.

It’s distressing to watch someone pull up and block my bike and carry ladders and duffel bags to the side of your RV, at least if you’re paranoia-motivated like I am. But that’s just a part of the “experience.” As is the complete lack of parking in the long-term stay loop. People have pretty much just resigned to parking in the middle of the traversable road. If you’re leaving the park at 0700 like we did, it’s very likely you won’t be able to take your rig through the gauntlet. Instead, I made a 3 point turn over the tent camp sites in front of us, which were unoccupied over the winter.

The water is very brown. Very brown. But this beautiful mountain hangs over Oasis Palms RV Resort.

I have to say that it’s difficult to feel as negatively about this park as I do. Most of the staff interactions we had were a positive experience. Most of them. And there’s a gorgeous mountain just west of the park, marking a 24-hour backdrop over what would normally be a very boring and ugly desert park. A berm exists to mitigate road noise, and I’m hoping it was helping because it has never been louder in our home. A lot of military jets (including my favorite, the F-16) flew directly overhead. More than a few helicopters would find their way over us as well. Sometimes the sound could be overwhelming enough to interrupt a phone call.

And I’m thankful that we could make phone calls.

When we book sites… or really, I should say, When Jakki books sites, one of the most important considerations is the availability of internet connections, which is very different from cell phone signal quality. Most of the resources we use when researching sites includes a little signal indicator to express the quality of cellular service where you’re staying. When we parked and settled in, we began our customary internet speed tests to determine what we’d be reserving for Jakki’s work and what our capabilities are going to be.

Panic set in. No joke.

We both sat wide-eyed and terrified. We were immediately convinced that we’d have to abandon our deposits and move on. Despite our phones pulling up 4 bars of LTE service, we couldn’t even complete the download portion of the SpeedTest. Immediately, I looked up everything I could about signal quality and noise to find a solution that would allow us at least passable internet service. I dragged our Verizon hotspot everywhere around the park. There were a couple of locations that offered some really great Verizon service. But nothing else. Our Sprint connection wasn’t working either.

I placed each of our hotspots in every conceivable place, thanks to the MiMo antennas that we invested in for our Jetpack and Nighthawk. In only one place in the RV, the Verizon connection was reasonable… in the afternoon to early evening. Think 5 Mbps down, 2.5 Mbps up. Our AT&T connection never showed up to the party. The Sprint connection was our lifesaver; if I dangled the device from a USB cable hanging out of the cabinet that we keep the printer in, we had “decent” service, meaning about 10 Mbps down and maybe 3 Mbps up. That was our lifeblood for 2 months.

No, seriously. It was bad. This is the kind of thing you experience when you’re not holding your providers accountable for their service goals or when you make it absurdly expensive to file FCC complaints.

As far as winter weather goes, Thermal lives up to its name. During the January and February months (the most brutal months for Minnesotans) we saw lows as low as 34F and highs in the mid-80s. It rained twice. We experienced two wildfires not too far from where we were, and one massive car accident that happened on the highway a mere 90-100 feet away from the front end of our RV. Why is that important? The engine from the car that was hit by a pickup truck was ejected more than 150 feet from the site of the accident.

If you have dogs, the park fancies itself a free-range park. Not everyone’s animals are up for that kind of test. Be aware. There is a very generous dog run that most dogs will find some enjoyment out of stretching their legs in. Not all of the owners have been kind enough to pick up after their animals, however.

I believe the closest restaurant to be a Del Taco some 7 miles up the 86. There was also a Burger/Pizza/Taco place in the gas station/truck stop nearby, a Starbucks, and a Denny’s that doesn’t look like it will be re-opening any time soon. Coachella proper, however, offers some great food, including a good burger that accompanied the best onion rings I’ve had in a very long time. Indio and Palm Springs offer so much food that I think it may be impossible to dine at every restaurant just between those two towns. We don’t eat out often, but we did manage a couple of very tasty visits to Grill-a-Burger. I saw at least one Korean BBQ restaurant that I wanted to visit, but Covid… you know how it is. Hopefully they’ll still be there when we return to Southern California.

The Box Canyon is beautiful. I thought this photo would be a nice way to break this up.

The reality remains, however, that there are no accessible delivery options for food. It’s not a big hit when we consider the “score” in its entirety, but I think some of us like the option to get lazy once in a while, and it simply doesn’t exist here. Full grocery stores require at least a half an hour of hard travel. Make it 40 minutes if you’re dedicated to the speed limit. There are several meat markets nearby, and while your options open up significantly if you’re fluent in Spanish, there’s still no replacing the utility and pricing of a full-on grocery.

I guess while I’ve been on a 2-page long negativity streak, it’s also worth noting that local water is toxic. Oasis Palms offers 3 spots to fill up your water by way of a reverse osmosis filter. If you have your own, this isn’t much of an issue for you, but for us, that meant buying a couple gallon jugs of water and refilling. This is also desert California. Not far from Death Valley. We were doing a gallon and a half to two gallons a day between drinking and cooking. They said it was fine to wash your dishes in, but I made sure to vinegar and a-salt my tea kettle.

The bathrooms are serviceable. But they get everything wrong. On the men’s side, the room is HUGE but there are only 3 showers and 3 toilet stalls. The showers themselves aren’t anything to write home about, except the lack of a close curtain to the shower itself means that you’re spraying water everywhere. On the floor. On your clothes. On the curtain that you can see through when it’s bright enough.

There are signs up in the bathroom/laundry area (and there aren’t enough machines, but there really never are) warning the residents/visitors that the water has not been adequately tested. It’s more than mildly disconcerting; I have a little leftover anxiety about being poisoned. Look up the Salton Sea if you’re interested. It’s only getting worse from here if no one does anything about it.

This photo of the Salton Sea is the one that made me feel like a photographer for the first time in my life.

Jakki and I have very different criteria for what a good or bad stay is. At the end of the day (or this review) it’s impossible to ignore the feeling of anxiety that I STILL feel about this stay. On two occasions on days when I left to go shopping for the week, we had completely lost internet service and one of those times was just before Jakki was running a large, important Zoom call. I made it home just in time to fix it by about 4 minutes, because again, it’s 30 long, boring minutes to the closest grocery store.

It wasn’t rare for the office to be closed during hours it was advertised to be open. The main interactions we experienced were with a person who doesn’t really have a grasp of what customer service is. I’m trying not to be mean, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to enter the office and that he would just be watching a movie and drinking a beer. In one particular case, that same person almost hit me (on my motorcycle) with a truck when he attempted to leave the corner store (by coming to speed on the dirt shoulder and then quickly merging onto the road, or more specifically, into me). I would not be surprised to find out that he had been drinking before driving, nor would I be surprised to find out he was buying more beer. Turns out, potentially killing me leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Toward the end of our stay, an older couple arrived after 5PM and waited for 2 hours when we arrived. They’d taken on a little too much road for one day and arrived exhausted without a reservation, hoping for just a night. Jakki, being the nosey goodie-two-shoes that she is helped them book online (from her phone) and showed them to their spot for the night. No one was answering the number on the office door.

Overall, I can’t give it better than a 2 out of 5. I think this place works great as a home base if you’re into the Coachella world. If you’re retired and looking for a place to get away from the world… this may still not be the best choice for you. When we spoke about it, Jakki was more generous with a 3 out of 5, citing unmetered electricity (which WAS nice, I’ll admit) and very fair booking prices.

I’ll never get over feeling like I didn’t have my own safe space there.