Rancho Oso Release Me!

Rancho Oso RV & Camping Resort (Thousand Trails). I don’t know what it is about this place. Perhaps it was the dreadful winding, curvy, no shoulder, road narrows, fall off the side of the cliff road that brought us in here. No, that can’t be it, been there, done that. Maybe it’s the fact that once we started to get close, the phone and internet checked out for the duration of our stay. No, can’t be that because we’ve been there a lot lately too.

Hmmm, perhaps it’s the fact that we have to drive 30 minutes for gas and a stick of butter. Because of course the little ‘camp store’ they have here is closed on Monday, Tuesday AND Wednesday. And emergency gas, a.k.a., you’re not going to make it into town with what you have in your tank, costs $5.00/gallon. And yes, we had to pay for a gallon because we had no idea we were going into the middle of nowhere.

Have I painted the picture nicely for you? And the thing that baffles me is that this place gets really good reviews on Trip Advisor. I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t a hundred or so aliases the management has secured to write good reviews on their own camp. I really want to embrace this place and like it but none of us are feeling it.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind being in the middle of nowhere without cell or phone service. Heck, I don’t even mind driving 30 minutes into town. But the place has to be worth it. Exhibit A, B, and C: Death Valley, Yosemite, and the Painted Desert. Those places are worth it. But this ranch? I feel like I’m trapped in the bowels of hell.

Okay, enough of my ramblings about Rancho Oso. Bottom line is it’s not our kind of place and we won’t be coming back. It’s run down, our electrical box was giving us errors while we were here, ground squirrels and their holes were everywhere and I do mean everywhere, some of the staff was nice and some really snotty, and I could go on and on.

The highlight of the trip was when the kids went horseback riding. It was their first ‘real’ horseback ride. They went on a trail for over an hour. The other thing we had to look forward to was Santa Barbara. We went into Santa Barbara and explored the waterfront. We ate fish and chips on the dock and put our toes in the sand.

On our second trip into Santa Barbara, we took Loki to the beach for his first birthday! It was his first time checking out the surf. Up until now, he’s only explored rivers and lakes. I think the waves were too rough for
him. At first he ran into the water and took a little drink. The look on his face was priceless, blah, salty! After that he stayed out of the water and walked the beach.

Then we took him into a dog friendly restaurant nearby. He behaved himself very nicely. Perhaps it’s because I shared some of the fish in my fish taco with him :-). Hey, you only have a birthday once a year! After that we headed home and the kids made him a ‘birthday cake’ out of doggie cookies, peanut butter and training treats. He was a very happy pup!

Loki’s Birthday Cake!

The remaining two days at camp, I tried, with extremely limited phone signal, to secure us a new home. You could get an itty bit of signal in the bathroom of the RV and a little more at the ‘adult lodge’. I called around for two days straight and was really getting concerned about where we were going to go next. Everything was booked for the weekend

It seems that it’s not a good idea to wait to reserve an RV spot in Southern California on a weekend when two holidays morph into one. That would be President’s Day and Valentines Day. Everyone kept saying, “The weekend is booked solid, sorry”. Ugh. I finally found an opening at Escondido RV Resort.

Sweet victory was mine! I knew nothing of Escondido or what it had to offer. As I perused Google map I realized I would finally be released from the bowels of hell and thrust into the middle of everything! Now we’re talking. A Pieology and an In N Out Burger in the s.a.m.e. shopping plaza?! A Wal-Mart and a Costco across the street from one another?! Yep, this is my kind of place.

The other bonus, it’s 30 minutes from San Diego. We could hit up the zoo and check out the waterfront. And there’s a PetSmart with a doggie day care just around the corner for Loki. So I don’t have to feel guilty about leaving him home in the crate if he can’t come along. Yes, civilization. Goodbye Rancho Oso, hello Escondido!

If you plan on shopping Amazon anytime soon, please click on my Amazon Link and help this blogger out :-). If you order within 24 hours, I’ll get a small compensation and it won’t cost you anything more. I’d be very grateful! Thanks!

{HUGS} from the Crew!