Morgan Hill Thousand Trails

Camp is crowded, not for the dedicated dispersed camper! and when we were there (just after lockdown) it certainly had a party atmosphere.

The facilities are nice and the bathrooms are clean but they do have a weird “railroad style” shower set up, where you have to walk through another showed changing area to get to your shower! Which pretty much means the three shower stalls were good for families but more or less the three became 1 if it was just a single person showering.

No sewer hook ups and just three dumps, so it was busy and stinky during the day, if you had to camp close to them.

LOTS of black widows in wooden fences and retaining walls.

The rangers were nice and friendly.

Access was easy and it’s convenient amenities and Monterey.

It's early December here and the weather has been very rainy for the two weeks leading up to our arrival, yet when we got here, the amount of standing water was nominal and the sites seem to be mostly dry in the F/G sections. Driving around did not show any real water problems, so that was encouraging.

The 30 amp section is closed because PG&E won't come out and replace a blown panel. Chapter 11 tends to encourage companies to make bad choices and if half of what I've heard about that company is true then I hope PG&E is broken up and their entire board thrown in jail.

TV? We don't need no stinking TV! At least that had better be your position as there are no signals (we're pretty much surrounded by large hills. I see several people with satellite systems and while there are trees, it's not a solid canopy by any means, so I expect getting a signal is not that hard for most. On the plus side we got our new Roku to replace our old Apple TV & Fire Stick equipment and with the Verizon hot spot it's amazing. Can't say enough about Roku. The Verizon hots-pot generally does a really good job during the day but at night we get a few pauses and network errors, but nothing too annoying.

There are a lot of parks in the west that don't seem to have sewer, so I can't reasonably ding anyone for that, but it would be nice to see them add it. Management says they are adding a loop next year and that it will have sewer. If that happens, then this campground will become even more popular. Water pressure (around 35-40 lb) here is typical for a lot of parks and electrical seems to be quite decent. During our stay we had zero issues with power. The utilities are not new but they are mostly good looking with minimal signs of age.

For the most part there's a decent amount of room between sites and it looks to be pretty easy to back into most of them. There are a few pull through sites and several of the back in sites have been "converted" by previous occupants. Cars are mostly parked in their sites and not along the road like I've seen at a lot of campgrounds.

The staff seem friendly and helpful. My only real complaint is the cell service. Either there has been a change recently or some of the previous reviewers were using boosters. While I can get 2 bars on Verizon and 1 bar on AT&T, the DATA SPEED SUCKS. I can't stream TV shows on Verizion at night without interruptions and the upload speed keeps reading 0.00mb on the speed tests. AT&T is even worse. T-Mobile does not even register here.

They've got a newer WiFi installation by Jabba and I've been forced to use that to do any meaningful work. Jabba tends to be better than most pay-for services, but that's not saying much. I am dropped at least once a day, but reconnecting is quick so it's not much of an issue.

Most needs can be met in Morgan Hill which is about 10 minutes away. Every possible store or business is within 45 minutes unless it's rush hour, then it can be up to 2 hours getting there. Peking Restaurant has decent Chinese food (but no crab wantons) and the Morgan Hill dog park is a great place to give the puppies a good romp.

Bottom line: It's a really nice park, but don't expect to use your cell data here unless you are only using low bandwidth streaming or have a booster. Their WiFi is acceptable and reasonably priced.

The main roads in the CG are paved but the feeder roads are dust with a little gravel (maybe). That really impacted my experience here. This is a crowded CG. They have high use restrictions all summer. Some sites (usually taken by annuals or seasonals) were a good size. Most others were slide to slide. You can tell there are many people living here and going to work nearby. They wake up early (like 4 am) make their noise and leave and come back later in the afternoon. Not one but MANY. This creates the massive amount of dust I experienced. And of course (even though no drought this year) you are not allowed to wash your vehicles. And because of the 14 day restriction at this park rigs are always coming and going creating more dust. It is very windy here every day too just creating more dust. Even with the AC on full time with windows closed there was a layer of fine silt dust over everything inside. Outside? A thick layer over everything. No FHUs in the CG so everyone has their blue boys and I noticed a couple not covering them when dragging them with their vehicle to the dump site. Stuff spilling all over. The bath houses are newly renovated and nice. Power was dangerously low and they actually had a towed in portable diesel generator running to try and boost the voltage. Even with that I usually had voltage of 105 on one leg. I only used my AC on the other leg as I didn't want to burn up that other AC on the low voltage leg.
Good Verizon speed here during the day At night it would slow to a crawl and no streaming was usable then. ATT good DL without a booster. A booster is really needed for decent UL speeds. TMobile even with a booster did not work well.
I'd only return if it was an emergency.

Morgan Hill Thousand Trails suffered a serious flood in March, 2016. The resort was closed for 10 months. A massive renovation and renewal is underway. Roads and sites have been cleaned up and graveled, some bathrooms have been refurbished (the rest are in progress), there is new playground equipment, and the Family Lodge is refurbished.

But wait, there’s more! The pool is refurbished including new furniture, there’s a new Adult Lodge, a new outdoor pavilion and new basketball court. The dump stations have new fencing and the dumpsters are hidden by nicely designed wooden enclosures. There’s a new 11 hole miniature golf course (yep, 11 holes). New volleyball courts and refurbished tennis courts. The dog run has new sand and fence. There are 4 new “Safari tents” and new BBQ units are being installed everywhere. Still to come is a new fitness center and a check-in desk in the membership building (the old adult lodge).

If you have not been to Morgan Hill TT since the flood, come on back and enjoy the much improved property! See the newest pictures.

The worst staff I have ever come across at a campground. Too bad cuz this is a primo location. Unbearable to stay another minute because of staff. And I’m normally not a complainer...just happy and grateful to live the traveling lifestyle in my RV. Will always steer clear of this place...it was such a negative experience. My first and last horrible experience tho.

We camped at 290 which is an upgraded site. We need 50 amp hookup and so we were restricted to the upgraded sites which don’t have much shade. There were a few sites that had larger trees, but those were reserved or had long term campers. All the sites are gravel and have a picnic table. Water and electric at the sites, but no sewer because of the nearby creek. The pool is huge. The restrooms closets to us were close for renovations. According to our neighbor it’s been closed since March. It seems like they’re trying to make some improvements to the park. The membership office was being remodeled. The staff chose to try and switch park to an internet air card on a Saturday afternoon. And they were having problems. Had an issues with the laudry card machine. Be warned, the staff doesn’t have anything to do with it. The card costs $4.00 itself and is reloadable. Make sure you check the balance before you leave the machine. I spent 45 minutes going back and forth with that thing. Laundry machines don’t take cash. $1.25 for wash and $1.00 for dry.
If you don’t need a 50 amp, you can find a great spot with a lot of shade. Some of the staff was really nice, but there was some that had a horrible attitude. The trash cans fill up pretty quickly.

We camped at 290 which is an upgraded site. We need 50 amp hookup and so we were restricted to the upgraded sites which don’t have much shade. There were a few sites that had larger trees, but those were reserved or had long term campers. All the sites are gravel and have a picnic table. Water and electric at the sites, but no sewer because of the nearby creek. The pool is huge. The restrooms closets to us were close for renovations. According to our neighbor it’s been closed since March. It seems like they’re trying to make some improvements to the park. The membership office was being remodeled. The staff chose to try and switch park to an internet air card on a Saturday afternoon. And they were having problems. Had an issues with the laudry card machine. Be warned, the staff doesn’t have anything to do with it. The card costs $4.00 itself and is reloadable. Make sure you check the balance before you leave the machine. I spent 45 minutes going back and forth with that thing. Laundry machines don’t take cash. $1.25 for wash and $1.00 for dry.
If you don’t need a 50 amp, you can find a great spot with a lot of shade. Some of the staff was really nice, but there was some that had a horrible attitude. The trash cans fill up pretty quickly.

Background: We have a Zone Pass with Thousand Trails and find it best to have low expectations. We love to boondock, dry camp, stay in state parks, and national parks. We appreciate TT for a low cost way to spend a night or two after boondocking to shower, fill and empty tanks, and do laundry.

We drove many hours to be able to do just that...shower, do laundry, fill the water tank. However, when we arrived we were told only one of the bathrooms (in the whole park) was open, but there was NO water!! We wish we'd been told this before we booked this night.

Also, we could not find an available level spot...or even close to level.

The spot we considered staying in had neighbors who had laundry hanging/drying everywhere and looked like the entire contents of their garage was on their campsite and behind it.

We did not stay the night.

If you decide to stay here, we'd suggest you call ahead and make sure everything is up and running.

We were given a Thousand Trails membership with the recent purchase of an RV from a local dealership so in the year of the membership we get 30 total days free (so we didn't pay for this stay) and then pay $3/night after that. This is the third Thousand Trails we've stayed at and the second in this immediate southern Bay Area. This one in Morgan Hill is completely different than the one in San Benito/Hollister in that there was ALOT more room. We have a Roadtrek so it's shorter with no slides and that must've been the reason we were given such a small site. We couldn't even park our personal vehicle at the site but they did have overflow parking. While the grounds are nice, clean, with lots of trees and amenities (pool, mini golf, a creek running through, dog run, adult lodge, etc.) and the employees were all very nice and enforced the rules, my only real complaint was the extraordinary number of people that seemed to be living there in their trailers. Not full timers but more like locals that were now moved into their trailers because the rents are so high in the area. Apparently this is quite the trend since Silicon Valley is thriving with business and population is exploding and it's driving up housing costs excessively. The campground has 330+ sites (not sure if that includes the few tent sites) and it was packed all weekend. We will be coming back but might wait until after the summer when hopefully there are fewer people camping.