Pine Country Thousand Trails

Better than average Thousand Trails experience. I enjoyed my stay here. The sites are large. There are different sections to the cg. The older section is mostly annual campers. There are a few scatter transient spots. Most of the non-annuals are at the front of the park when you pull in. I stayed here and had FHU with 50A electric. I thought it was decent. it was hard to level which is weird because this part of the cg is pretty level. The pool was closed during most of my stay. Not sure why but I don't frequent the pools much. The staff were really helpful and friendly. Check in is at one and they ask you not to arrive before that. The weekends is when most of the annual people come in. Why the ride around in the golf carts round and round is beyond me. The bad part about that is all the dust it generates. The toilets and showers in this part of the park are new. Looks like they only get cleaned once a week but it wasn't too crowded during my stay so wasn't a real problem. Good internet on ATT and Verizon. I would def come back.

Thousand Trails Pine Country Campground is conveniently located near the interchange of Interstates 39 and 90 in Belvidere, Illinois. Thousand Trails Pine Country Campground made a great stop for a few days as we traveled across the country. In this video, we give you a walking tour of the campground which has a mix of seasonal and transient campsites. We camped in the upgraded Promenade Deluxe Section which boasts spacious 50/30 amp full hookup campsites. A Super Walmart with fuel is located just a few miles away on US Highway 20. Verizon cellular service clocked in at 16.5 Mbps download speed and 0.81 Mbps upload speed. AT&T cellular service clocked in at 48.0 Mbps download speed and 1.87 Mbps upload speed. T-Mobile cellular service clocked in at 7.13 Mbps download speed and 0.82 Mbps upload speed.

This campground was pretty simple. It has a pool and a pavilion plus a volleyball court. There are some trails to explore and the bath houses were nice, with individual bathrooms from the outside each with its own showers instead of a big room with multiple shower stalls and multiple compartmented bathrooms. More private that way, which was good. One of the showers had no COLD water. Only hot. That was too hot. Be careful before you jump in the shower and maybe even check the water temp out before getting fully undressed, since you'll have to go outside to go to another bathroom for a different shower.

Cellular data connections were fine. Since we were there for a short stay over a nonworking weekend, I didn't do a full speed test on all our connections but everything worked just fine. AT&T in a Netgear hotspot, Sprint/Calyx in the Alcatel cheapy hotspot that comes with it, Tmobile in a cat20 router/modem, Verizon in a standalone hotspot and Visible all had good connections, good enough. AT&T in particular was very good.

Town is pretty close (Belvidere). The Walmart is super duper close by, nearly on the road leaving the park. Maybe 2 miles. Also some of the cheapest gas around could be found there.

We enjoyed eating at a German place in Rockford, a sushi/cajun place named Fuji Cajun and liked exploring the area, the trails, visiting with other campers. We were en route to another location and did not plan to make it a destination, so didn't have big plans.

I either could not find the laundry room or there was no laundry room. This is a smaller park and seems to have quite a high % of long term guests, annuals/seasonals.

We were 50A, fhu. Some tight turns inside the park and the exit from the park also had some tight spots. Be alert about them.

I would not want to stay at this site for an extended period, weeks or months unless it was our home park and we lived relatively nearby or we were sightseeing in Chicago or somewhere else nearby. We enjoyed what we did there but that was enough, for us. If we wanted to see Chicago, then I would gladly book this location and go in for day trips. It's about 90 minutes away.

Reservation said full hookups with 50amp. The site was only 30amp but it was cool enough that we didn't need AC. Water was a little low on pressure with max of 45psi. Sewer hookup was good.

We camped over Labor Day weekend so we expected it to be a little crazy, but wow! This is a party campground! There were parades of loud golf carts for 3 days straight. The only thing that calmed things down a bit was the rain. But the first break in the storm brought out hundreds of people mingling and partying with no masks and definitely no social distancing. The welcome packet didn't mention much about COVID rules like most other campgrounds the past couple months, so maybe it's just not as strict here in Illinois?

It rained most of the week so we didn't really get to experience much of the campground. The pool was drained and closed after Labor Day. And everything else was soggy wet.

It was also a little unusual that after the holiday, the campground emptied out but nearly all the RVs stayed put. It seemed like 90% of the campground was annual rental spots with just a few spots up front and a couple back where we were that were transient.

First, they have assigned spots, I prefer this over the usual FCFS of other TT locations. Our spot was level, gravel and comfortably wide from the neighbor. Full hookups with 50 amp service. The connections were adequate, water pressure was below 40psi (weak).

The pool is a 25yd, full sized pool with lane lines. I'd give another star if they had adult or lap swim in the mornings. The pool even has anchor points where lane lines could be installed. That would be very nice.

Otherwise, they have nice amenities although the place can get crowded. It is a large park with a robust population of annuals.

The transient spots are near the entrance where there is significant highway noise from the state highway about 1/2 mile away.

This place was not busy while we visited. Unlike TT, they gave us a site to stay in but it was on a corner of their new section and it would've been difficult for us to back into the spot. It seemed odd to stick us in the corner because they were not busy and had a lot of spots available. We made up for it by being able to stay in one of they sites that backed up to the pond (PW3). They have a nice club house with at large indoor area and a covered outdoor area too. Nothing fancy but the kids loved going down to play air hockey. The pool was still closed so we didn't get to check that out. I think the nicer sections around the amenities are for annual sites and the monthly members get put in the newer section by the entrance and storage area.

Not bad overall. We would stay here again if we were in the area.

We really liked this RV park and since it was part of Thousand Trails, we stayed for free.

The check-in was a bit odd because the staff was in a meeting and I think we were the only people to check in on a Saturday so I had to stand in the office for a few minutes before we could go to our site.

We had a nice pull thru full hookup site, but it was just 30amp power in the whole park. Seems to be a lot of full time / annual leases in the park so there were a large amount of RVs setup with storages, etc. Many if not all of those sites were well kept up, so that was nice.

When we were at the park, they were in the process of expanding so we did have to go offsite for propane. Also, there were only 2 washers and dryers (and 1 was out of order) which seemed odd for such a large park.

The amenities were great with a large pool, good playground, room for the dog to run around (just in a field, no real dog park) and a nice pavilion. The people who were living there seem all really nice as well.

The amount of bugs while we were there was pretty high. Maybe time of year or something, but we got a lot of bites and the dog could not stay outside. Hopefully that was just a timing thing.

The nearby town is small with only a few restaurant options, but they have a Walmart just 2 miles down the road. We thought we might go over to Chicago for the day, but it turns out this was probably over 2 hours drive away so we did not. We did go to Rockford about 30 minutes away and it was nice.

Oh yeah, and on the way out, the exit gate barrier came down and dragged on the last 5 or so feet of our 5th wheel and then dropped. That system should probably be improved to take into account trailers where the wheels are closer to the middle.

We would stay here again, have a good time!