Rancho Sonora Inn & RV Park

Manager snaps your head off when you ask questions! People in the park speak ill of her! These people have been coming here for years! The grounds keeper are very nice. The house keeper cleans so good I would take her home with me! The lady that does activities, she puts on a good show, for everyone has all kinds of great things to do! Very friendly!
She told us of all of the owners places to visit. She has worked for him for years! But we will not come back due to the manager!

UNLESS YOU ARE SEASONAL—AVOID!
Hard to know where to begin this review. The new management is very unfriendly. Called to make reservations for 1 week in mid January at the end of December. I was NOT told they were full and would be in overflow. If we had been told we would be in overflow we may have not made a reservation.
Don’t expect a warm reception or even a reception. Check in is 1:00. The office closes at 1:00 and your site info is in the box outside on the post. If you do catch someone in the office you are met with a cold, unfriendly “we’re closed, info outside” and “we will be open on Monday” (we arrived on a Friday).
Our site wasn’t even in the RV park. It was situated between the road coming into the park and the outside wall. Road noise constant from Hwy 79 to our back. When I checked about the the location of our site on Monday, I was told the RV park was full and had been with seasonal. No chance to have a nice landscaped site in the RV park. It was a take it or leave it.
There are 9 spots close together as you come into the park. Surface is either gravel, some gravel in odd spots or more dirt than gravel. Small patios have been pored at the front of the sites but we could not get our 38 foot 5th wheel positioned so our steps would allow us a firm step onto the patio. If we positioned to do so, our 1 ton pickup would have been in the main driveway as there was no place to park it except perpendicular to the trailer front. We had to step out onto bare dirt-no gravel.
We understand this is the desert and it rains infrequently but we had 2 days of rain and we ended having to step out into mud. Our small rubber mat was floating. 3 days later we still were dealing with mud. Ask at the office for some gravel and was told they had none and would not till summer. They suggested we go to town and buy some bags of gravel (at our expense). Also no picnic tables.
Actually having a site in the RV park that was nicely landscaped, gravel throughout, large patios and some space between trailers would have made our stay nice. What we got was not worth the money. We will not return.

Stayed there for a few days in March 2022 and really liked. Liz saw that we were in a fairly tight space and had moved us to a larger one without us even asking, we were impressed. In April 2022 we booked the full month of 2023. We were assigned a space along the wall and I called to ask Liz if she had anything else. She told me that 24 had just become available, had me look at the park map to approve it. I ok’d it and she emailed me the confirmation. All was good.
Arrived Jan 1st and there’s a camper in our spot. We called the office and got a recording to call the after hours number. We called it, no answer there either, so we set up in site 25 and waited for a call back. No one called back until the next day and then it was to tell us to move to a smaller space that really wouldn’t work for us. I explained picking the site with Liz and her sending me the confirmation and was told that Liz isn’t there anymore and they only had the smaller site. We left and will never stay there again. The park is nice, the management is awful. Good luck if you book here.

On a scale of 1 to 10 for quality of the facilities, I'd give this park a 9 or 10. Everything was very clean and well maintained and the park has some of the prettiest desert landscaping that I've ever seen. Sites are gravel with concrete patios. Hook-ups for the back-in sites are at the back of the site which meant we had to back our small trailer all the way to the back of our site to reach them, putting the bumper of our trailer about a foot from our neighbor's satellite dish. WiFi worked well.

The showers and restrooms are in the office/clubhouse and somewhat oddly placed. As you enter the building there is a small lounge area to your left, the office itself to the right and a community kitchen directly in front of you. Go to the right to access one bathroom and the "library" or to the left to access the other bathroom and the laundry. Bathrooms are uni-sex, but private with each one having its own toilet, sink and shower. Hint: the bathroom by the "library" is larger and has the better shower. Restrooms were very clean and nicely decorated.

The park also has a pool and hot tub which we didn't use. They looked very nice, but the hot tub is only heated from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM and the pool is unheated.

Now, as for the friendliness of the residents I would have to give this park only a 3 or 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. When we arrived, the man who checked us in seemed a little put out that we were disturbing him on a Sunday, even though we had reservations, because they "don't normally have the office open on a Sunday." Although we saw many residents when we were walking around the park, no one seemed very friendly and it was usually my husband or I who said "hi" first. I got the impression this park is primarily set up for long term seasonal residents and so those of us just passing through aren't very welcome. I must say however that the neighbor behind us and the one to one side were friendly enough.

A final note: We picked this park for its proximity to Boyce Thompson Arboretum (fabulous!!!). We had no idea that Florence is also known as "Prison City". There are at least 6 prisons in the immediate vicinity of the town which give it a kind of depressing, creepy vibe. Your experience may be different of course.