Oakzanita Springs Thousand Trails

In full transparency, we did not stay at the campground. We reserved two nights, checked in online, were given a gate code, and received instructions to take any open spot once we arrived. However, when we got there, we were greeted by a “ranger” who was really short, borderline rude, with my husband and insisted we needed to check in again with her. She then circled a handful of sites we could set up in, and as we entered the park, the gate arm fell on our rig. We were not impressed but navigated our way through the park to pick our site. The campground terrain would definitely be a challenge for less experienced drivers. The roads are steep and narrow. We went through each of the sites that the “ranger” circled for us, not one of them would have been close to fitting our 32-foot travel trailer. Many of the sites were very close to one another and not even close to level. While we searched through both sides of the park in search of a spot that would be worth the $70+ a night we spent, we were able to see the amenities, and were not impressed. We then decided the “ranger” was not worth dealing with again and that the campground was not for us. We left to a nearby-ish county campground that cost half the price. This was our second experience with Thousand Trails and I can effectively say it will be the last.

We had to let everyone know what a great time we’re having at this campground. We have a great site with 50A @ water on a gravel pad. The facilities are clean with very hot water and in nice condition. They are extremely dedicated in keeping them as pristine as possible. Great staff. The Ranger Ginger has been our main contact here, from my first call until we drove up to the Gate. We were warmly greeted by Ginger when we arrived. We had spoke on the phone before we arrived so she already knew about our rig and the type of site we were hoping to get. She happily grabbed a map and started marking the open sites she knew about from her morning rounds, so we found our perfect site pretty quickly and settled in. When we had any questions about the camp she happily gave us her full attention. You will see her and the team riding by in their carts with a genuine smile and a wave. Can’t wait to leave so we can come back again. We want to thank everyone for making our stay here spot on. Cheers

We stayed in B (North) side E/W/S hookups with our 30ft Class A and toad, it was a little tight but there are definitely bigger sites. A (South) side is E/W only. Ranger Kevin recommended a site that had good Northern sky view with good Starlink visibility. I work while on the road and this park has strong fast ATT, good Verizon, no T-mo, so fine for my work zoom and movie streaming. Friendly, accommodating staff.

If you have a rig >30ft and enter from Hwy 79 going North, go ~2mi past the park, turn around and easy entry if Southbound.

Not much nearby business but Alpine is nearest town with most services.

The very first thing that needs to be mentioned is the staff, they were exceptional.

All over the park, the upgrades are more than obvious and ongoing. While we were here they repaired a few areas on the roads and several hip-height marker lights were put in. The electrical boxes all looked fairly new with many looking less than a year old.

The location is great. Out to the right, it's around 15 miles from Lake Cuyamaca where you'll find the closest restaurant and convenience store. While the food is decent to marginal, Delores makes it all worth the trip. She is the owner/operator of the place and really made us feel welcome the first time we ate there, remembered us the second, and made us feel like regular customers after that. She's short-staffed at the moment and can be found to be waiting, cooking, hosting, and running the register at the same time, without sacrificing one iota of customer service. The restaurant has a deck that has a wonderful view of the lake that's about 40' below you. Next door is a bait and tackle shop that services the waterfront at that location. It's $10 to park your car for the park or an $8 fishing permit. That one fee covers you at three different locations around the lake where you can fish, launch a boat, or even camp.

Out to the left is about 20 miles to town for big shopping, etc. Along the way is Descanso, a tiny town with about 6 shops. There's a restaurant there too. It has better food, but it's the first time I've not tipped my waitress in nearly 10 years. Don't waste your time if you don't like your food dropped on your table, entree before soup, and then being forgotten till it's time to pay the bill. Gotta give credit where credit is due, it was some really good potato soup I had for dessert.

Why I won't return. I don't fit. This is a very small park on the side of a hill, with very small sites. There are around a half-dozen sites my 36' TT could fit into, but most of them were filled by annual residents. I got there around 9:55 PM and caught the ranger as he was locking the doors to go home. He figured it was best if we just parked it for the night over by their RV storage area, so we spent our first night there. In the morning I set out, map in hand, to find a spot to park my rig in. As a drove around I realized how right the ranger was, there was no way I would be able to find a spot in the dark, there'd have been no way I could have gotten into one. I couldn't find a full hook-up site that I could fit in so I took a W/E site. Two days later I found one and decided to move there, site 27. I squeezed it in here, my TT took up every inch of available space. Which was fine, because site 28 was unoccupied and we could exit our TT, walk up a little incline, and out through that site. That didn't last long and someone moved into site 28 and they too, took up every square inch of that site, leaving my disabled wife no way to get out of our rig and into the truck. :( Seriously, my wife is trapped and my only option is to hook up, pull the rig forward, let her out, and put it back. I called Thousand Trails and they, as always, were very accommodating and changed our reservations and we're leaving today.

TL;DR: If your rig is over 30', don't come here, if you're under 30', put this on your must-see campsites.

The simple act of entering this campground requires a difficult near 180 degree u-turn on a downward slope. Our 28 foot class A RV with tow car barely made it. Upon arrival at the guard station, my wife and I informed a ranger named Kevin that we needed a full hookup site. He kindly drove us around in his cart so that we could see all of the available B section sites. Now that is great service! We ended up in site B45 and it was a snug fit for our RV. The B section roads are curvy with several hills to negotiate. Trailers and smaller vehicles won't have any issues but any RVs over 30 feet should go over to the A section. These sites are larger but most of them are water and electric only. This campground sits at 4,100 feet above sea level so it can get quite chilly at night. It is very quiet so quality sleep is not an issue. Beautiful views of the surrounding hills and there is a hiking trail up near the water tower. I left several voicemails for staff members and all of them were returned promptly. The great service continues! Free lodge wifi was slow and we did not try the optional paid wifi. My AT&T phone had 4 bars and the hotspot worked great. Garbage cans are plentiful and recycling bins are even available. Very cool! The B section laundry facilities opened up during our stay. Prices were a bit high at $2.25 to wash and $1.75 to dry, but the machines were in great condition. We filled up on propane on the way out and it was only $3.29 per gallon. Campground store and pool were closed due to Covid.

We enjoyed our stay at this TT campground. Staff was wonderful, giving us a golf cart tour of available sites and best approach to our chosen site. If you have a big rig, you will be limited. Abundance of trees which makes it feel a bit more private, but sites are small. Very convenient access to the state park and tons of hiking opportunities. Due to COVID during our stay (December 2020) amenities were not available.
Will definitely return to this campground.

This is one of the smallest Thousand Trail parks I've been to. It's an older park in a rustic setting in the hills on the outskirts of San Diego County. There's a bunch of sites undergoing electrical upgrades (in Thousand Trails lingo "undergoing" means a year later and there's still little to no work being done), which leaves the number of active/available sites to only a few dozen or so, and most of those are 30A and do not have sewer hookups. However they do offer a honey wagon service for $25. There's quite a few tent sites spread throughout although virtually none of them are in use. Maybe the tent sites are more popular in the summer.

The roads are hilly and tight and crumbling in some areas. As other reviewers have stated this place isn't very big rig friendly, although it's doable if you can find a site to accommodate you. If you have a big rig I would call the ranger on the morning before you arrive and ask if they can save you a spot.

They currently accept packages with no fees. At the time of this writing many Thousand Trails have begun implementing a per-package fee, so your experience may be different.

Because of the remote location and relatively small size this place is very quiet, making it a good "get away from it all" place. Central San Diego is a 45 minute drive, the beach is closer to an hour, but for basic needs you can get to the nearest town of Alpine in under 15 minutes. No WiFi is offered but for being way out in the hills I was really surprised at just how strong Verizon and AT&T are.

Last time I was in San Diego I opted for one of the expensive RV parks in town. But I also paid over $1000 for a month's stay. And other than the location there was nothing special about it, like camping in a crammed parking lot. So if you don't mind being a little remote and you're a TT member you can save a ton of cash and still have access to all that San Diego offers.

This Thousand Trails Campground is relatively small and while it can accommodate some big rigs, the narrow campground roads, predominantly rolling topography, and abundance of trees makes maneuvering a challenge. The town known for its apple pies, Julian, is a 30 minute drive north on CA Route 79. We absolutely loved the apple pie. The Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is an easy day trip, and the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park is located just north of the campground. AT&T cellular service was 5G and clocked in at 185 Mbps download speed and 43.3 Mbps upload speed. Verizon cellular service clocked in at 27.63 Mbps download speed and 39.00 Mbps upload speed.

First, I want to say that this is a really nice location out in the middle of no-where. In fact it might be one of the nicest remote locations we've been to in a really long time. If you're 36' or less, you shouldn't have any issues.

However, I'm rather annoyed by TT for the simple fact that they do not adequately explain length issues here. Yes, they mention going up to the turnaround and coming back, but the ranger insists that 36' is the longest recommended length. While there are sites that take longer than 36', like site 29 and 50, there are not many. There are more in Loop A than just two, but those were the only two open, when we pulled in, that had a chance of handling our 43 foot fifth wheel. Loop B is closed for the next few weeks, so the few long sites there are inaccessible. Finally, make sure you don't come in with an inadequate engine because a few of the hills are quite steep and several of the back in sites need extra power to get up onto the pads.

Site 50 is looks like it is only accessible from the direction opposite normal flow. At site 29, the seemingly obvious thing to do is to take a hard left into the incredibly long (over 100 foot) site directly across the road. Unfortunately when you then try to back in your big rig, you discover that you're digging into the pavement with your rear end into road. Luckily my wife caught that (it's obvious others did not as there are huge gouges in the pavement), and we very carefully backed out the way we came. The safe way is to go up the hill and back it in slow and turn really tight. The angle was pretty sharp but the road and site were more than wide enough to allow the maneuver for us. After a couple of small in-and-out adjustments, we were settled. I strongly suggest that big fifth wheels have a sliding hitch so that you can make 90+ degree turns when backing in... this is just a good idea for so many campgrounds.

Loop B is closed right now for electrical upgrade, so a lot of the available big rig sites are unavailable. We were VERY lucky that we got in early as there were only two open sites that could possibly handle our rig. Two large class A's came in right after us and that would have probably forced us to look for a different campground. Again, we were lucky we got there early.

There is a sign just before the last 3 miles with a prohibition against trailers over 40 feet (thanks for the warning) and is OMFG curvy with no guard rails and sharp drop offs. The face of the cliff wall is not cut back like most roads so I was sneaking around corners well over the center line to make sure I cleared them. Those 3 miles seem like 10 even when you're without the trailer and there was a surprising amount of traffic. It's like Needles Highway without the tunnels. I would NOT want to drive on that road on a foggy night or during a snow storm (yes, they have them). Our rig is officially 41' 9" but the bikes sticking off the back make it 43' in total, and I was really wishing I could tuck the back in a bit during those last 3 miles.

Once there, the road past the bath house in loop A seems ridiculously narrow and the corner stupidly tight to the point that I'm surprised it doesn't have RV damage. The campground is hilly, but I've seen much worse. At least there seems to have been some real effort made to level the sites and the utilities are not decrepit. The water pressure is only 20 pounds so make sure you have your low pressure shower head attached or else fill your freshwater tank and use your internal pump to take a shower. The bathhouse is not bad so that's a reasonable alternative.

We could only get a 30 amp site, but since it's nearly 4000 feet up, the weather isn't as warm as in San Diego, and their LP fill hours are 8:30 am to 4:00 pm, so it's not a critical issue. We lost power in the campground a couple times for a few minutes during our stay, but everything was stable, otherwise. I suspect that had to do with the electrical work in loop B.

Finally, the poster on the bath house about mountain lions does remind one that you're in a rustic campground and not a tourist site. I'm glad to be in one of the interior sites as we have small dogs. I do doubt very greatly that the campground sees many large predators, but we decided to not spend much time outside late at night.

Now for the good news. The cell reception is great, the bandwidth is beautiful, and they just refurbished the hot tub! There aren't a tone of OTA channels, but there are enough for us. The bath house nearest us is old but clean and my surge protector says everything is wired correctly (you'd be surprised how many places have problems). While the nearby stores tend to hit you in the wallet, it's only 30 minutes to the nearest urban like area with normal (for California) prices. Some of the fuel prices between here and the beach the lowest we've seen in California. The PetSmart along 8 has a Banfield and PetHotel so that's helpful for those times you need them. BTW, the dog beach next to the San Diego River outlet is amazing. Do go there if you have pups.

The staff is friendly and helpful (the ranger that warned us about the length issues also happily drove me around to scope out likely sites and made suggestions for the stay). There is lots of privacy due to the layout of the sites. Package delivery is free and the rangers stay on top of what's waiting for you, which is really nice.

If you're over 36', you need to get in early and be a little bit lucky. I'm t old more than a few big rigs end up with less than ideal situations. This is one place that should seriously consider assigning sites by rig length or else put up and enforce a 36 foot size limit.

One last thing, since you're in the middle of nowhere, the place is quiet... almost too quiet ;) The occasional jet from El Centro (blue angels) or one of military planes based in San Diego don't really mar the scene. I'd also swear I saw a pair of Japanese Zeros, but they were just a bit far away to make sure.

In all, with a smaller RV or a bit of luck finding a bigger site, this is a really nice place to get away from the crowds and relax for a while.

The park is in quite a bit of disrepair. About half of the campsites don't work in the pool and hot tub have been under renovation for quite a while. It's a beautiful park and the staff are great but it really needs to get fixed up and return to what I assume was its former glory. There is absolutely no coverage unless you have AT&T or Verizon but if you have AT&T you will get about 140 Mb a second Internet! The AT&T/Horizon Towers directly across the street. It's somewhat out of the way as the nearest little town is 15 minutes away and the nearest midsize town is 35 minutes away. The roads are very steep and a good deal of the campsites can't be backed into by a larger RV. It's nice and quiet and really beautiful if you can find a good space where you can back in.