Pio Pico Thousand Trails

Stayed here for the weekend. It was our first Thousand Trails experience and we are real hesitant to ever have another. Checked in at 4 and all the spots on the south side were taken which was a bummer because we were part of a larger group. The ranger checking us in was beyond rude! They needed proof of insurance which was apparently in one of the dozen or so emails I received from them after I made a reservation. My fault I suppose. There’s very limited cell service so accessing proof on the app was difficult. Never been asked for this at any other park but I would have been prepared if I had known. You can move from the north side to the south but the process is cut throat , ambiguous and chaotic. Everyone was circling with their trailers like vultures trying to get a spot. Wasted nearly half our day trying to get somewhat closer to our group. The park was ok. They obviously cannot clean or maintain spots in between customers so we had to pick up trash and clean up the table. Lots of weeds, lots of foxtails. The pool was nice but not nearly worth the headache.

Average thousand trails - much of the campground is run down and could use some TLC, but for our needs it did the job. We stayed in section G for 2 weeks at a pull through site. No Verizon cell service, but starlink worked great! My husband and I both work remote jobs and are on teams calls most of the day and starlink was very reliable. Downtown San Diego is about 30-45 minutes away, along with other popular attractions. Would stay again due to no cost with membership.

4 stars since it is a TT park and we sort of have lower expectations for them than if I am paying elsewhere. It was your average TT park, sites pretty close together, but had plenty of trees and the area itself is very pretty. As others said, the process for getting a site with full hookups is a mess. We didn't try because it seemed too complicated for a week stay for us. If we were staying longer we may have tried. We stayed on the no sewer side but with a 50 amp box.

It rained a decent amount while we were here and the road flooded in both directions. We were able to get through with our 3500 DRW but we saw several cars get stuck/on the side of the road. It is about 15 minutes to Chula Vista which has ever store you could need, restaurants, gyms, etc.

And while the cell service is nonexistent in the park, it is very easy to get a site where starlink works. Starlink had great speeds here and never seemed to be congested.

Stayed here on a trip through California. Cost was $0.00 since I it was part of the membership.

Pros:
* Close to San Diego (about 30 minutes)

Cons:
* No Cell Phone Service (found a spot that worked toward the long term leasing section)
* WiFi is useless. It was in and out and unusable
* No map or properly marked areas telling you where you can camp. Had to talk with campers in the area to understand what each section was.
* Chaos. There were a lot of people leaving on one of the days but other people had already placed their tags on the electrical box before they had a chance to leave. Found out that it is common for people arriving to ask current campers if they can tag the spot so they can claim it after they leave.
* People are not in a good mood.

The close location to San Diego is Pio Pico's best feature.

Pros - Close to San Diego - Short drive to Chula Vista and the rest of San Diego.
Almost always has availability.
North side has a lot of pull-thru sites.
Good snack bar on premise with hot food - don't miss (south side)
Large indoor activity center (south side)
Honey wagon service for sites with no sewer (for a fee).
Two good hiking trails (Dirt roads) that start from the campground (south side).
Chula Vista has all the usual stores and restaurants.

Cons - Noise - The highway runs between the north and south sides so noise is very high.
The road is popular with motorcycles with no mufflers - can be hear 1 mile away.
Occasional border patrol helicopters fly overhead.
North side has no sewer hookups.
The G section was just rehabbed in 2022 however some sites are still 30 amp.
Some sites are very close together.
During winter monsoons the road to the campground may be flooded and closed for a while.

Overall my stay at Pio Pico was pleasant. The G area has been updated with new electrical, water, and gravel. They are no sewer hook-ups in this area which I was fine with after boondocking several months you learn how to conserve your tanks. Dump stations are easily accessed on the way out. This area seemed to be the quietest of the zones. Which I appreciated a lot. Most of the sites in this zone are pull-through. Nice views of the surrounding hills here too.

Personally, I felt that the other side was too busy/congested for me. Arrived on Easter Sunday and it was a hot mess checking in but, they did their best to get everyone in and settled. The staff here is attentive, kind, and easy to talk too.

As a digital nomad, I can not recommend this campground for remote workers. Cell service for me was non-existent. The week spent working on their WiFi was pretty stressful and I’m glad I did not have a lot of conference calls. Try to get sites closest to the bathhouse and routers. It does drop a lot and it’s slow. I did survive the week though.

The facilities are clean and well maintained, I love walking into a bathhouse and it smells clean.

In December 2021, we stayed several weeks at the Pio Pico Thousand Trails RV Resort and Campground in Jamul, CA. In this video, we show new upgrades in progress and provide an update to our previous review of the Pio Pico Thousand Trails RV Resort. A welcome change, Pio Pico RV Resort eliminated the lottery system to enter the south campground which allowed us to obtain a full hookup campsite in the south campground upon arrival. In addition, A multi million dollar electrical system upgrade is underway as well as several other upgrades to campground amenities. We show all these campground improvements and more in this video. Sightseeing highlights of San Diego, the Las Americas Outlets, and Silver Strand State Beach are also presented within the context of this video. AT&T cellular service clocked in at 52.7 Mbps download speed and 2.44 Mbps download speed. A speed test failed due to poor connectivity for both Verizon and T-Mobile.

No price is listed because we joined Thousand Trails.

Booked two months in advance and they did not even have a site ready for us. When we arrived they told us to "Just go find a spot and if there were none they had partial hookups on the other side of the road"!

Some of the spots had 30amp service, some had 50amp only they didn't tell us that! Parked in one without knowing it was 30 amp so we ended up having to find another spot with 50 amp after going back to the office to find out which ones were. "The ones with the painted red top on the pedestal".

NO cell service and spotty wi-fi in the common areas.

This park would be very nice if they truly had customer service. It truly is in a beautiful spot.

Half the campground has sewage so that’s why this campground got 3 stars from us since so many TT don’t.

The sites are a little tight. My biggest disappointment was the internet. We had no cell service (Verizon) and our only option to have contact with the outside world (and work) was to buy the WiFi. It worked about 50% of the time. It was not worth the money. We’ll stay at this campground again because it’s the closet to San Diego through the membership but if we had to pay, I wouldn’t bother.

My wife stayed here with her grandparents as a kid, so when we were visiting family in San Diego, we decided try it out and let her reminisce.

The good: This place brought back a lot of good memories for my wife. It’s first come, first serve spots with reservation for non-members, so when we checked in, we asked the host if she had any favorite open spots. We didn’t like any of them after we drove through, so we picked our own. We had gotten confused with the spots and as we were finishing unhooking, a host came over and told us we were in a leased spot and can’t park there. Seeing that we were already unhooked and only there through the weekend, she was nice enough to let us stay.

The bad:Unfortunately, this campground is not what it used to be. Way too many long term campers with messy spots. Definitely not like other Thousand Trails camp spots we’ve stayed in, in the past. The clubhouse was lacking and had no A/C. Looked like it didn’t get used very much.