Ok y’all, Thousand Trails is confusing. There are so many parks, so many levels of memberships, so many older memberships, different times you can go, high season, holidays, RPI parks, it’s SO much. You already have it, but do you know how to use Thousand Trails? 

Disclaimer – any prices and booking windows and benefits were up to date when this was posted. I do my best to keep things up to date, but always check the Thousand Trails website for the most up to date information.

I’m going to break things down for you and share how I personally use Thousand Trails and share my Google map with you. Use the form below to get your own copy.

If you’re more of a visual learner, I put together a video of how I build out our trips!

First, what is Thousand Trails? Check out this post for a little more about it, but I think the easiest way to understand it is to think of it like a timeshare. You pay for a membership, and annual dues, in return, you get to use the campgrounds if there is availability. 

The differences in the memberships all come down to how long you can be “in the system,” how far in advance you can book, and which campgrounds you can hop between. 

The first level is the Camping Pass in 1 or more zones with the option to add on the Trails Collection. Prices range on this and they have different sales throughout the year, but it’s between $600-$1200 a year. 

The next level is a full membership. These start around at least $7,000 with $1000+ in annual dues. You can finance this or pay it all at once. It depends on your cashflow and what works for you.

We have used RV Trip Wizard to plan every trip since we got on the road in November 2020. We love RV Life so much that we have partnered with them. If you’re looking for a planner for your RV trip, this is what we use!

Where are the Campgrounds?

They’re all over the US and some in Canada too. If you get an upgraded membership right now, you also get access to the Resort Parks International (RPI) system for free for a year (or more depending on the upgrade). Most of these parks have a cost of $10 or have a special savings. 

Now, when I first got all of this, I was overwhelmed. There are SO many campgrounds in there! I was also finding that some of the RPI campgrounds were also Thousand Trails and Trails Collection campgrounds. I use RV Trip Wizard with my RV Life Membership and while it is an AMAZING tool for planning all my trips, which I have done from the very beginning of our RV journey, it was hard to see all of the Thousand Trails, Trails Collection, and RPI campgrounds in a way that made sense. So, being the organizing nerd that I am, I created my own map on Google. 

I’m also not 55 years old yet, so there were some campgrounds that I could not access. So! In the map, I added layers for each zone, all of the non-age restricted trails collection, all of the 55+ trails collection, all the RPIs that are $10/night, and all that are extra savings. I noted which ones were high use and which ones had seasonal dates. Now I can hide campgrounds that don’t apply to me, if I need to.

If you haven’t gotten your free map yet, here’s another link to get yours.

How do you book and plan? 

Here’s what I do personally. I pull up my Google map and looked up reviews for each of the campgrounds in the area I planned to visit, add notes and then change the color of the campground pin.

My color scheme is this but feel free to use whatever makes sense to you:
Blue – default color of the pins
Green – stayed before, love it, would go back
Purple – amazing campground
Yellow – looks ok, but a not top choice / have stayed before maybe would go back
Red – don’t want to go / been before and would NOT go back 

I check reviews and photos on Campendium & RV Life/RV Trip Wizard. 

Our requirements are:
Good internet
Full hook ups
Big rig access
Not too tight of spots/campground

Our “would be nice” items are:
Aldi
Close to things to do
Fun activities at the campground

The great thing about Campendium is they have internet and cell service reviews. We need to have access to decent internet and cell service to work, so if a campground has bad internet, it doesn’t even make the list. I change the color of the pin to red in that case. I’ll add a note to the pin that says the internet is bad, if that’s the only thing wrong with the park, so if I want to go to the area later and maybe I don’t need internet as much, I might want to go.

A great example is Yosemite Lakes, there is ZERO cell service, a tinnnnny bit of wifi at the office, and slow wifi you can buy. We had to cut our visit there short because we couldn’t work, during a time when we HAD to work. But, it was close to Yosemite National Park, was very pretty and we’d love to go back some day. Funny enough, there was GREAT reception in the National Park.

If the internet and cell service looks ok, I’ll hop over to RV Life/RV Trip Wizard and look at reviews on there as well. Sometimes there are better reviews and photos on there. 

After I’ve batched my reviews of the area, I’ll create my trip in RV Trip Wizard. I typically do a season, or about 10-20 stops. We have added in our height, weight, length, and fuel mileage. We like to stay around 300 miles or so. That way we don’t have to worry about filling up our truck on the drive. This really helps us plan the drives and the area. 

We try to move on Sundays or the weekends so we can work during the week and we like to stay for 2-3 weeks. After I’ve plotted the drives, I’ll add in dates on RV Trip Wizard. I’ve started to change the title of the campground to have a TT for Thousand Trails and Encore for Trails Collection, since they have different booking windows. 

After I have my rough plan, I use Asana to remind me when it’s time to book. I’ll Google “what is 120 days before XX/XX/XX?” and then I’ll set a reminder the day before so I know to book and set alarms to actually book. In my to do list system, I have a reminder to add things like set an alarm to book and book the campground when it’s time to book. 

When it’s time to book, I’ll log in to the Thousand Trails website and book through there. I can typically book ok, but if I have trouble, I use the chat.

What I wish I knew at the beginning

The chat! This has been such an amazing feature and a total game changer for me! You can find it by navigating to My Trips and you’ll see a little box that says Chat at the bottom of your screen. Tips for this – have your member number saved in another screen. They’ll be asking for that and some details to confirm your identity. I’ve found it’s much faster to chat than call. The first time I tried the chat, I left the room for just a minute and they had responded. I think the longest I’ve had to wait was about 15-20 minutes. If you’ve called them before, you know this is a big time saver!

I wish we had known we’d want to upgrade before we hit the road. Before we upgraded, we spent $1669 on campsites outside of the system, for 35 nights at an average of $47.69 a night. Besides paying off our membership (which was over $5000), we’ve spent $2043.27 TOTAL since August for 331 nights for an average of $6.17 a night. But here’s the thing, half of the people you talk to love Thousand Trails and the other half hate their campgrounds. We just weren’t ready to spend the money for a product we didn’t know if we’d like. I’m glad we only waited about three months to upgrade, even though we wouldn’t be able to use the membership as much out west. We were able to use our RPI membership at the $10/night rate for about a month. 

 What about you? Did this help you or make things more confusing? Let me know!!