Pinto Lake City Park — Attraction in Watsonville

Unfortunately Pinto Lake is under new ownership and I have never had so many disappointments camping in my 40 years experience. I have stayed at Pinto Lake prior to the new ownership on June 1, 2017 and always had pleasant experiences. However, the new ownership hired completely new staff and the 2 girls who were there during the summer of 2017 were very inexperienced and was very disappointed that they secretly banned me and my family from the park: Here is my experience. During the month of July and August, I was a regular at Pinto Lake with my husband and 3 children. In August of 2017, I became very ill and during a check out day, I had a bad asthma attack and asked the girl if I can stay late. She said it would be no problem as long as we were gone by 6:30 pm. I thanked her up and down and she smiled so nice and told me it would not be a problem. Upon leaving, my site, at exactly 6:35 pm, she was on the phone with the police, we left and she hung up, when we tried to return we were put on the blacklist and banned from the park forever, if you arent mexican dont go there you will be discriminated against for sure, we were immediately treated like criminals and told we could no longer camp there, we are registered business owners in Aptos, and have never been discriminated against like this before, we overheard the one countergirl calling us that sorry ass gringo posse, Amazing, upon trying to call upper management to file a claim, I NEVER RECEIVED A RETURN CALL, whereas I returned to the office to be told by the same counter girl that they had no complaint forms. For a county park to be run by little children who are racist that is the most ridiculous setup I have ever seen in my life for angry children to be in charge of a...

Here the staff was friendly albeit a couple conversations left me to believe some were inexperienced as they could not seem to provide any answer without first checking with the head person. Access for big rigs is easy with wide roads and lots of maneuvering room, albeit the sites once parked... are very tight. They say 15 ft wide and that is tight for big rigs with slideouts. Attempted to put out our awning and it literally went over the neighbors slideout. The park is visually appealing and each site has it’s own trash can back of site. There is a lake but no swimming permitted. WIFI was strong but bandwidth extremely little. No cable but TV Reception Over The Air is good. We had 37 channels. Both Sprint and Verizon signals were good. We came here because the price ($35/day) is far less than most anything else in the area. From here we made trips to both Santa Cruz for a day (30 min) and Monterey for a day (45 min). Downside for big rigs is the 30 amp (no 50 amp).... and at our site the 30 amp would not hold even at a 25 amp draw (we have readouts to see the load). The breaker which kept tripping at 25 amp load is probably old and weak (site 21) and needs replaced. If we returned this way, think I would pay the high price to be somewhere without so many restrictions as this place (i.e. No smoking, drinking or leaving your pets in the rig). If you do not smoke, drink or have pets….and do not mind hearing your neighbors snore…. this will be a 5...

We stayed here with our rental RV. Not crowded except day use i think a lot of locals come in for fishing. Boating allowed so we saw a few boats and quite a few kayaker. All fishing. The water that fills this lake are runoff so it's not "ideal". No swimming but there's fish in there. Pretty cool because you can hang out in your RV camping with access to the lake or drive 15 minutes to the beach along PCH 1! I think that makes this location great! Wasn't too crowded and the staff are friendly and chill. We all loved it. Last minite reservations in September was no issue. All other areas including KOA's were all booked! Thanks Pinto lake for saving our vacation. We were supposed to head north to Oregon but the fires caused closed roadways and very bad air. Instead we found this cool place. And glad we did. Doesn't hurt to have a safeway and starbucks couple of blocks down if you miss or in need of "essentials". Yes, starbucks was an essential because, like I said, we did all this last minute so we didn't...