Thousand Trails La Conner — Hotel in Fidalgo Island

Beautiful setting and quiet in the trees kind of place. Roads are almost too narrow. Backing up around a corner would be a struggle for a novice.

We made a reservation, so we would have a site to go to. Reservations are NOT possible to reserve a specific site. All sites are available are on a first come first served basis. The main gate (Ranger station) was manned by three people, all helping campers with questions - a busy place! We found their advice helpful, but they were short with their answers and appeared tired of it all. More smiles, please.

We received our packet at the gate including a campground map. Then proceeded to find a site with sewer. All were taken. (We did notice that there is a multiple RV dump station as you exit the facility.) Most RV sites are electricity (30A & 50A) and water, grated level with a gravel base. While there are 20+ sewer sites available, none were when we arrived in Late July - this is the peak camping season. To help with that, once you are settled in your site, go immediately to the ranger station and put your name on the next mornings waiting list for any available sewer site. We did that. Then we walked around exploring which site we would like to move to, if a site became available.

The "window ID" for each occupant, told us when that camper would be leaving. We realized though that the sewer site choices we had marked on our map, were NOT going to become open, before we left. We found some great sites Elect & Water for us and chose one in the trees. Beautifully cool in the summer (80's) heat.

The next morning, we didn't bother with the drawing as there were five names in front of ours. IMHO, unfortunately, unless you will be staying for at least a week (again, this was during peak season), the chance of getting one during your short stay is very small. Lots of 21 day'ers staying here. Also, there are some permanent family sites, all with sewer hookups on the North perimeter that are marked available on the campground map, but are not.

The place is big and there is a constant stream of RV's moving into and out of the campground. The roads are not paved, so that meant a cloud of fine road dust with constant dust swirls, coating everything and getting into all the windows. But that's camping, right? The site next door was not occupied, so we were able to use its water spigot with our hose, to water down the dusty road, which helped a lot, but doing cleanup at home, I found that we had the road dust everywhere. Watering the roads didn't really make all that much of a difference. One of the 21 day'ers we met on our daily walks, told us that the lease with the tribe would be up in the near future, so that explained the worn appearance and the lack of facilities maintenance, I observed. Old electrical equipment hanging on and galvanized plumbing with dripping faucets.

Other than the unpaved roads, let me suggest that this place is a great family campground. We used it as a base camp to explore the surrounding areas, such as the cities of Anacortes and LaConnor, and the amazing Deception Pass Bridge lookout and Rosario beaches.

We will definitely be coming back in the off season, as the Fidalgo Island is one of those places you can't...

Hands down the worst Thousand Trails experience I have ever had. Show up right at check in time (noon on Sunday), an hour after checkout and was told that there were 50 people checking out that day. You would think that since this was an hour after check out time, there should be all kinds of spots, nope. So I proceed to drive around in circles in the campground for the next hour and a half trying to find a spot, which is not very easy since the roads in the campground are VERY narrow and poorly laid out, a lot of very tight sharp corners in between large trees, not an ideal setup for anybody with a moderate to large size RV. The whole time I am driving around I saw maybe 15 open sites, 5 of which had signs saying the power was out (typical Thousand Trails), and the other 10 sites were so small you would be lucky to fit a 10' camper in them. So as I continue to drive around, more and more people are showing up, there are lines of RVs parked down the main road while people are out wandering around looking for spots. I finally go back to the main gate to see what is going on, I confirm that 50 people were checking out (yes), and I ask have all those people actually left since there are no open spots, I am told that they have no idea and the only way to find out is for somebody to go check all the sites and since they were the only person working, that couldn’t be done. So either most of the people that were supposed to be checking out decided not to check out (which seems unlikely since all the check out date tags I saw were for future dates), I think that they just severely overbooked the place. I had wasted enough time already, so I told them to cancel my reservations and we left. So instead of having a nice relaxing week long vacation, we just wasted 7+ hours in the truck and $140 in fuel to drive around a cramped, dumpy little campground. I will never go back there and would highly recommend anybody that has anything bigger than a truck camper or a tent, don’t...

I’m fairly disappointed with my thousand trails experience and this La Conner location. The bathrooms are consistently dirty, there are dead bugs in all the windows in the club house, and there’s a lot of homeless people living in tents “camping”, even now during the winter. It’s becoming a luxury homeless encampment. There are signs put up about theft and apparently someone was caught sleeping in the laundry room. So when these things happen, new rules go into places and everyone is penalized for them. So now the laundry room closes early and everyone lost access to one of the clubhouses because people kept stealing. Same thing with the bathroom, apparently someone keeps “vandalizing” the bathrooms, so they shut one down and penalize everyone.

They also just changed the way you get sites now, and they choose FOR you based on length. You can no longer choose your own site. This is good for rigs that are larger and need to make sure they fit. But it sucks because a lot of the sites are in crappy locations and next to weirdos you don’t want to stay next to. You can kiss goodbye to getting a cool spot by the water or being able to camp next to friends and family. And it’s based on the length of your rig, not including your car. So if your truck doesn’t fit your camping spot, you’re out of luck. My boyfriend was told “I don’t care if your car doesn’t fit your spot, you can park in overflow parking” when he checked in. I’m really expected to fit a 15 foot long bed in a 28 foot site with my 28 foot long trailer that just fits? And I’m expected to walk half way across the campground to access my car day and night?! This is ridiculous and very rude lady to my boyfriend when we checked in this past Sunday.

The manager Kelly does seem to give decent service. But overall they really need to get it together. It’s an affordable full time living rv option. But don’t expect...