TRAILER RANCH RV PARK, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

Our Opinion: Rave. If you are looking for a convenient, urban park in Santa Fe (and willing to pay the price), this is the place.

Date of Stay: September 11 through 17, 2008

Weather During Stay: Sun and clouds, highs in the low 70’s, lows in the upper 40’s.

Site Description: This is a small, urban RV park in the front section of a 55+ mobile home community. We are in site 20, one of 22 “premium” big rig sites, a wide, level, graveled site with a concrete pad, parking for our car, and a picnic table. 50 amp FHU with cable TV.

The RV section of the park is fairly small and extremely well maintained, with a small, clean, swimming pool, small community building with pool table and library, dog walk area, and sufficient trash disposal. Laundry is open 24/7. Lots of large shade trees. The entire park is surrounded by an abode wall, spacious and very visually pleasing for an urban park. The office staff is extremely helpful and friendly.

Rate: We paid the weekly rate: pay for 6 days, get the 7th free, which worked out to $32/night. Pretty steep for us, but we wanted a convenient spot and this is it.

Phone/radio/TV: Verizon service is good here, phones and aircard. We have around 20-25 channels on cable TV, and our TV satellite works here. NPR is available on 89.1 and 89.9. Free WiFi is available.

Elevation/Landscape/Terrain: This is a flat, shady park at 7,300 ft elevation. Views are of neighboring rigs and trees.

Lighting/Noise: Night lighting is typical for a commercial park, “streetlight” type lighting that is brighter than necessary or desirable, but we‘ve seen worse. Noise is typical for an urban park on a busy commercial street, but not excessively annoying in our middle-of-the-park site with our windows open at night. I would avoid the sites in the front of the park, along the road.

Favorite Sites: The “premium” sites all are very large, long and wide. We would be pleased with any of them.

Hiking/Walking: Not much space for exercise in this small park, though a few loops through the mobile home section would be better than nothing. The park is located on a wide, busy, commercial thorough-fare with sidewalks; lots of traffic rushing by.

Comments: We are pleased with this park. We wanted to explore Santa Fe from a convenient location, and the park is better than we anticipated. Santa Fe has a good bus system, easy to navigate and inexpensive ($1/day for seniors). The bus stops right outside the park for a 25 minute trip to the plaza. Albertson's, Best Buy, Target, Borders and the usual companion stores are a few blocks in the other direction, within walking distance.