Welcome to our (very personal) reviews of the campsites we have visited. If you arrived here from a link on our travel blog, Semi-True Tales of Our Life On the Road, you can click here to read all of our campground reviews.

If you would like to know more about me, or contact us, click on "Who are We?" (to the right). For more information about what you can expect to find in these reviews, click on "About These Reviews". Finally, a note about the photos: hover your cursor over a photo to read the caption, or click the photo to enlarge it.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

WONDERLAND RV PARK, TORREY, UTAH (CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL PARK AREA)

Our View on the patio side. Our Opinion: Neutral.  Good central location for exploring Capitol Reef National Park and the spectacular surrounding area.

Date of Stay: September 28 through October 6, 2010.

Weather During Stay:  “Unseasonably warm” (mid-80’s) for several days, cooling into the 60’s later in our stay, with a couple days of rain (flash flooding in Capitol Reef).  Lows in the 50’s and 40’s.

Site Description:  This small RV park (30+ sites) has both back-ins and large pull throughs, with a separate grassy area for tents.  All RV sites have FHU, but I’m not sure whether both 30 and 50 amps are available in all sites. 

Sites are reasonably level, though the pull throughs slant a bit from back to front (seems to be the norm in all the RV parks in Torrey).  Roads and sites are gravel.  Sites are surrounded by well manicured, green grass and each has one or more trees - including apple trees, with ripe fruit during our stay.  Each site has a picnic table.

Looking towards Site 13, with pull through sites on the right.Bath house and laundry on site, and a couple of cabins are available for rent.  There is an extra charge to use the showers (!), and our neighbors described them as lacking in privacy.

Rate:  This park participates in CampClubUSA, good for one night only.  For our first night, we paid $20.95 (cash only), the CCUSA rate (½ price, plus extra fees for 50 amp and??).  For the remaining nights, we got the 10% Good Sam discount, paying $29.77 per night (including taxes) for our 50 amp FHU site.  Might have been a weekly rate if we had been more organized about our stay. 

Phone/radio/TV:  We are on the edge of the Verizon signal here, but our phones and aircard did work.  We often used the park-provided WiFi (no extra charge) instead of our aircard; sometimes it was blazing fast, sometimes it crawled.  With just a little back-and-forth, we found a shot past a tree so our roof-mounted satellite TV dish worked.  Cable TV is provided, but we preferred using the air antenna, which brought in 20 stations far more clearly than the cable TV signal.  Local NPR on 94.5.

Site 13Elevation/landscape/terrain: Located at 6,800 ft. in a beautiful setting, this park is quite appealing.   Local views are of the green grass and trees of the park and adjacent green pasture.  Distant views are of red rock cliffs and big skies.

Lighting/noise:  Most sites are reasonably dark at night; an unlucky few are near tall night lights.  Even though the park is on the corner of the two main highways in the area (US 24 and US 12), traffic noise at night was not obtrusive for us.

Favorite Sites:  We were in what appeared to us to be the best site in the park, site #13 - which had just been vacated by its seasonal resident when we arrived.  It is a roomy back-in adjacent to the grassy common area with shade trees and beautiful views, facing east.  NICE, except that some of the trees bleed onto things below them.  We’ll see how difficult that is to clean up.   The sites backing up to Hwy 24 would be our last choice.

Grand Wash road Hiking/Walking:  No trails take off from here, but this area is FULL of great hikes.

Comments:  This is one of several RV parks in Torrey.  We like some things about the park (location, trees, small size), but had some minor annoyances (intermittent WiFi problems, poor reception on the cable TV, somewhat brusque owners).  We had no real complaints, but might give one of the other campgrounds in Torrey at try next time we come to the area.  Bring groceries, the nearest “large” grocery store is about 20 miles away.

2 comments:

Lynn said...

We just returned from a Utah trip (it looks like we may have even overlapped some of your time in Torrey!). We stayed at the Thousand Lakes RV Park just outside of Torrey and paid about $27.00 night for a water/elec site.
The wi-fi was problematic for us, but the view back up against the red cliffs was nice. We passed Wonderland each time we went into the park or onto Hwy 12. It looked greener than Thousand Lakes, but a little close to the highway.
Thousand Lakes staff was personable and responsive. A busy place, always full, even late Sept/early Oct.
We'd probably choose it again the next time we come to Capitol Reef.
And I second your suggestion about groceries! Come to Torrey with a full fridge.

Laurie and Odel said...

Lynn, thanks for your comment about Thousand Lakes RV Park. We visited there when we were in Torrey, and decided that is the park we will try next time - mostly on the strength of the GREAT office staff. Funny how much of a difference that makes! Too bad we didn't get to meet you! Hope everything in Eugene is going well.

Safe travels,
Laurie