Happy Leap Day

We are at the Desert Trails RV Park, south of I-8 in El Centro (map).

On Wednesday the vet decided to do another ACTH test, which had us there until nearly 5pm (the test requires a two-hour period between injection and sample). That meant they missed the window to get the samples to the lab the same day, and so we could not expect results back until today. Between doing laundry and getting the water tanks ready, we figured we could use the extra time productively here, and so we signed up for two nights.

The rate here is $39 for full hookups, but it turns out they also have a rate of $31 for water and 30-amp electricity only. We usually can't even use sewer hookups, as they are almost always at the very back of the space, and our tanks (and therefore our dump valves) are just about dead center of the bus, making it a good 20' reach at a minimum, so we opted to save the $16 and take the cheaper space.

The non-sewer spaces turned out to be in a crappy gravel lot behind the pool house.



Sheesh, we've stayed in truck stops nicer than this. Frankly, when we saw it, we nearly turned around and headed for the exit, but we reminded ourselves that it was only for two nights, and we were here to get some specific things done, and we decided to just bite the bullet and get parked.

Yesterday, Louise headed over to the laundry room -- far enough from our space that she used her scooter -- to discover a sign proclaiming the water would be turned off at 9am. It looked like the whole park would be off, including both laundry rooms, except for the little corner where we're parked. So she called the office to find out when the water would be back on. Whoever answered the phone was just plain rude, and also completely uninformative. Apparently, customer service is not part of the mantra here -- and why should it be, considering only about a dozen spaces out of 400+ are for transients.

After Louise hung up, visibly disturbed, I scooted over to the office to nail down an answer. I got the same person, Wanda Hylton, who was equally rude to me. She tried to be uninformative again, but I explained that doing the laundry was the primary reason we chose to stay at this park, and if we could not do it, I wanted a refund so we could leave and do it elsewhere. That finally prompted her to get off her butt and make the phone calls required to find out that, as it turned out, the water would not be turned off after all. I have to say, I just don't understand this kind of attitude ("we don't know anything -- we're just the office"). This place also has the temerity to charge $22 per night for dry camping, which comes complete with the same horrible customer service, and then RV parks want to know why people choose instead to park at Wal-Mart.

I will say that at least the pool and hot tub were decent, the laundry equipment was clean and in good shape, and most of the "residents" we met were pleasant. The park seems mostly full of Canadian snowbirds, and quite a few of the spaces have park models on them. At 20 years old, though, the place is looking a bit run down.

While we were here, we put our lone remaining bicycle and our Homedics massage chair out with "for sale" signs on them, and sold them both within a couple of hours.

Checkout is at 11am, when we'll roll over to the dump station to empty our tanks, then over to the on-site LP station to fill our empty cylinders. I am hoping that, by then, we will have heard back from the vet about Opal's results.

We don't want to start the border-crossing process too late in the day, so, depending on when the vet calls, we may very well end up spending tonight at the Wal-Mart in Calexico. Or the one here in town, if Opal needs any follow-up work.