SoCal Snow

In the past few months, we've had fires, floods and now snow down to 2500' elevation. Our friend Paul runs the Scout Camp near Serrano campground. Yesterday, the high temp up there was nine degrees! We're not so wrapped up in the Caboose to want camp in the snow, so we'll camp at the beach this winter and rent a cabin for the snow.

Surrogate Campground Report

My buddy Jake is a regular visitor to this website, and while he still hasn't published his own camping blog, he has no problem sending me reports of their trips (keep 'em coming Jake!). This report is about Vail Lake Village and RV Resort. This place is between Old Town Temecula and Sherry's God Daughter's house, so we're likely to give it a shot. With Jake's details below, we're ready to make a reservation.

We were with several other campers and occupied spots 46 – 50. These spaces are wide apart and had a great view of the area. We were on the Upper Chardonnay Mesa. Lots of grassy area around the entire campground and several undeveloped places, great for walking dogs.

Facilities were good. Each area had easy to walk to restrooms except for the Lower Chardonnay Mesa. There were lots of kids around, all seemed to enjoy the place, especially down in ‘The Village’ in the arcade and playing miniature golf. The swimming pools looked in good shape, except one that was empty. The water slides are just north of the Oaks on the west side of the main camp road.

We checked out the rest of the camp ground and the spaces at The Oaks were pretty nice. Just stay away from the main camp road and the end spaces and you're fine. Some other campers told us that during the summer time they prefer The Oaks because of the shade trees.

The spaces at Arroyo Seco were OK, but not as nice. There were not the large trees and such, and the spaces were a little closer. I would not recommend Lower Arroyo Seco at all. Under-developed, close together, lack of trees, lots of dirt and little grass.

With 5-tents being your highest rating, I give this place a 4 ½. I am sure we will be back. The only thing that I found against the facility is that it does not have direct contact with Vail Lake or even a road leading to it. They do have a fishing pond, but that was dry while we were there.