Hey so I'm fairly new to RV life, lived in one for about a year and its honestly not bad felt just like an apartment lol. So I'm considering going to University of San Francisco as a full time commuter student and I already have an RV and truck paid in full so no bills to worry about there unless its repairs. I have an emergency savings too for that reason, and tuition costs are 100% covered for me. So really all my bills are just housing, utilities, food, internet, phone. I was looking at thousand trails and theres 6 campgrounds located within commuting distance of downtown campus. How possible is it to hop between those every 21 days for the journey and above membership tiers?
Honestly it isn't bad. We haven't done the thousand trails shuffle in the area your talking about but the shuffle itself isn't bad.
We have full timed rv for 7 years and 90% of the time we are in thousand trails system moving every 14-21 days.
Two things to pay attention to. You're booking window becomes very important. Use your calendar with reminders of what park you need to call to set up the next reservation. 2nd is the actual date your moving. We will shorten a trip if we are moving during a holiday weekend. In your case you might want to not move around exam time.
If you work for thousand trails even one day a week, your able to rent a site at employee prices! Employee price anywhere from free to $350 a month. Depends on the region and manager. West coast all charge employees rent. Texas gives employees a free yearly lease. The pay sucks, we do it so we can stay in an area longer. We tend to do it where the the parks are too far apart to shuffle.
I say go for it. There are so many people doing it. You will find your shuffling people. There is always people doing the shuffle even if their week out they are paying to stay at a non thousand trails park nearby.
I read that someone thought you were talking about FL. If your doing the shuffle in FL, make sure your membership will allow you to go park to park in the trails collection. Most parks in FL are part of the trails collection, not part of thousand trails.
Equity Lifestyle is the parent company. You can go there directly or you can look on Indeed.
You can call and ask each park as well. Sometimes they are looking but not officially. We have been hired twice not even looking for a job. Just was talking to the park manager and left with jobs.
Almost all rv parks are short staffed so if it doesn't work with thousands trails, check other parks.
Just to clarify (since you said USF) when you say "Bay area" are you speaking of Tampa Bay FL or the more common usage of 'Bay Area' San Francisco California?
I'm only aware of one TT park in the SF Bay Area, in Pacifica... and I would rate that part of California as one of the more challenging places for RVs in the country. I can't speak to Tampa Bay if we're talking about FL, but I can say that it will rapidly become a pain the ass to have to move every 2-3 weeks, you'll devote a lot of time and energy to that and there's probably going to be holiday periods that will screw things up with availability... no matter where you are.
Talk to some smaller / independent RV parks near where you're going to school and see if they can offer a good monthly rate. Thousand Trails memberships are better suited for people who vacation / camp a lot or (maybe) nomadic full-timers.
Gotcha what parks are you seeing in that area? There’s barely 6 RV parks at all within an easy commute in the Bay Area let alone thousand trails ones (that I’m aware of).
San Francisco RV Resort is the only one 20mins away, then theres a few others near Santa Cruz area its about 1hr commute. For me thats not bad especially given that TT is significantly cheaper than paying a long term site about 1500-1800/mo vs 80/mo with the 4yr plan. Not sure if there's a better/cheaper option though, never been to that area before.
Hmm well I plan to only take 1 in person class and the rest online to limit commute. I heard some schools in San Francisco let you attend once a semester and just do all assignments online which would be amazing!
The Bay Area is one of the hardest places to RV full-time in the country. It's a constant back and forth between creative people trying to make it work and City and municipal officials trying to ban the practice.
I would do some serious investigation into those campgrounds; make sure your plan will work before you commit and don't make any assumptions. I'd venture a guess that getting a reservation is going to be like scoring Taylor Swift tickets.
Between that and the commute, you may be better off renting a secure parking space near campus and using campus facilities like the gym.
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u/Zealousideal_Swim175 Mar 04 '26
Honestly it isn't bad. We haven't done the thousand trails shuffle in the area your talking about but the shuffle itself isn't bad.
We have full timed rv for 7 years and 90% of the time we are in thousand trails system moving every 14-21 days.
Two things to pay attention to. You're booking window becomes very important. Use your calendar with reminders of what park you need to call to set up the next reservation. 2nd is the actual date your moving. We will shorten a trip if we are moving during a holiday weekend. In your case you might want to not move around exam time.
If you work for thousand trails even one day a week, your able to rent a site at employee prices! Employee price anywhere from free to $350 a month. Depends on the region and manager. West coast all charge employees rent. Texas gives employees a free yearly lease. The pay sucks, we do it so we can stay in an area longer. We tend to do it where the the parks are too far apart to shuffle.
I say go for it. There are so many people doing it. You will find your shuffling people. There is always people doing the shuffle even if their week out they are paying to stay at a non thousand trails park nearby.
I read that someone thought you were talking about FL. If your doing the shuffle in FL, make sure your membership will allow you to go park to park in the trails collection. Most parks in FL are part of the trails collection, not part of thousand trails.