This week we stayed in a state park in Folsom Ca. We have been past here on the I-5 or 99 many times but have never stopped. I admit to always having a preconceived notion of the Folsom area as being a little ink dot in the middle of nowhere, with just a prison in the city limits to sustain the town.
Boy was I ever wrong! We stayed at Folsom Lake State Recreation Area, and it is a great state park. There are two loops, one full hook up and one dry camp for tents and small rigs. The roads and pads are asphalt, The sites are grassy dirt and gravel, but most are really good size. There is good open space between rigs at most sites, and some have the parking pads for your rig, and a separate connected pad for your tow or toad. The biggest negative to this park is road noise from a fairly busy 4 lane road that runs in front of the park. Our site, #60 was probably the most exposed to the road as our curb side faced the road. However, most of the traffic on the road is automobile, so you are not overwhelmed by big rig trucks going by. And the road is lightly traveled at night, so there is no problem sleeping. Our site was about 150 yards from the road with lots of grass and trees in between.
Although Folsom lake and Dam are connected to the park, there are no lake view sites, except for a few peek a boo sites in the tent area, which is not the same loop as the FHU sites. There are handicapped sites, and all restrooms are handicapped accessible as well. Showers are coin operated at 50 cents for 4 minutes. The cell signal is off the charts strong, as there is a cell tower in the park on top of a electric line tower (the dam on the lake makes power). My 3G air card was making 2.6 Mbps on Speedtest.net. I have never had speeds like that with 3G!
The town of Folsom and Granite Bay are amazingly upscale new. Much of the shopping and restaurants are very nice and look brand new. Many housing developments are in the area, but there is still an old town area with many original shops eateries. The developers have left large green space areas with many mature trees to soften the residential and commercial areas.
One of the servers at a restaurant we tried, the Asian Palace, which was excellent by the way, explained how the community had grown. He said that the town had grown due to many of the employees of the major tech companies (and some of the businesses) in and around San Francisco started migrating east and built near Lake Folsom instead paying the mega prices in the Bay Area. The result has been a very nice upscale community with all the amenities. In fact, we drove past an ?Intel? plant not far from the state park.
There has been some surprises here though. Due to the lake and all the green space still around, there are lots of critters. One morning we were awakened by a banging on the RV. Not like a person, but something unexplainable. So at 6 AM I threw on a robe and went out the door in time to see a 3' tall turkey beating feet away from the back of the rig. It appears he saw his reflection in the shiny paint on the rig, and was attacking the other turkey! Welcome to central California. We seen them a few more times during the week walking through the brush in front of our site. There were 4 of them, 2 males and 2 females, and all pretty good size.
The full hookup sites here are $57 per night, but not all spaces are the same size so do some research on line when selecting a site. A few of the sites are heavily treed, so if you want to get satellite reception that may be a consideration too. We checked out a few other RV parks in the area, but none had the space of the state park, and all were more expensive.
While we were here, no visit would be complete without a visit to the infamous Folsom State prison (not as a resident fortunately). The prison while not prominently mentioned anywhere around town, is but a few miles from the downtown area. A few miles down some tree lined country roads and the the prison fences appear. We went to the prison to visit the small on site museum and gift shop, just outside the front gates. There is a security building for visitors going into the prison to visit inmates, but the museum is across the street, and is easy open access to the public. You are permitted to take pictures of anything you can see from the front, as long as prison staff are not in the picture. The museum was small but interesting, and prominently featured was the 1968 concert that Johnny Cash held inside the prison for the inmates. Along with a collection of prison curio's and even some artistic stuff that was created by inmates. All in all it was worth the 45 minutes or so we spent there, and admission is $2, which goes to the all volunteer staff which man the shop. Some are retired prison guards with stories to tell.
All in all we found the Folsom area comfortable and enjoyable. We didn't even get into Sacramento on this trip, an it seems that we had so much other stuff to do. We were here for a week and never got bored. Hiking and biking trails are all around the area, and are frequented by the residents. I will come back to this area again.
Next we head to Bodega Bay for the holiday weekend. We are on the beach for 4 days in a no hook up spot. This should be interesting.