Campground Review: Nice County Park Near Legoland with Lots Going On
We picked this spot since it was the closest camping to Legoland that wasn't a million dollars or completely booked up 6 months in advance. It's part of the San Diego County park system, and has both a nice, large camping area with well maintained, clean facilities as well as a popular day-use area on the lake. We booked one of the last spots available about two weeks before we arrived and paid about $30 per night (including a $5 online booking fee) for an RV spot with water and electricity. There are a total of 33 decently-sized RV and tent sites nestled between trees, a large modern playground, numerous hiking trails and a plant/nature walk right next to the campground. There were several rangers available during the day for questions and lots of maintenance folks working on upkeep. If you look at the attached "Guajome Regional Park Campsite Availability" map you can see which sites have full shade, which ones have partial, etc., though in general all the sites were fairly nice.
Pros:
- Reasonable price
- Lots to do including hikes, lake, and playground
- Well maintained and well staffed
Cons:
- Rattlesnakes! I would have easily given this campground a 5-star-rating, but there were several signs warning about rattlesnakes. Admittedly, I have a full-on phobia of rattlesnakes, and we never saw one. But when I asked one of the Rangers about them, he said "don't worry, the last one I saw was four days ago at the playground." Ahhhgh.
Overall:
Totally great campground about a 1/2 hour (12 mile) drive from Legoland. Would definitely stay here again.
Gear Review: Snapbuds
Overview: As a Ranger for The Dyrt, I get products to test and review from time to time. This summer we've been trying out snapbuds, an "earbud detangling system" that work with our apple earpod headphones. The basic idea is that every time you set your earphones down or put them in your pocket or bag for a while, the wires come out tangled. Snapbuds are a series of magnets that you snap onto the earphone cords and then when you coil them, the wires stay in a loop until you need them again. Here's a snazzy video from their kickstarter campaign that gives a good idea of how they can be used.
Setup: Each package comes with 10 folding snapbuds and 2 anchors that go up next to the earphone speakers, which means that depending on how you set them up you could use these on two separate sets of earphones. It also has a paper ruler/template that guides you through where to attach each of the buds. Set up was pretty easy. We (including my 11-year-old son) were able to attach and remove the snap buds several times within a couple of minutes to try out different configurations.
Tips: Two things we learned:
1. make sure you keep the magnets labeled "upper" and "lower" separate, since once you remove the red rubber band that holds them together it's almost impossible to tell them apart.
2. if you have any painter's or removable tape, use that to hold down the paper ruler template and the earphone wires during setup. You can also use rocks, sticks, whatever, but the tape makes the whole process easier.
Pros: Set up was easy and fun, and while all the literature says that the plastic buds are "permanently" attached, we (with fingernails) were able to remove and switch up our configuration as needed, which was nice.
I LOVE the customization option where you can put your company logo or favorite team on the buds.
Cons: After a month of testing on day trips and longer road trips, we found that using the snapbuds didn't actually save us any time. The process of coiling the cords with the magnets and then uncoiling them (with some that may have gotten tangled in backpacks) took about the same amount of time as just untangling them without the magnets. So while the snapbuds website says that on average people spend "from 3 to 5 hours a year untangling" earbuds, I don't think we're the right test market. Our average time to prep and then untangle in both scenarios (with and without the snapbuds) was around 10 seconds per use.
