Keeping up with the campers
As more turn to RVs over tents, two area campgrounds work around the clock to ensure guests feel at home on the road
Among the first thoughts Tom Brimacombe, owner of Rancheros de Santa Fe Campground, has every morning is, “Oh, God, what’s going to break today?” Brimacombe and his wife, Lisa Lincoln, own the campground at 736 Old Santa Fe Trail, along the historic Route 66 that leads into Santa Fe from the northeast. And keeping all their campers — in 125 tents, RVs and cabins — content in each’s particular version of the great outdoors can be a major undertaking.
“Managing a campground is kind of like being mayor of a small town,” said Brimacombe, who with Lincoln took over the campground in 1994 after the California couple spent a year and half rolling up and down the continent — from southern Florida to the Arctic Circle in Alaska — in a small RV.
“I’m a drinking water system operator, and I’m a wastewater system operator. I’m a Wi-Fi network engineer and a part-time plumber and electrician.” On this particular Saturday, Brimacombe was a telephone repairman, or at least trying to find one.
“If the Wi-Fi breaks down, the phone in the store doesn’t stop ringing,” he said.
On the other hand, “I don’t have to wear a tie to work and I don’t have a cubicle.”
Likewise, don’t expect to see Larry Pasekoff walking around his campground in a tie, either. He and his wife, Phyllis, operate the Santa Fe KOA Campground up the highway a couple of miles from Brimacombe at 934 Old Santa Fe Trail. And they, too, tell of long days and sleep-starved nights keeping campers plugged in, turned on and laid back.
“People have no idea,” Larry Pasekoff said. “It’s pretty much a 14-hour-a-day, seven-day-aweek job.”
Added Phyllis Pasekoff: “There’s always something to do. There’s grass to mow, bathrooms to clean, cabins to clean, tent sites to clean.”
Larry Pasekoff, who has owned the KOA franchise since 2011, noted that a campground is run much like a hotel, except everything’s on the outside. “There are guests to check in, there are reservations to take. Things get broken and they have to be fixed.”
And then there’s the omnipresent task of keeping the power on, the water running and the toilets flushing.
Pasekoff, he and his wife longtime RV campers themselves, said he manages his campground as though he was one of the campers himself.
“When I go camping, I want my own toilet. I want my own bed,” he said. “I’m not into sleeping on the ground or finding a tree to go to the bathroom. That’s not me.”
The Pasekoff ’s campground offers “shakedown weekends” for first-time or RV campers hankering to get back on the road. “They are getting their rigs out for the first time for the season, they are going on a trip, and want to make sure everything is working OK,” Phyllis
Pasekoff said. “The guys here are really good about showing them how to put it altogether.”
Both the Pasekoffs and Brimacombe have been in the camping business long enough to note changes among campers and RVers over the years and decades. The trend is definitely away from tents and toward the RV experience.
“When we started, there were a lot more tent campers,” Brimacombe said. “What is happening is that the baby boomers are getting older, and they don’t like sleeping on the ground anymore. Our tenting business has steadily declined, and the RV business has steadily grown.”
That change has caused increasingly more work for campground owners, in light of the power and other needs and desires of the RVers. Some of the campsites at both facilities even offer cable television. And there are recreation rooms, dog parks, outdoor grilling areas and even indoor theaters for movie nights. Rancheros de Santa Fe Campground has a pool.
“We still want people to be comfortable, of course,” said Phyllis Pasekoff.
Camper Ted Winslow certainly seemed comfortable relaxing outside his 32-foot Coachmen Mirada. He’s been parked at the KOA grounds since April, and was sitting in a lawn chair, a drink at his side, reading a favorite Kindle book on his iPad.
“They let me kind of set up home here,” said Winslow, who pulled up stakes from his house in Rio Rancho after his wife died about three years ago. He plans to pack up the Coachmen when the campground shuts down at the end of October.
“I will set up my house somewhere down south … maybe south Texas or Arizona. That’s the nice thing. I can just point it south and stop when I like it.”