While the summer almost seems upon us in Texas, I can assure you that Wisconsin is a different story. We left on May 4th for Wisconsin, knowing it would not be the type of weather that we had come to love in our September travels northward. While we ordinarily make reservations months in advance, we left this time with no reservations at all. Surprisingly, we did not have any problems securing sites. It may be that this is a result of the current state of the economy, or perhaps it is just the fact that the camping season north of Texas hasn’t kicked into gear yet.
Travel now is not inexpensive, which became apparent as we purchased diesel. The further north we ventured, the further north the prices climbed.
We chose a different route this time, avoiding both Oklahoma and Memphis. We left our home taking Highway 30 east around Little Rock, Arkansas. Next it was Highway 67 to Hwy 55, to the 255 bypass around St. Louis. For some reason (and this has always been the case), MapQuest does not select the bypass. MapQuest always routes us through the heart of the city, which we ignore choosing the bypass. I don’t understand the logic of avoiding the bypass as I feel it saves considerable time. While it’s hard to predict what the time savings are in reality, I have driven the mapquest suggested route several times, and it is not faster. In addition, the roads downtown are always under construction and are in bad shape.
Once we were back on Highway 55, we followed that to our first stop which was the Lazy Days Campground in Litchfield, Illinois. We made this reservation while in route. It is a privately owned campground, which seems to have many seasonal sites. However, it is very quiet and the owner is a true gem that lives on site. We arrived late and she came down to greet us and took us to our site. It is a cash only campground and we paid $40.00 for the night. This was a water and electric only site, but they do have a dump station.
The sites are gravel but very level and well maintained. Because of its size and how many seasonal trailers are here, I imagine that the weekends may be a bit on the crazy side, but for a one or two night stay during the week, it would be nice.
Eva and I did our early morning walk around the campground and saw some Geese that scurried their young into the water. It was a nice cool morning; however things would get much colder at the next stop. I was already trying to calculate how long a 20lb propane tank would last when the furnace would run at night. I figured we could get at least 3 days of cooking and heat, however we did much better than that. More about that later.
The stop at Lazy Days put us only four hours away from our first stop at Pilgrims Campground in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. We packed up and headed out for Wisconsin, arriving there very early in the afternoon. Our arrival was met with some pretty wet conditions as it had rained earlier in the week.
Pilgrims is a nice campground, but it is rather primitive for trailer camping. Your site will have water and electric but there are no gravel or cement pads for your rig; it’s basically a wooded field with hookups. It may or may not be level depending on where you end up in your space. It has always been a confusing place to park the trailer since the specific sites are not marked (other than the site number). The folks that own the campground have had it since 1992. Coincidentally, that was the first year that we camped there. However, the campground has been around since the 1960’s.
This campground was set up in a way that has your neighbors rig facing you (front door to front door). I’ve never been very fond of those kind of arrangements.
I was not thrilled with our spot this time. The site just wasn’t very level, requiring us to drop the front end quite low to make the trailer livable. Also, even though the campground was empty, they had another trailer only one site away from us (not next to us). These folks probably shouldn’t have a camper for reasons I won’t go into; suffice it to say that among other things, a hammer was involved in disconnecting the hitch. In addition, they put their dog on an incredibly long lead that let it get almost halfway between our sites, which Eva did not appreciate. Their dog was a very young golden retriever that got very little attention from its owners. I felt sorry for a puppy that really deserved better.
If we were staying longer, I would have asked to move to a different site. I’m sure the owners would have accommodated us, as they are very nice. However, for our short stay, it was manageable.
The weather for the time we were at Pilgrims was not great. The nights were cold, and the days were not conducive to sitting outside. Regardless of the weather, Eva got plenty of walks around the campground and down the nearby rural road.
Rain was predicted for the day we were leaving, but it was supposed to stop early in the morning. I thought that we would have time to let things dry out before pulling the slides in, but that would not be the case. The night before we left, we had dinner with Tammy’s sisters and their husbands. As soon as we got back to the trailer, we backed up the truck, removed the leveling blocks and hitched up. Then I removed the wheel chocks. Now we would only need to disconnect the water and electric, and pull in the slides tomorrow.
Well, the rain came steady the next morning. The prediction of it stopping in the morning was incorrect. Around noon we got a ten-minute reprieve where the steady rain changed to a drizzle. I immediately jumped on the roof and used my leaf blower to blow the tops of the slides free of water. As soon as Tammy heard me finish one slide and move to the other slide, she pulled the finished slide into the trailer. Once both slides were in, I stored the electric cord and water hoses and headed for their dump station.
I quickly dumped our tanks and we then drove a little over two hours in the pouring rain to Cliffside Park in Racine. Our site, 91 was in a swampy area and was really not a good site for a large trailer. It has the picnic area on the opposite side of the trailer, and the woods is so close that it makes walking around the trailer to that area a real problem. However, we parked for the night and Tammy went online to get us a new site (26), for the balance of our stay.
I have always said that of all the campgrounds we have stayed at, Cliffside is the nicest. I used to say that “You wouldn’t be able to find a bad site” in their park. That still holds true for the most part, however, some are better than others.
More about our stay at Cliffside in our next post!
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