The Trip to Wisconsin continues! We left the Double J campground behind at 8:00 AM. Since this would be our last full hook up site, I took the time to flush out our black and grey tanks. The next campground would be water and electric only. This is not a problem as I brought our portable waste hauler in the back of the truck. Tammy affectionately refers to it as the poop wagon.
The trip to Cliffside Park in Racine County Wisconsin is about four hours from the Double J campground. Check in is 3:00 PM, but the site is supposed to be free by 1:00 PM. Knowing that we would probably get to the park early, we decided that we would just go to the parking area up front and wait.
Now getting to Wisconsin from Illinois wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Highway 55 was a mess. It seemed like non-stop construction almost all the way to the Chicago bypass. It was a trip filled with bumpy road, merging lanes, and changing speed zones.
Even the Chicago by-pass had its fair share of construction and narrowing lanes. Thankfully we never had to sit in stop and go traffic.
Finally we hit the Wisconsin border and thirty minutes later we were sitting in the parking lot at Cliffside park.
Cliffside Park is an awesome place to vacation. While it is not a full hook up campground, they do have a conveniently placed dump station. The sites are well maintained and really spacious. If you found a private campground this nice it would be expensive. In all the years we have camped here, we have never met a rude camper or had any issues. Even the park staff is conscious of making your stay pleasant and use care as they mow or do any work around the sites.
Cliffside park is about twenty minutes from my daughters house and about forty minutes from my sons house.
After an hour wait at the parking lot we pulled into our site. This time we are in site 1, we have always been in site 4 in the past. All the sites are awesome here so it really doesn’t matter with the exception that site 1 is pretty impossible to get satellite TV, but we will survive.
Backing into site 1 was a little more challenging than I expected. There were trees on both sides of the site. It wasn’t the trees that were an issue as much as the branches that should have been trimmed back. I don’t want branches dragging down the side of the camper so we edged back slowly and got in with no issue.
Eva sat with Tammy while I unhooked the trailer and leveled it. Then I got our power and water hooked up and we were all set for the next 12 days.
Shortly after we were all set up, my daughter Jennifer and her husband and our grandson showed up. It was pretty steamy outside but we all kicked back in the shade while the AC worked to cool the travel trailer down to a reasonable temperature.
One thing I noticed immediately is that the mosquitoes are really out in force. I can see that this is going to be an issue. Complicating matters is that strong storms are predicted overnight, and of course mosquitoes love rain.
Oddly, my smoke detector goes off later at night for no reason; I am not cooking, and there is no smoke. I decide it must be a low battery alarm. I buy a new battery and get the same results. After reading the entire owners manual, I call the manufacturer of the smoke alarm to see if there is anything I can do that might troubleshoot the issue. Short of vacuuming the unit off there is no sort of reset I can perform. So I clean the unit and get the same results…alarm continues to sound. So it’s off to Amazon to buy a replacement which comes the next day and solves the problem. Why the first one became defective is a mystery.
The weather outlook for the coming week looks to be in the 90s with a potential for strong storms.
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