CAMPGROUND REVIEW- Lake Emily , Florence County Park, WI and Using Our New Starlink

This is a two-part blog, the first part will be a review of the campground and the second part will be while we were actually camping there for the last 2 days! 

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Lake Emily is a county campground, located in Florence County and the Northern edge of Wisconsin. It borders on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It is situated on the Eastern shore of this small Lake Emily. Paved roads lead to the campground, and just gravel from the entrance in to the campsites and boat landing.

We really like this park because it's open year round. It's April and a very rare warm weekend in Wisconsin, so we are here. The sun is shining and we think it's time to camp. Not many campgrounds are open in Wisconsin during the month of April. We are the only people in the campground right now. 

https://www.florencecountyparks.com/parks/camping/lake_emily_campgrounds/

From their website: 

This facility has 18 sites on a quiet lake. Sites are $25.00 per night. There is a boat launch, pit toilets, water, sandy beach, and fishing. Each site has a picnic table, a fire grate, water and electric hook-ups. This park also has a pavillion which can be rented for $25.00. The Lake Emily Park Campground is located in the Town of Commonwealth. 

Camping is allowed year-round at Lake Emily Campground; however, water will typically be shut off from mid-October through Early May depending on weather forecasts. Florence County does not plow snow at parks, campgrounds, or boat landings during the winter months. There is also no other maintenance or cleaning in the parks from November – April.

Check-In Time: 3:00 pm
Check-Out Time: 1:00 pm

Address
4305 Emily Park Ln
Florence, WI 54121
View Camping Map

Location Area
From US 2 in Florence turn South on County Hwy. N, go about three miles to County Hwy D, turn right (West) on County Hwy C, continue two miles to the campground and park.

You can now reserve online through the Florence County website, or use the envelopes and write a check or cash to deposit at the kiosk. No host. No flush toilets or showers, no dump station. Dump station available in nearby town of Florence at the Visitor Center and Forestry building. Boat landing and ramp and extra parking available. Also an extra pier near the campgrounds to keep your boat tied up during your stay. Sandy bottom, nice for wading or swimming. 

Quiet and relaxing. 18 sites here. There are also 29 sites over at the other Florence County Park called West Bass Lake, about 15 mi to the west. Most of the sites are level and many will accommodate a big rig. Camping here in a 25-ft motorhome. 

The town of Florence is only about 5 mi away for necessities. Cell service is not too bad, we are using Starlink which is great. Mostly wooded but some sites have a clear view to the north. Best satellite sites are 9, 10 and 16. Antenna TV stations are remote and fade out during the day. Waking up to the loons on the lake this morning, priceless!

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Okay, end of the review and here is now our camping weekend. As I said, Saturday morning turned out to be a lot nicer than what they had originally forecast. It didn't take us long at all to throw some groceries and clothes into the motorhome. The dogs and the dog food are of course necessities. And away we went. 

We took site number 10 because we were looking for a clear view to the northern sky. We had just got a Starlink satellite dish this week, and we wanted to try things out. Site 9 next to us is a little closer to the water, but site 10 was a little more level and easy to drive the motorhome right onto with the cargo trailer still attached.

We are new to this Starlink thing, but we read a lot of things online and did our research before we invested into it. First thing we did was get the satellite set up at home for a trial run, and made sure everything was activated. Then we unhooked it all and packed it up to take with us. We're going to get a nice little flat rubbermaid type tote to put it in for transporting. 

We set it up on the picnic table with a clear view of the northern sky. We ran the obstructions test from the Starlink app and everything looked really good.

We ran our speed test and we're really surprised. Absolutely wonderful speeds, and more than we would ever use. We don't do any gaming or teleconferencing. We do a zoom type call with the grandkids once in awhile. This will be plenty of speed for doing those things. Mainly we stream our favorite HGTV shows in the evening.

So when I posted it to our RVing with Starlink group on Facebook, they said there's another speed test you can do further down in the app. It's called an advanced speed test. It tells I guess a little bit more of how good your connection is. After I posted the second screenshot, they said we had a very very good connection!

We are on the roaming plan, which is perfect for RVing. Although it's a little expensive at $150 a month, our home Spectrum plan is going up to $120. Time to cancel that! We can use this in both places and move it around anytime we want. And added feature with the Roam plan is that you can pause service for any length of time and restart again. Perfect for RVers who may only go part of the year.

One caveat: they do require auto pay from an account for a credit card for a debit card. We do not like auto pay. So in advance we set up just a little separate account for this and only this. That way if we ever want to stop service, all we have to do is close the account. Lot easier than trying to stop the auto pay function as we have found out from friends and relatives can be very difficult to do. I'm not talking about Starlink autopay per se, but any auto pay function where you give them automatic access to your accounts. No thank you. 

So, now that we are set up, we could stream or browse the internet and receive emails and messages without the difficulties of our old cellular plans. When you get way up into the woods like we do, cellular plans just do not work. Even with the wee boost antenna booster that we have, it doesn't work if there's no signal at all. So this is going to be a game changer for us. 

We have two regular Jensen 12 volt TVs in our motorhome, but each one has a Roku stick stuck in their HDMI port. This makes them smart TVs. Smart enough for us anyhow.

Saturday night we curled up with our favorite TV shows in our comfy cozy motorhome. It started to rain outside and as the thunderstorms went over, we had a perfectly clear connection. 

The next morning we woke up to beautiful sunshine and blue skies! I baked up some blueberry muffins in the convection oven. Steve perked the coffee on the stove. 

And some little doggies were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first thing in the morning and wanted to get outside and go go go!!!

We took a beautiful walk through the heavily wooded forest. The birds were singing from every direction and the sunlight was filtering down through the trees. We were the only ones in the campground and it was absolutely delightful.

We always adhere to leash rules, and the dogs are on long flexi leashes when there's nobody else around. Otherwise they are up short on a 6 ft leash.

On the flexi leashes, they can sniff till their hearts content. There is so much to smell that their heads are down the entire way. I swear Nicholas's nose is going to get ground down from the gravel for how much sniffing he was doing!

Binney chose to read the doggy email, known as "pee-mail", located on the trash cans, scattered throughout the park. These dogs don't sure ask for a lot. All they like to do is get out and sniff.

We heard noisy clamoring and honking overhead is the geese were heading north..... up to Canada! I guess this really means that Spring is here?

We walked down near the boating pier, that is set up specifically for the campers within the park. We found a little treasure that someone had painted as a greeting to the fisherman walking up onto the pier. We left it there, with a smile, knowing somebody wanted to leave a greeting.

As we walked around the campground, we found another rock at their campsite, probably from the fall camping season before the snow fell. Evidently the person who painted it is either an A or a C?

The sunshine that was filtering down through the bare limbed trees was very pleasant and relaxing.  We made sure to make the best of it! My snoozing Steveio knows how to take a nap. 

After nap time was done, we decided to take out the e-bikes and take a little jaunt around the lake. Years ago, on a fishing trip, Steve camped here with his brother one weekend. They walked around the entire lake just to see where the road went.

This is the interior of the cute little cargo trailer we bring along. It now has 320 watts of solar on the roof and a Bluetti Power Station inside. We are all set up now to go camping, and the Bluetti can power up the Starlink without adding any extra drain on our house batteries within the motorhome.

It was almost 4 miles around the lake. There were a couple hills here and there. With the e-bike's pedal assist I could get up them with ease. I know I said this before, but I marvel at my old self. I never thought at 63 that I would be back on a bicycle again!!

We got back just in time for a delivery to our campsite. Yes, for some strange reason the West Iron Country District Library has delivery service of books. Especially by a librarian who rides on the back of a Harley??? 

Heh heh heh ---:actually it was my sister and her husband out for a beautiful ride on a sunny day. She brought me some books from the book sale, and delivered them as we were only about 35 miles from their home in Michigan. Wasn't that sweet?

They hung around chatting for a couple hours, but needed to get home before dark. The winds were starting to kick up and it was not going to be a pleasant evening to sit around a campfire anyhow. Plus the conditions are really dry and they had fire danger warnings out on all of the media and news programs. We decided to go inside and turn on our favorite HGTV and You Tube shows. 

Just as we were ready to go in, I noticed the sun was going down. We were treated to the most spectacular sunset! I guess I say that about every sunset. But each and every single one is a gift.

Ahhhhhhhh

Pictures don't do it justice.

And then it was gone.

Steve popped up some popcorn, and we snuggled in to watch our favorite TV show. Sunday night is Home Town with Erin and Ben Napier.

Monday morning, the winds kicked up again. It really wasn't even that pleasant to sit outside. The temperatures were in the low 50s. We really didn't see any reason to stay longer if it was that windy out. I don't think we would have even enjoyed another bike ride. So we buckled up and packed things away. It doesn't take too long. 

But before we headed home, we swung up to the small town of Florence, Wisconsin. There's a factory there that makes pasties called The Pasty Oven. Their website said they were open from 10:00 till 2:00 for retail customers. Sometimes you can get the misshapen and factory seconds for only $3 each. We called ahead but nobody was there. We even drove by and although the sign said they were open, there was nobody there. We left a message on their voicemail and texted their number. Oh well, we headed over to the little grocery store in town. We know they also carry them, but at a higher price of $4.99. 

That was okay, the little grocery store also had our favorite Klements brand bratwurst on sale. So we stocked up on both and loaded the freezer and the fridge of the motorhome to bring home.

We stopped over at the Forestry Department with the Visitor Center before leaving the town. They have a dump station there as well as a little fenced in dog park. This is a really nice new visitor center with a lot of good information on the area.

Pretty handy to let Fido out to run around while you take care of dumping tanks. The freshwater was not yet turned on for filling tanks, but at least it was a place to dump. Great to keep in mind if you are traveling on US 2 heading either east or west across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This is about in the middle of the state. Good thing to mark down for future travel plans.

As I dictate this blog, we are driving home on a beautiful sunny Monday. The wind is gusting here and there, which is not fun for traveling in an RV. 

We are due for about a half inch of rain tomorrow. I guess it is a good time to head home.

I STILL HAVE TWO MORE BLOG POSTS TO FINISH EDITING AND POST OF THE LAST TWO DAYS OF OUR TRIP TO ARKANSAS AND OKLAHOMA. 

STAY TUNED