CAMPING - Holtwood City Campground Oconto WI and Back to Blogging

I am finally getting around to Blogging again.

We finally got up and about and did some camping as well.  So this is kind of a campground review on Holtwood City Campground in Oconto Wisconsin

http://cityofoconto.com/Camping.html

We decided to head on up to Holtwood City Campground in the city of Oconto, Wisconsin. Many of my readers remember that is where we used to live. We decided to go up there to camp and visit with the grandchildren. Our oldest daughter and son-in-law needed us to babysit Friday night while they celebrated their anniversary.

Friday afternoon, we drove on up through the pouring rain and set up on our campsite. We really like the D loop in this Campground because there's less traffic. Our campsite backs up to the playground area. A real necessity when you have grandchildren.

The sites are large and open grassy, (in the D loop) some big shade trees and are level throughout the entire campground. The cost is $28 a night and includes electric, sewer and water. They  have rate discounts for people staying for a week a month or the entire season as well. No stickers are required for vehicles, no additional fees necessary. What you pay is what you get.

They have two shower buildings and one laundry area.  All of the buildings are in moveable mobile homes because this area floods up in the springtime due to the ice flows and blockages from the Oconto River out to the waters of Green Bay.

The campground is located on a peninsula that juts towards town, but to get there you have to drive around to the backside and come in around the ball park and the city pool near the entrance.

Little Chelsea Clayton and Claire were so excited to see us come to their daycare center and pick them up. That's a special treat to have Grandma and Grandpa appear at the door and say come on, let's go! (Pre-arranged with the staff and the parents of course)

It was raining out, so they helped us set up the awning and little Clayton helped with the party lights.  I have a lot of crafts and toys in the motorhome, so we kept ourselves busy while the rain poured down outside.

It was still raining outside so we did not really have a chance for a cookout, or the s'mores that we had planned. We made the best of it and cooked hot dogs and macaroni and cheese inside.

The rain let up a little bit during the evening and we were able to get out and walk around the park. The dogs enjoy the visits from the grandchildren just as much as the grandchildren enjoy seeing them.

We got in some outside playing, with the playground nearby. The kids made friends with the people in the campsite next to us. These people had a wonderfully funny gangly 10 month old Saint Bernard pup named Penny. Here she was watching us out of the zippered side screen of their camping trailer. She watched everything we did and kept her eye on Finney and Binney.

One by one I popped each kid into the bathtub before bedtime. By the time the third kid got done, the water was getting pretty brown. I am so glad we have a bathtub in our motorhome. It sure beats trying to stand in the public campground showers with three wriggling soapy kids trying to clean them up.

With all the fresh air, they were fast asleep by 9 p.m.. but of course that means they were wide awake at 5:30 in the morning ready to start their day!

The best part about camping with grandkids is when they come in the morning to hop into bed with us and snuggle for a while and laugh and giggle and plan what to do for the day. And they have to pull the dogs up into the bed as well.  Free for all fun and giggles and snuggles.

One of our special traditions is that I buy those little boxes of cereal when the grandkids come camping.  My grandma used to buy them for us.  It is enough cereal with some bananas on the side, to hold them over until we cook a bigger breakfast.  Now little Claire (one and a half years old) is big enough to sit at the table with the Big Kids!

At the entrance to the park is an office. Clayton had spied the various items that were available for rent. The office rents out canoes, kayaks, tubes, big four-person float devices, and best of all, these very fun four-wheel Pedal Go Karts. He had to finagle us a bit until we managed to find him $5 to go and rent it for 2 hours.

My oh my what a happy boy!!!

He had to take turns with his older sister Chelsea. They made sure they got their money's worth out of it before we had to return it.

There wasn't much traffic on our small D loop road, so they could enjoy themselves and pull over if a car happened to come through.  The speed limit is 5 mph and there are speed bumps and curves that make sure the vehicles go slow.  We kept them in our range of eyesight and watched them having so much fun.  Good exercise too!

Later on after lunch, the parents came to get all three of them, while Grandma and Grandpa needed a nap!

It was pouring rain all afternoon, It was very pleasant to lay in the motorhome and sleep with the rain hitting the roof. One of the nicest camping experiences if you have to have lousy weather is to at least hear the Rain On The Roof!

Because it was raining, Erin and Waylen invited us to bring all of our cooking out stuff for supper over to their house. Our younger daughter Heather and her husband Jesse joined us with two more of our grandchildren, Jameson and Whitney.

Waylen grilled out all the food and we ate indoors because of the weather. The kids had a blast in the toy room and finally settled down with a movie while the grown-ups visited out in the living room.

"Peace, man"  (Whitney)

We toddled on home to the campground, which is only about 4 or 5 blocks away.  This time we swiped the oldest grandson, Jameson who is 9, almost 10. He will be quick to remind you of that.

It was a pleasant evening walking around the campground because the rain stopped. It was now dark out. We got to walk the entire campground with the dogs before bedtime.  It's a very quiet park, on a Saturday night there was nothing going on of any noise whatsoever. Many of the sites are seasonals in loops A and B.  With the weather forecast of rain all weekend, not many even came to spend time at the campground.

Jameson curled up on the loveseat to sleep with the dogs out in the living room in the motorhome. It's nice to notice that as grandchildren get older, they also sleep in later in the morning. So we got to doze until almost 8 a.m. before we all started moving around.

In the morning, Grandpa and Jameson made a quick run over to the local Kwik Trip gas station.  He stocked up on glazer donuts and bacon!!! Jameson said these are two "must haves" for breakfast when you are camping.  LOL

Of course, Clayton had told Jameson all about that wonderful four-wheel pedal go-kart so we had to make sure we went back to rent another two hour stint for Jameson to enjoy.

There He Goes!

The weather was pretty nice and things were starting to dry up. Jameson had had fun riding around the campground and being very careful if there were any oncoming vehicles. Like I said, there really weren't that many, as most of the regular seasonal people didn't even bother to come camping that weekend due to the weather reports.  I think by the afternoon, there were only 2 or 3 other occupied RV's in the whole park.  We let him pedal around the entire grounds and enjoy his fun time.

Of course, I had to have a try at that fun little pedal go-kart too!

Jameson filmed it with my phone, he forgot a few times to aim at me because he was busy watching his silly almost 60 year old Grandma acting like a kid!!!

As the day went on, it began to heat up. Jameson's parents came to pick him up in the afternoon, and brought Whitney for a while to play as well. We had a little tea set for her to set up while the grown-ups visited in the shade under the awning. They had to go visit other family later on Sunday, so we were left to ourselves again.

It was pretty hot out, so we hopped in the Tracker to ride around our "old home stomping grounds".  Remember, we lived here in the area for 13+ years. We drove out by Oconto City Park which is a small campground right on the waters of Green Bay. There are 9 rustic sites for $15 a night. The sites are located across the road from the actual beach and picnic area. We were thinking about going there on Monday and Tuesday, depending on the weather reports.

From there we drove up to the city Breakwater Park. No camping, but just a pretty park to go out to see the waters of Green Bay, which leads into Lake Michigan.

This park has a beautiful harbor and docking area. There's a long causeway that goes out into the bay with a turnaround at the end. Attracts a lot of local fishermen. I am pleased to say that the water levels in the Great Lakes have risen back up to normal levels again. All of the cottages along the shoreline had lost their waterfront beaches and had been nothing but a swampy marsh for years and years. Now the water is back up to where each place has it's own beautiful shoreline and beach again.

From there we drove a little further up the bay to North Bay Shore County Park. This is run by Oconto County. We like camping here as well, the sites are nice and clean and open and far apart. Some of them are even blacktopped. The rate here is $25 a night and includes electric and some of the sites also have water. There's a small newer shower building and a beautiful harbor access to put in your boat if you are a fisherman. 

 https://www.co.oconto.wi.us/parks/camping/north_bay_shore_county_park/

Here is a little map of our travels and where the other parks are located:

We drove on back to our motorhome and decided to stay put for the night, rather than pull up stakes and move to one of the other parks. We visited with the neighbors until dark, and then went in to take showers and go to bed early. Woohoo! Those grandkids sure wear us out.

Monday morning we woke up and checked the weather reports. Now the weathermen were promising hot humid sticky weather for Monday and Tuesday. Ick!  Instead of spending the extra money to camp with hookups, just to sit inside in the air conditioning is not really to our liking?

Steve did a good rinse out of our holding tank because we had sewer at the site. Then we started packing up by 10 a.m.  We hit the road and headed south towards home.

The nice thing about having a Wi-Fi thermostat at home is that I could turn on the air-conditioning via my phone, and have the house cooled down by the time we would get there two hours later.

On our way home, I also looked up the local ad for Dick's Family Foods in Sherwood. They always have wonderful locally butchered meat and we try to buy a lot of our groceries there.

They had country style boneless ribs on sale for a $1.50 a pound, as well as pork roasts for a $1.50 a pound. Great for pulled pork sandwiches. They had big sirloin beef roasts for $2.50 a pound. Large frozen turkey breasts were on sale for $ .99 a pound and our favorite 1/3 pound hamburger ground chuck patties were on sale as well. We got 18 meals for two of us) worth of meat for only $67.00!

The nice thing about having the motorhome right in the (parking lot is that all the meats and freezer items can go directly into the refrigerator to be transported the last 17 miles to home. I even stocked up on sherbet that was on sale, otherwise it would have melted by the time I got home in this weather if I had been in the car.

We got home in the afternoon, got the rig parked, unloaded, and laundry started as well. Although we had planned to camp for two more days, the weather just wasn't cooperating. Now that we are back home, Steve called his part time job boss at the county ADRC Transport service to let him know he would be available to drive if needed.

Of course, they needed him. So it was back into our normal routine.

But having a fun weekend with some of our grandkids was priceless!!!

CAMPING - Holtwood in Oconto and Family Birthday Party

There are a couple of Motorhome Modifications and some Our Old House project posts that I want to write about. First I better catch up this blog from 2 weeks ago. Sorry I haven't blogged lately, but things just speeded up fast around here. How does that happen?

Two of our grandchildren were having birthdays the previous weekend.  Jameson was turning 9 and his little sister Whitney was turning 2 already. We travelled up to the area for the purpose of attending the double party on Sunday. On our way through the countryside, we stopped and picked up Jameson to spend the night with us at a campground.

He loves getting the chance to ride in the motorhome,

 even if it was only 5 miles into town.

We made reservations two weeks ago for the last weekend in July to go up to our old home stomping grounds. When we lived in Oconto, Wisconsin, we always drove through this city campground, called Holtwood.  Often just driving through and looking at rigs and seeing who was from where.  In the winter, local sponsors and civic groups decorate the campground with Christmas decorations and trees. Cars can drive through with holiday music tuned to a station on the radio. We really enjoyed this park and spent a few weeks living there, after our house sold in 2012 when becoming full-time RVers.

It is a nice city run park located right on the edge of town. It is situated on the banks of the Oconto River which loops right around the entire campground. Campsites are $28 a night for an interior site, and the ones right along the bank of the river are $30 a night. Some of the sites are seasonal but they are the interior sites. The prime best sites along the river are available for people who come and go and travelers through the area. Some long pull-through sites in the beginning of the park that make it easy for travellers to pull in and stop for the night.

Here is the link to the PDF file of all the information about the campground:

Holtwood Campground Information PDF file

This is the map of the park. We like staying on sites 11 through 18 which are close to the playground area. They do get packed in rather tight along the river but the people are all able to turn their RV sideways, so their rig is parallel with the river. That gets you the best view and stepping out your doorstep right onto the banks of the Oconto River. Rather nice.

This time we had site 18. We like the shaded trees and the green grass. Each campsite has water, sewer, and a post with both a 50 and 30 amp power hook up that you share with the neighboring site. So if someone comes first and they are hooked in the 50 amp you need the adapter to scale yourself down to 30 amp. We always carry an assortment of adaptors for that very situation. If you don't have the right adapters, they are available for a deposit from the office. When we first got there we had to take the 30 amp side of the post, but then our neighbors left, and we were able to switch over to the 50 amp side.  (that way the dogs could be comfortable in the AC while we were gone to the party on Sunday) 

Jameson helped us get set up on the site. He helped Grandpa with the leveling and the jacks with the boards underneath. He is now strong enough to help pull out the strap for the awning to set that up. 

Once our campsite was all together and we were situated and happy, it was time to do some fun stuff with our soon-to-be 9 year old grandson.

First outing on the agenda was to head over to the little mini golf center that is located right across from the campground in between McDonald's and Shopko. This was never here when we lived in Oconto so it was an adventure for all of us.

I honestly can say I have never played mini-golf before. I've played regular golf so this was a new adventure for me. Jameson actually beat me on a couple holes and we ended up with a fun afternoon and learned some new things.

Later that evening, our other daughter Erin and hubby Waylen stopped by with our youngest grandchild little baby Claire. So here is our oldest grandson and our youngest granddaughter together hanging out at the campfire. Just look at her idolizing her big cousin!

The next morning we decided to take Jameson out to what is known as the Breakwater. It's a harbor in Oconto with long arms that reach out into the Bay of Green Bay, which pours into Lake Michigan.

We have always enjoyed coming out here it's just on the outside edge of town. Sometimes even in the winter or early spring we would drive our motorhome out here to the point on a motorhome exercise day. When it's not busy we would park at the end of the point looking out at water in all three directions, make a little lunch in the motorhome and enjoying the view. In the summer months there are too many fishermen coming out here so you really don't want to block the turnaround at the end with a motorhome.

One time we even went out there as the ice shoves were happening, which is when all the ice is breaking up and rolling slowly into huge mountains near the shorelines. Very interesting!

Jameson had brought along his fishing pole and Grandpa got him all set up. He is a wonderful cast-er and pretty patient with the fishing. We tried for a while on his lures and baits, but no bites. A lady nearby gave us some nightcrawlers, and even that wasn't bringing in any big catches either. He finally resorted to eating his Swedish Fish candy, the only fish he caught that day!

Saturday night, we met up with our friends Gary and Roz over at our favorite restaurant in Oconto Falls. It's called The Penguin Again http://www.thepenguinagain.com/  which is known for their BBQ Ribs and also their Tenderloin Tips on Saturday night. They give such huge servings that Steve and Gary both only ordered half an order of tenderloin tips and it was still a huge platter full. Roz and I each ordered the ribs, and we each took a full rack to take the extras home for lunch the next two days (not kidding!)

Gary and Roz had come over to the restaurant in their old Model A Truck. The guys had a lot of fun going over it in the parking lot and checking out its features. Later they came over to our campground and hung out at the campfire with their dog Charlie.

Sunday morning Steve cooked us breakfast on our "new to us" propane stove we installed a few weeks ago. We now have four burners to cook on which means he can have 3 fry pans going at the same time. One with bacon, one with eggs, and one with sliced american fries. If we were camping without electricity, the fourth one would have the glass Pyrex coffee pot on it.  Since we had electric, we used the drip coffee maker.

Such a nice change from the two burner stovetop that we had before. We had to shuffle pans around into a holding spot on a wooden trivet to one side, and keep moving them back and forth to completely cook a meal.  Added benefit is the propane oven, so we can bake things without using the convection oven overhead. 

Sunday noon we headed over to our kids house for the double birthday party. Heather and Jesse live just 5 miles out of town, actually just down the road from the house we used to own. Lots of kids and relatives came to celebrate Whitney turning 2 and Jameson turning 9. Here is a little YouTube video clip of their Happy Birthday song:

Birthday cakes and blowing out candles, what fun!
The kids were all in swimsuits
because they were splashing in the little pool,
playing on the splash pad,
and playing with a bubble machine.

Once that part was all done, it was time to open the presents. Boy oh boy, these little kids sure are well loved. They had lots of wonderful things to open and smiles and thank yous and hugs to us all.

A couple of years back when we only had five grandchildren, I had given them all sleeping bags with their names embroidered on to them. So this year it was Whitney's turn to get one and she seemed quite pleased with her silky sleeping bag.

We headed on home 75 miles after such a busy weekend and got settled back into our house. Whew~ what a busy time, and it tuckered us out. It was so nice to spend time with everyone, and hang out in our old stomping grounds of Oconto Wisconsin.

Tonight we are heading out to LA LA LA LA LAAAA  Lambeau Field for the pre-season opener game of the Packers versus the Philadelphia Eagles. Our oldest daughter Erin and son-in-law Waylen got us tickets. It's supposed to rain so I am heading out now to buy some ponchos.

Still feels like we are on VACATION???

Yup, although we have been living in the motorhome for a couple weeks while parked in the driveway, I am still feeling like we are on VACATION and I am dreading going home and having to take care of the house.

But the joke is on me, because there is NO house to go back to and take care of!  LOL

After the successful house closing on Tuesday, (which took a mere 15 minutes)  we had a few more things to finish up in the Oconto area.  Steve has now seen the arthroscopic surgeon and is set for surgery on  August 17th. The surgeon seems upbeat and positive and it is an easy fix on Steve's knee.  So we will be looking forward to that.

We hung out at Holtwood City Campground in Oconto for four days. One evening Erin and Mark with the two grandtots came to visit.  They live mere blocks from the campground.  This is a small city run campground and after living in the area for 15 years, we FINALLY camped here!

Holtwood Campground Link

We cooked out and had a great meal... and of course enjoyed the antics of little Clayton and Chelsea.

Good thing we parked close to the playground equipment! 

By Thursday afternoon, it was time to shove off.  We had the rig ready to roll and I drove it over to meet up with Steve for his doc appt.   Soon we were heading on down the highway, to loop around the bay of Green Bay and up towards Dykesville in Southern Door County. 

Our friends have a cottage that is only 12 miles from where Steve works (more on THAT in the next blog!)   and have generously offered that we can pull in and park and enjoy their property for the next 10 days.   

The cottage is located on the waters of Green Bay, across the bay from our old home-town of Oconto.  We are facing the west, and there was an awesome sunset last night... but I forgot to take the camera down to the shoreline to snap a pic.  Oh well, we will be here 9 more nights, so I will be sure to snap a few.

See why this still feels like VACATION to me? 

Today it is somewhat warm, but not nearly as hot and humid as it had been all week.  I took the doggers down to the beach to wander around a bit in the water.  They went right in and enjoyed the coolness.  Ducky tried to roll on a dead fish on shore, so I will go down later with a shovel and bury it.

It was a great way to spend part of the day...

after all, cleaning and housekeeping in the rig goes quite quickly ... 

so I guess I can splurge a little time to be a beach bum, eh?

I have four or five more boxes of "stuff" to go through yet that are sitting in our livingroom area of the motorhome.  They are things we didn't quite want to part with, that we could still use.  We just don't have a "place" for them yet in the rig.  I am working on finding locations that make sense and don't take up space that is for something else.  Steve noticed the rig seems to ride better now with more weight on board.  Our available CCC  (cargo carrying capacity) is rated quite high, and we have never fully loaded ourselves up before.  I will do a blog post later on CCC, UVH, GVWR, and GCWR.

Plus we decided to get wall-hugger style LaZboy recliners instead of the ones we have now.  Our present ones are much wider and need to set too far away from the wall to recline.  We looked at a few the other day with a narrower profile that are wall-hugger types, and we might make a decision by the weekend.

In the meantime, we will enjoy this location for the next ten days, and then I will write about our next exciting news as to what the future will hold for us!!!!

Oh, by the way, the doggers think this VACATION state of mind 

is just fine and dandy with them too! 

.