Apple Creek Campground, De Pere, WI – July 2008 Pfundtner Family Picnic

 

Steve and I both come from *camping families*…  His folks own two RV’s:   a diesel motorhome for his dad’s business trips, and his mom loves fifth wheels, so she just got her *cottage* for camping trips.   We decided to have a little family gathering with the siblings and kids, and I chose a campground kinda centrally located for all of us to meet up.  

(please note, we don’t often camp like this…. we like rustic woods and boondocking)

 

Apple Creek Campground is located south of Green Bay, WI about 15 miles.  It is a privately owned campground of 130 sites, located right next to the highway, and within the pungent smells of the nearby dairy farm, which odiferous runoff could be smelled in the little creek flowing behind our campsites… sigh.    The creek was green, slimey, and clogged up with gosh knows what???

The rates were steep, $34 a night, plus a $25 fee to just put in a reservation!  Times two sites, that was $50 just for the honor for them to save a spot to be able to camp there?   And a charge of $2 per person for all our family to come to eat at our own campsite and who would not be using any of the campground amenities….   even our grown kids were considered guests and we had to pay for all of them to come for the meal too.

http://www.applecreekcamping.com/

On the plus side, they had a lot of activities for little kids, a fishing pond, a swimming pool, a game room, camp store, and plenty of kids shouting, hollering, running through sites and having a great time all around.   This fun cow ride made about 10 passes each night, with bells clanging and people getting on and off throughout the park.  What fun!

A great handy-man lent me an extra adaptor as our 50 amp cord could not reach the 50 amp outlet…. (we now have an extra 50amp extension cord) …. so I had to lay out the long 50 amp cord, then ramp it down to 30 amp for our other extension cord,  which would have been just fine.  But once you reach the power pole, its ONLY 50 amp at the pole.   So I had to adapt it back up to 50 again when it got to the box….      I asked him for the adaptor and he snuck me one,  turns out that most campers have to usually go inside, sign a book, pay a deposit, and return it when done.   He said I looked *honest* and saw my predicament of being too far from the post.   What a nice guy! 

On the negative, did I mention the smells?   and the charges for each guest coming to visit for a 2 hour lunch on our site?  no parking spaces for guests?  and wayyy too high campground fees for our budget?  And the packed in tight like sardines?  And the people next to us where we could look out our window and see in their window 10 feet away?

 

(to solve that, we pulled down our awnings over our windows on that side, and they pulled down theirs on their side… LOL)I drove the rig down myself during the day and got all set up.  Steveio came later on the scooter which he had ridden to work earlier that day.   Then we would have one less car taking up space on our tiny campsite.  We had the rack on the back of the motorhome to put the scooter back on for the ride home on Sunday.  

The reason why we pulled in forwards was so our door could face the reserved site next to us for the folks.  It all worked out good this way…..

 

Here is Grandma’s new cottage, and Grandpa’s new truck to pull it.

The folks came later Friday afternoon and got all set up on the site next to us.  We had one table between us and our awnings just about touched.  LOL    

 

I hung our newly refreshed sign between our campsites.  See how close we were???

(I mentioned in a past blog about this sign, but it bears repeating… the folks gave it as a gift many years ago to Steve and his first wife.  It was the ONLY thing he got outta his divorce LOL…  So I spruced it up, added OUR first names, and gave it new varnish.  The folks were so happy to see us using the sign now.  I will gladly take the hand-me-down sign and the hand-me-down husband.  He is a WINNER ….    her loss, my gain)

 

The folks brought along sassy Nicky, who is still learning what it takes to be a Good Campground Doggie.  He is so full of energy and sassiness, that he’s quite a *handful* for the folks.   Heck, I even have a hard time hanging onto him!

 

We managed to get a second picnic table from a nearby site to add to the first, and on Saturday, the family rolled on in for a gathering of Pfundtner Proportions!   Good food, good fun, good laughs……  everyone brought a dish, and we filled our extra folding table up with goodies.  Steve manned the grill, and we ate and ate and ate…

 

Steve’s brothers prefer to sink their playtime into cool cars… we choose to sink ours into the motorhome.  LOL     The parking was limited, so we had to squeeze all our guests cars onto our sites.   We considered parking them out on the road and having our guests walk in, but we still had to pay, never-the-less, just for them to be in the park.  Besides, the brothers weren’t about to let their cars sit on a frontage road just feet away from the highway.  So we crammed the cars in on our two sites anyhow.

We sure are not used to those kind of regulations, most state, county, national forest or COE parks don’t have such fees.

 

Steveio helped his folks with some wiring issues between their rig and their truck.  He got it all figured out and they were good to hookup and roll down the road again.   Gosh, that man can fix just about anything! 

 

After the meal, the folks needed to hit the road for another event.  They wiggled and waggled their way into the horribly designed dump station, which is in the MIDDLE of the loops of campsites….  quite aromatically pungent and noticeable when campers were dumping.  Would hate to be camped in those campsites located 20 feet away from that? Bad enough we were by the cow-manure creek….  LOL

They managed to maneuver it through the crowded loops and got their tanks dumped, so it was ON THE ROAD AGAIN for the folks!

 

After all the food was done, the bellies were full to the point of exploding, now it was time for cleanup, and our guests went on their way.   I took a nap.  YAAWWWWNNN

I guess camping at a place like this once year, lets us appreciate the kind of peaceful camping we do in the northwood’s rustic beauty the rest of the year!