CAMPGROUND REVIEW - Chute Pond - Oconto County Park, Wisconsin

We spent a couple days over at Chute Pond County Park Campground. It is part of the Oconto County Park system in Northeast Wisconsin. 

Chute Pond is located over on the northwestern side of our County, just south of the town of Mountain on Highway 32 / 64. It is usually jam-packed full all summer and we can never get in here. 

But in late April, there's absolutely no problem getting in as a first come first serve visitor. 

The campground is spaced out in four different loops for daily campers and a fifth distant loop down on the far Southeastern end for seasonal campers.  One loop is specifically available for people with ATV / UTV recreational vehicles.

Our site has 30 amp service, not sure if the others are 30 or 50 in other newer parts of the campground.

Potable water is available at the the bathroom/shower house, but not at the dump station. The campsites do not have water hookups. So be sure to fill ahead of time, or wait in line at the bathrooms for other campers to fill during busy times.

There are various bathroom facilities scattered about, some are pit toilets, some are flush, and a nice shower house near the central area by the playground.

Cell phone signal is very good, and television antenna programs fade away some during the day but come back in the evening.

There is a little general store in the field house that has some signage of things that they sell. It was not open this early in the year. I'm sure more information can be found online. Nearby is a picnic area and a small beach as well.

Incidentally, this water reservoir here that has been dammed up is the Oconto River. It flows 50 miles down towards our house, through our little town and out into the bay waters of Green Bay. So cool that it's the very same river. If we popped a canoe in here, we could float our way home!

As for the park itself, like I said, it is older and set up for smaller RVs. Some of the sites that are big rig friendly are in the loop nearest the state highway 32. It's not like an interstate, but it is heavier traffic during the day. The smaller sites that are nestled further back into the woods are much quieter. 

The river is beautiful and the water is up with higher levels because of the recent rains. With the Oconto River being controlled by various dams up and down it's complete path, the fluctuation of the water is always a guess. Right now it's up and maybe next week it's down.

Here's more information on the County website as well as a link on how to make reservations:

https://parks.ocontocountywi.gov/parks/camping/chute_pond_county_park/

Previously, we had camped here in our larger motorhome in 2020. Here's my blog post link from that visit:

http://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2020/09/campground-review-chute-pond-oconto.html?m=1

The Oconto County Park system has recently installed credit card kiosks for their park fees instead of envelopes and a pay post at their North Bayshore campground. We stayed there the other night and we could also just pay for our site via the website from our cell phones when we pulled into a campsite at North Bayshore.

So when we got to Chute Pond, the other campground on the County website, we thought we could do the same.  

We were the only ones in the park of course... And had our choice of 100 campsites.  We selected site number 82 and got ourselves all set up. I opened up my cell phone to go to the website to pay for the campsite. Oh boy, it was only set up for reservations 2 days out for this campground --- not for first come first serve to be able to pay for it!  I called up the gal at the County office and asked her if I could just pay over the phone. She said no, we have to walk all the way over to the field house because they still have the old fashioned pay post and envelopes there. This is until the new credit card kiosk is operational. That is located over at the boat landing next to the field house. Either way, we were all set up on the site and now we had to get all the way over to the field house to pay at the post. It's quite a walk..... 

Sure wish they had put up a temporary pay post somewhere within the campground until the credit card situation is operational like their other campground. Oh well. 

It was a nice walk around through the woods and over by the dam. This cute little damn backs up the river to make what is called Chute Pond. It is pretty popular in the summer and has quite a bit of recreational boating, fishing, kayaking etc. 

This is the view of the dam from one of the campsites in the campground. It's quite impressive, but also a little noisy. 

This little dam has a walkway across the top that leads to some hiking trails... and a special little place called "Slippery Rock" that all of the locals know about.

Here is a video about "Slippery Rock" that I filmed 2 years ago:

On our walk back to our campsite, we examined these two huge pieces of equipment are Pond Skimmers. They are used to skim off the lily pad and seaweed growth that happens out on the pond. Because of the damn backing things up, the water becomes more still or stagnant at times, and the plant life overtakes the pond. Because of the high amount of recreational use, as well as the cabins around the rest of the pond, they have opted to skim the stuff off to keep their residents of the area happy.

The park is beautiful with full grown mature trees and winding little twisty dirt roads to many of the campsites. The two newer areas are more gravel roads and easier to access. There are no blacktop sites, it is a little more rustic than most RV parks. But there is electric available at most of the sites. One loop down near the water and one other campsite near the dam do not have electrical hookups. 

The bathroom/shower building is very nice and neatly kept every time we've been there. 

The price is $30 a night from Thursday through Sunday. Monday through Wednesday it is a special of only $20 a night. No vehicle permits are required. It's a pretty good bargain considered it's an electric site. Like I said, it's a very popular park in the summer and you do need to make reservations. 

The site we chose, number 82, is up at the end of a loop at the top of the hill, in the farthest northern loop of the campground. There are big areas of exposed rock as this is a glacial region. The town nearby is named Mountain and has a lot of exposed rock and ledges in that area all the way through down to Chute Pond.

We got all set up on our site even though the day was looking a little cloudy in the afternoon. Steve expanded out our awning. Then he read the book on different ways that we can tilt it a little bit rather than having it straight perpendicular out at 90°. It's our first time having a power awning, so we want to make sure we do this right. 

We put out our slides and got ourselves settled in and made some lunch. I had ordered some cute little black ottomans for the living area, but they hadn't come yet. So we took one of our larger stuffed ottomans from in the house for the week end. When we turn around the driver and passenger seat from the cockpit area they become lounge seats in the living room. Ottomans will make them even more comfortable.  The ones I ordered can also be used for storage for things like shoes or dog leashes or other things we don't wany laying about. 

The love seat in our motor home is also a comfy spot to settle in to watch TV. It could also benefit by having ottomans in front of it. It is a "Fold and Tumble" loveseat by Flexsteel. We are thinking about swapping it out with a Wall Hugging Lazy Boy loveseat recliner in the future. I also have a creative idea about a cocktail table instead of that wooden computer slide one in the pic below. It's temporary for now.

Binney says the loveseat suits her just fine!! 

After fixing a nice dinner, we settled in our comfy cockpit chairs to enjoy a little TV for the evening. It was drizzling a little bit so we decided to not do a campfire. 

Our new to us Winnebago View has some pretty impressive theater lighting. It is all LED and has a low power consumption for when we are boondocking. There are strips of lights up above the cabinetry as well as along the walls and submerged along the backsplash in the kitchen. As my Grandma Kafehl would say "kind of ritzy".

I really like all of the counter space and drawers of the kitchen in this rig. The TV is in front of one of the cabinets overhead. It can be unlatched and turned towards the front seats to view movies or snapped back into place during travel. For a small 25-ft rig, this is a pretty big kitchen. Beyond the refrigerator is a tall pantry with four different pull-out box drawers. We are finding things to be pretty comfortable, coming from a 38 ft rig down to a 25 ft one. 

We fell asleep early in our cozy comfy bed. Even though it got cold and damp and wet outside, we were just fine. Besides the furnace, we also have an electric mattress pad heater. We snuggled in for the night and it was so comfortable.

Early in the morning, little Binney decided she needed to get outside. It was about 35° out. I slid into my moccasins and Steve's winter jacket. I opened the door to let out the dog ... I descended the steps and looked up to see there were three deer right in our campsite! They looked at me in disbelief and bounded it off in three separate directions. Binney didn't even see them because she was concentrating on coming down the steps behind me. 

It was a sweet surprise for the morning.

Steve was still dozing so I started up the coffee in the cute little percolator from Steve's mom and dad. I whipped up a blueberry muffin mix and popped it in the convection oven. I don't really care for convection baking, I would much rather have a propane oven. We might make a swap out later, but for now, it's good enough. 

It sure was a pretty good way to start the morning. Seeing some wildlife, perking some wonderful coffee, and having a little snack.

The sun was coming out and it was going to be a beautiful day! The temperatures weren't going to get much above 50, but we didn't care. The sun was out and we would be able to enjoy the woods and sit in our lawn chairs and do our thing. 

The morning sun was shining in through the skylight and bathed the inside of the rig in bright sunlight. This was much better than the cloudy rainy drizzly day before. 

We walked around the empty campground. It was kind of nice being the only ones here. Binney had so many things to sniff. It takes her a lot longer to go for a walk when there are interesting things to examine. It's almost like taking a toddler for a walk. 

We kicked back on our recliner lawn chairs underneath the awning and enjoyed the view. The trees are just starting to bud out and get a few teeny tiny leaves. We listened to the birds singing in all the different directions. Every now and then some geese would fly overhead, heading back to the north. We had a few cranes, saw a couple eagles, and there were even some noisy crows giving some other birds a tough time.

We really didn't need to do anything or go anywhere. Just kicking back and enjoying the quiet woods was all that we were looking for on this camping trip. We don't do a lot of tourist things, we don't see a lot of attractions or do any shopping or restaurant eating. This is our kind of camping. 

Steve gathered up some firewood from surrounding campsites, because there wasn't anyone around to purchase the wood for sale at the locked rack up at the field house.  But he found enough here and there to get a campfire going for the evening. 

We have been thinking about grilling some burgers, but I decided to cook inside. I had done up some sliced pork tenderloin in the slow cooker portion of my Instapot. I had it going all afternoon. Then I added some frozen vegetables on top and simmered up a pot of rice on the side. We had a wonderful warm meal while sitting out by the campfire. 

Watching the flickering flames of the first campfire of the season. What can get better than that?

One more camper pulled in after dinner, to a site a few spaces down from us. We were the only 2 campers in the entire campground! 

We woke up Saturday morning to the sounds of pitter patter pitter patter rain on the roof. Looking outside, it was just a drizzly wet day and the weather forecast said it was going to continue for the rest of the weekend.

At least our weather report was not as dire as what's going on just north of us. My sister and brothers up north are facing up to TWO FEET OF SNOW!!! 

(OUR CAMPGROUND IS JUST ON THE EDGE 

OF THAT LOWESTS DARKER TURQUOISE BAND 

OF SNOW / RAIN WINTER MIX)

My oldest brother Steve, also known as Butch, was travelling on his way down from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He was heading to Green Bay to catch a flight out to Phoenix. Smart! Avoiding the snow storm, lol! 

Because he was driving right past our campground, he stopped into visit us and check out our new to us rig. 

We had a nice visit. He is actually on his way to fly out to Arizona and help his girlfriend drive her motorhome back to Ohio. She has been wintering over near Benson, AZ with her sisters.  He said he would avoid the snowstorm in the UP by flying down to see her, and take turns driving the rig back home.  How nice is that?

After he left to catch his flight, we decided to pack it up and head back home. The weather reports didn't look good for us at home either. We could have stayed at the campground as late as 3:00 p.m. check out time if we wanted to. Or just paid for another night and stayed till sunday. But instead, we rolled things up pulled in the slide and headed on home.

Steve had an order finally come in at the auto parts store for the rest of the supplies he needs to do some service maintenance on the motorhome. Also our neighbor have been collecting our boxes from Amazon and Home Depot that have been delivered to our house. The Ottomans as well as some other things had come in and we could head home and check out our new purchases.

After an uneventful ride home, the rig is parked back in our driveway and getting ready for our next round of camping! 

What a (wet & rainy) View!