CAMPGROUND REVIEW - North Bayshore County Park, Oconto, Wisconsin

We had a quandary last week...

We wanted to go camping but also we had a couple things going on at the house.

One thing was that we were having our city water meter changed. So the water utility repair guys needed access to our basement. We had an appointment for Thursday morning for that. 

Also, on Tuesday we had a much awaited FedEx delivery scheduled. So we wanted to be home for that!

But we also wanted to go camping. We had the lawn cut and the flowers watered and we really didn't have anything else to do all week at home.

So away we went to North Bayshore County Park. It's a small campground of only 34 sites just north of our home along the waters of the Green Bay. It's really only 6 miles as the crow flies. About 8 if we drive on the road!

We checked online and saw that there were a number of sites available for 3 or 4 days...

It is such a nice little county park. It has a marina and breakwater, as well as a nice boat launching area for fishermen. It tends to attract older people or fisherman, because there really isn't a big swimming beach. Things are pretty rocky there. There is some playground equipment for children. But not much else. So it's a pretty quiet campground even during the week. 

The county has enacted a special for Monday through Thursday for only $20 a night for a campsite. Friday Saturday and Sundays it is $35 a night.

We loaded up the motorhome and drove on over. Once we decided on one of the six or seven available sites, we drove over to the kiosk to pay for it. 

The kiosk in the park, located over near the boat ramp area, is available to pay via credit card for any of the sites that are not already reserved. It is the camper's responsibility to either look online or drive over to the park and go through each of the campsites looking at the little calendar on each post. Reserved sites are stricken off. If a site is open a certain number of days, then you can pay for those days at the kiosk. But the kiosk is not hooked up to the reservation system....  We didn't know that. 

Sooooooo

We accidentally paid for FOUR nights on site 11. Technically, according to the strike off marks on the little calendar on site 11's post, it was going to be used by somebody else on Thursday night.

Uh oh.... So now we had a kiosk slip paying for FOUR nights, but we could only stay on site number 11 for THREE nights. I made a quick call over to the courthouse. The gracious clerk helped me switch my fourth night over to site number 10 across the road. That one was not taken by anyone else. So she put it in the computer and everything was completed,  easy peasy.

Here is the link to their website and access to the reservation system:

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

So now I'll do a little campground review. I will start off with a YouTube bicycle tour of every campsite. I am trying to build up my YouTube channel called "What-A-View". It is only going to be videos of camping and campground reviews and camping products. Not to be confused with my other YouTube channel with videos of everything else in my life. 

So this is a bicycle tour going from campsite to campsite --- so you can kind of use it to figure out which site you want to reserve. By seeing them on video it's a little bit easier than trying to look at a graphic map or a Google map view of the park.

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For those who don't care to go to YouTube, here are some photos of shots I took around the park. As you enter the park there's this beautiful little Harbor. There's a nice deck, situated lengthwise to the water, with some little benches. A perfect spot to sit and do some fishing or watching the birds.

We are dealing with the emerald ash borer here in this section of Wisconsin. They ask that you only use certified firewood from the area that's been inspected for pests. They do have this cute little self-serve kiosk that is like a vending machine! For $10 you put it in and you can punch in the number and letter of the door that contains firewood. Just be sure you only punch in the letter and number of one that has not previously been emptied! Also there is a local certified vendor who drives through the park once a day and sells firewood off the back of his truck.

There is a restroom building with flush toilets at one end of the park. There are also pit toilets situated in other parts of the campground and over by the boat launch as well as the group area. But this building is the only one with flush toilets.

It is kept neat and clean, and the campground host is located directly across from the bathrooms which helps to keep down any vandalism or nonsense going on.

The shower rooms that are located on each side of the building are a little more worse for the wear. They could use some updating. Also the showers are coin operated. You get 4 minutes of showering for $1.00. 

(We shower inside of our motorhome)

Outside, there is a water faucet available as well as a drinking fountain. Perfect for filling up water bottles. About 3/4 of the campsites have water faucets. Sites 12 through 21 do not have water at the campsite.  So be sure to fill up from the potable water fill at the entrance if you are on sites 12 through 21.

All in all, it's a quiet park. Located far enough away from any main roads or railroad tracks or noisy residential or cabins. For the price, to get a site with electric and water during the middle of the week it's a bargain! That's why we like coming here. Cellular coverage and broadcast TV are pretty good. And the fishing is great!

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So that's it for the technical review of the campsite. Now I'll get on to our own camping experience while on site 11 and later on site number 10.  As I said, it was just a hop skip and jump from home. To buzz up along the shore and get into our campsite.

Because we were going to run back and forth to home a couple times, I followed Steve in our Kia. I towed along our little utility trailer with the e-bikes and our extra camping gear in it. Normally we just hook it on to the motorhome. But since I was coming along in a separate vehicle, I towed it.

The campsites are nice and deep, plenty of room to park an extra vehicle.

Now again, I made a YouTube of our four days at the campground. If you want to watch it, here is a link below. Please like and subscribe if you do!

We had an enjoyable afternoon and the evening cooled off enough to take a nice long bike ride up the Bay. We found some back roads and had some fun pedaling around. 

After dinner, the sunset was looking a little strange and starting to cloud up. Everything was getting that funny yellowish light, you know the kind, right before a storm? 

Well well well, look at that. We clicked onto our radar app and saw what was coming!  We tuned into the local weather station on TV and watched the announcements slide by on the bottom of the screen. 

As the storm crept closer and closer, the warnings got more and more ominous. We were looking at nickel to quarter size hail, combined with up to 60 mph winds.

Well, motorhomes are insured. But people and dogs not so much. So at 1:00 a.m. when the wind started rocking and the rain was just beginning, we grabbed our wallets and cell phones and the dogs. Hopping into the Kia just as the rain started. We drove the short 8 mi back into town and soon we were pulling right into the safety of our garage.  We curled up in our own bed for the night and the storms raged around us. We didn't need to go down to the basement but a tornado did touch down across the bay on the tip of Door County. I'm glad we made the smart decision and went home for the night. 

The other benefit of going home was in the morning we could grab some cute grandkids to haul back out to the campground. They wanted to do a little fishing! 

We picked up a couple tubs of worms and grabbed the fishing poles. It's one of their favorite pastimes. Grandpa spent most of the time either untangling lures, fixing tangled lines, or adjusting the fishing poles so they could reel in all of these big huge whoppers.

It was a beautiful morning after the big storm. You know how things always look so much nicer after the storm goes through? The air feels so fresh and things are so green.

The total catch of the day was "1". And we let it go to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

While the two older kids were still fishing with Grandpa, Claire came back up to the campsite with me to start some lunch. The kids had opted for cheese pizza. To keep the excess heat out of the motorhome, we took out our Camp Chef oven from our camping gear in the cargo trailer. It's the nicest little propane oven with three different rack positions inside as well as two burners up on top. We could cut the pizza in half and cook both halves at the same time. We just alternated the pizzas on the shelves halfway through.

Kids, camping and pizzas. A pretty good combination!

In the afternoon, it started to cloud over a little bit. The few raindrops started splattering down so we headed on inside. It was getting pretty hot and muggy. We clicked on the air conditioning and popped on some movies on the TV. We have the Starlink along, so they could choose some of their favorites. One of the favorites is a separate little Roku station called The Pet Collective. The grandkids call it the "puppies and kitties" channel. As it started to rain, Chelsea cuddled little Binney, and made sure she was comfortable. Someday Chelsea would like to be a veterinarian.

Claire and Clayton crawled up on the top bunk. We don't often have the extra mattress up there. Usually we store it in the garage. But this time we had it along and they had the perfect perch to lay up there and watch TV.

The storms blew over and soon the sunshine was out again. A cold front had blown in. This time they opted for spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Sloppy spaghetti and little grandchildren don't really go together inside of a motorhome. So we ate out on the picnic table.

The bread sticks from our local bakery / deli are a real hoot. Chelsea was definitely incognito.

We brought the grandkids back to their house and also we waited for our FedEx delivery. One small box came but the main big box evidently had a smeared barcode tracking label and it accidentally got shipped way over to the far west side of the state! Our box was in LaCrosse! So a new shipping label was created and now we would have to wait one more day for the box to arrive at our home.

So Steve and I went back out to the campground and spent another day and another night in total relaxation and comfort 

It was pretty hot and muggy again on Wednesday. We decided to cook and keep the heat out of the motorhome. Steve did up some burgers on his Blackstone flat top griddle.

I got out my instapot that has an air fryer lid attachment. This is another one of my favorite appliances that I carry along in our cargo trailer. On the video up above I show how I made french fries while we were camping. They are much better to eat coming out of the air fryer than anything fried in grease or baked in the oven. 

Yummmmmmmm

On Thursday, We got up early and drove into town to meet up with the city water utility worker. The new meter got installed and the paperwork for the new phone app to go along with it was set up. New technology.

As we were getting ready to head on back to the campground, we got the notification on our phones that our FedEx box was finally arriving! We carefully moved it from the driveway into the garage. That box is going to be one of our next update motorhome modification projects, and you will see that in an upcoming video and blog post. 

But... If you do watch the video from the link up above, I tell you on there what is in the box that we were waiting for!

Anyhow, we went back out to enjoy another beautiful day at North Bayshore County Park. It was time to pack up and move over to site number 10. Our site number 11 was reserved for 3:00 p.m.

About 1:30, we did the big move over across the road. We hand carried the lawn chairs and our ground mat. We pulled in the slides and unplugged the cord. Picked up the Starlink and drove the motorhome across the street. Big move! 

Soon we had everything set back up and Steve sat back to enjoy a nice cold beer. 

The people who had our site 11 reserved pulled in at 3:05 on the dot. I am glad that we didn't delay getting off our site and making the move.

The grandkids begged to come back out on Thursday evening. They pestered and pestered us to be able to sleep overnight. We said it would be okay and they hauled all their gear into the motorhome. Chelsea opted to stay in a tent that she pitched up behind our camper. 

We were going to do s'mores out by the campfire, but it got very cold and windy. So the next best thing was to do something inside. 

On my video up above, I have Chelsea and Claire's creation of making a new treat using mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, a fudge stripe cookie and a sugar cone. Guess you'll have to just go look at the video to see what Chelsea and Claire came up with? 

In the morning, everybody was warm and cuddly and cute--- we had a nice breakfast together. But there was going to be rain coming again about 1:00 p.m. It was probably best to get loaded up and back into town. Chelsea pulled down her tent and we got the gear all stowed back where everything belonged. 

It was time to head on back so I hauled the little trailer behind the Kia. Chelsea was my co-pilot.

But there's always one more task that needs to be done when leaving a campground. It was time for Claire to learn what happens to the contents of the toilet and the sinks of the motorhome when we go to leave the park....  That section is also on the video up above!

Steve had come up with a really good idea for some birthday presents for the grandkid's parents. Our daughter's birthday was on Sunday and our son-in-law's birthday in the middle of July. We figured out a really good idea of something to get them, and the grandkids were really excited to help go pick them out. 

It was two new maple trees from the local nursery. One for each of their parents to plant up at their cabin.

The trees were huge, about 10 ft tall. We really didn't have a way to haul them in the Kia.

But I came up with a really good idea that we could haul them right in the motorhome!!! 

And we did!!!

Yep, Steve wrapped plastic bags around the bottom pots so the dirt did not fall out. He was able to hoist each one into the center aisle and lay them gently down in our motorhome!

Once we got to their house, Clayton got out his little dolly cart furniture mover. It sometimes doubles as a little flat go-kart for him...

So here's three little goomers with all of their camping gear. They are smiling at the delightful thought of their parents surprise at getting two huge trees for their birthdays. 

It was quite a productive weekend, combined with camping, water meter installations, storms, FedEx deliveries and purchasing and hauling birthday presents!

CAMPGROUND REVIEW - Governor Thompson State Park Wisconsin, fish scales and caterpillars!!

It was the middle of the week, the best time to go camping for us. We prefer to not be out on the busy weekends. We looked online and found a campground with a couple open sites about 50 miles away from our home. Wednesday and Thursday nights are good for us.

Then we took a look at the weather report. Even though things looked horrible back here at home, it was going to get better once we got on the road.

Yep, this was about our first 10 miles...

After that, as we headed further north, the clouds opened up and we could see blue peeking through. The weathermen were right!

We headed up into North Central Wisconsin to a fairly new campground in the Wisconsin State Park system. It's called Governor Thompson State Park. It began development in 2000, and was finally ready for picnicking and other recreation about 2005 or 2006. The campgrounds weren't developed until after that. I remember we went up there one weekend and just walked around to see how well they were putting together this park. 

We could tell someone with half a brain was helping with the development, someone that actually did RVing! 

(Please note that Steve is a retired State Park Maintenance Supervisor, and had seen a LOT of the state parks that are just not constructed or developed very well)

These sites are level!!!! There are lots of woods and shrubbery in between sites. They are placed strategically so you don't see the people in the next campsite. It was also evident that traffic flow was a consideration. Beach goers and day use picnic and hiking areas are in the beginning access to the park to the south. The boat landing is up in approximately the middle, and the campground is up to the northern end. That way you don't have the daily use people driving through or even near the campground! 

The next thing that was evident was that the campground was made in three separate loops. That way you didn't have all the total amount of traffic driving past all of the campsites all of the time. You basically had one third of any campground traffic going through your own loop. 

The third thing that was evident was the big beautiful bathhouse building that was constructed somewhat in the middle of all three loops. Easy access. The bathroom building had restroom areas on each side. And then all around the perimeter were individual rooms with locking doors for showers. Inside of each shower room there is a toilet, a sink, a bench and a shower. The showers are free, no coins needed like some parks. 

Throughout the three loops are very nice heavy duty concrete buildings with pit toilets that are extremely clean. The buildings can double as a tornado shelter in the event of bad storms moving through the area. This area of Wisconsin seems to always get hit with heavy storms, straight line winds, or tornadoes. Smart to make smaller accessible shelters throughout the campground area, but also the large restroom/shower building in the middle can be used as shelter in the event of a storm.

Also throughout each loop are drinking fountains with water bottle fill taps, as well as regular faucet hydrant units for filling up water jugs or dish pans for tenters.

All of the roads are paved, and the campsite pads are graveled and level. The two handicap pads are paved. The only electric sites available are in one loop on sites 15 through 30. The rest of the 100 sites in the campground are all rustic with no electric. 

The dump station is extremely wide and easy accessible with big rigs or large fifth wheels. It can be approached from either side so two vehicles can dump at the same time. Spaced far enough away is another staging area with the freshwater. That way if you are filling your freshwater tank you are not blocking up the line for the grey water and sewer dumpers. very smart! 

Be aware, although there are some water faucets throughout the campground, you should fill at the dump station first before reaching your site if you travel with empty freshwater tanks. I think the faucets in the park are not threaded, so if you really needed to use one to fill you would need a "water thief"... which is a rubber device that clamps on over a non-threaded spigot so you are able to temporarily attach a hose in an emergency.

Also at the end of the loop of the dump station area are three large dumpsters. They are for garbage and for recycling. Spaced nicely far away from the campground as to not attract bears or coons or other wildlife. Great to not have them stink in the hot summer sun of they were closer to the campground. 

The boat landing has a wide swing for launching boats plus an area set to the side for tying off and cleaning your boat of any noxious weeds. Then the parking area for the boat landing has huge pull-through spots for trucks and trailers. Again, a well thought out setup.

There's a camp host on duty at site number 2, and there are the presence of maintenance workers and rangers from the main office near the entrance as well as the maintenance area near the picnic and beach. 

I would like to mention that the cell phone signal was very strong with five bars and many times 5G. That is sometimes hard to find a northern Wisconsin. The broadcast TV stations on the antenna brought in all of the major networks from Green Bay. We didn't even bother setting up our Starlink, because we had plenty of data and antenna access.

Reservations can be made using the website below, and is highly recommended because this is a high use park. For Wisconsin residents the rate is $28 a night. If you reserve online there's a $7.95 reservation fee. A daily or seasonal vehicle sticker is also required. 

Here is a link to the website:

https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/govthompson

The park covers 2,800 acres! There are many trails and natural areas to enjoy. Because it's so large you don't hear any nearby road noise or cottage folks or ATVs which are not allowed within the park.

Here's the map of the campsites. The East Loop is the only one with electrical sites, and take note that it's only half of the loop with electricity. It starts at site 15 and runs to site 30. We were on site 28 for two nights during the middle of the week. I would say 3/4 of the electric sites were occupied. The rest of the park was pretty quiet with maybe 10 to 15 other campers on the rustic sites throughout the park.

Okay, that's enough information about the park itself. Now let's get down to the nitty gritty about our actual individual campsite.

Check in and check out time is 3:00 p.m. because there had been heavy rain the night before and all morning, we were hoping maybe our site was open already. We arrived at the park about 1:30. 

Nope, there were still people in our site which they had every right to be until 3:00 p.m. So we drove around the park a bit and made this YouTube: 

Here is a video of our actual time spent in the campsite and setting up and some stuff with walking the dogs. There are segments on here where you can view the restroom building and showers: 

I'm attempting to start up a YouTube channel with just my camping videos featured on it. My other YouTube channel has weaving and spinning and knitting and grandchildren and dogs etc--- so this one is known as "What-A-View"

Just like my blog:

https://youtube.com/@what-a-view-ml2uq?si=TftWubbxZl_uCMi7

If you enjoy watching my videos, 

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By about 2:30 p.m., the people had moved on. We could back into our campsite now.

It's a very pretty site, number 28, with electric, located in the east loop. We backed right in and set up and it was very quiet and peaceful. We were only a tiny bit tilted and put leveler blocks on one side.

Here is where I get a little irritated. The previous people had decided to clean fish on the picnic table!!!

And they left behind piles of dried fish scales!!!!!  They were in piles on the ground....

And scattered on the picnic table!!!!

I guess gone are the days of people buying newspapers anymore. So they don't have them to roll out on a table to clean their fish? 

What really bothers me is that these little pieces of fish scale are like little pieces of bones. They are very sharp and are horrible in a dog's digestion tract. Our dogs could easily lick them up because they are stinky and delightfully tasty to a dog. Then we would be going back to the emergency vet located way down in Appleton which is 100 plus miles away!!!!

We did the best we could with our little camping shovel to dig up what we could and bury it out further in the woods. I carefully swept off the picnic table with a damp paper towel to catch each little one that was stuck on there. 

Because of these inconsiderate people, it changed the way we could use our campsite.  For the rest of our two and a half days here, we had to keep our dogs only secured up close to the camper where they could be nowhere near the picnic table or the ground where these little flecks of fish scale were all over the place. Not to mention, they attracted flies!!! 

We didn't use the picnic table at all. 

I hope the next people don't think it was from us????

We unhooked the cargo trailer and tried to get a little more level on our campsite. We did the best we could with our leveler blocks and it was good.  We set out our camping mat and chairs, and it felt just like home.

It doesn't take us long to get set up. A few people had walked by to chat. Many were commenting on the invasion of the "tent caterpillars"...

Which are actually the Gypsy moth larvae.

We knew that they were all over in Northern Oconto County, as they have been for years. 

They cover everything with little specks of caterpillar poop as they defoliate all of the oak trees. Back in the early 1990s, they were horrible to the point of being a complete invasion. You could not walk through the woods without swinging your hands from side to side moving veils of them hanging down on their silken cords. 

If you sat still and quiet in the woods it would sound like little bits of rain as their little specks of poop would fall down from the air above. It would hit down on the fallen dried leaves on the woods floor. It sounded like little teeny bits of sleet or hail. Tick tick tick tick from the caterpillars overhead. Eating and pooping eating and pooping!!! Ewwwww

Back then, if you drove a car or an ATV on pavement through the woods with tent caterpillars, it would be awful. The sounds ofsplit splat splat splat under your tires, and you could literally skid on them if you hit the brakes when going too fast. I'm not kidding. The entire ground would be moving with motion of crawling caterpillars. 

They are not nearly as bad now as they were back then!

The worst part is they are able to defoliate an entire tree in no time flat. They seem to prefer the oak trees. See the photo below? That's what they do... Until the leaves all curl up and fall off dried and destroyed. 

After a year or two or three of having all of its foliage eaten off, a mature tree cannot manage to survive without its photosynthesis and chlorophyll process. The trees begin to rot from the inside out. What looks like a normal tree trunk can be pushed over sometimes by hand as it collapses to the ground from being rotted out. My father's cabin is located nearby and he lost near 80 oak trees on his property due to these caterpillars. Most of the trees around the cabin had to be taken down before they fell down. Others just fell over during high winds and as they hit the ground they exploded wide open with rotted centers. 

The maintenance staff in this park has very carefully removed any of the dangerous trees in the high use areas. We noticed that everything around our campsite was fairly young new growth or of other species than oak.

This is the funny part about the tent caterpillars, they totally freaked out our little dog Nicholas!  If he laid down on our camping mat, they kept crawling towards him! Oh horrors! He couldn't figure out why these little things kept coming after him....

Honestly he was totally afraid of them! I did make a video clip of him being scared. I am putting that together into another YouTube that I will add the link on here later. I'm not finished yet putting the scenes together and editing. We never laughed so hard! 

He then came up on my lap where it was safe and sound away from the caterpillars. Just look at that face?

We could deal with the caterpillars, because we have been doing that for over 20 years. We enjoyed walking around the park, and the weather decided to change almost hourly. It would be pouring rain. Then it would stop in the sun would come out. And we will go for another walk or a bike ride.

Then it would cloud up again and get really windy. We will get more rain. But that was okay. We stayed inside and watched some TV.

Again, the sun would pop out and everything would be nice. We really enjoyed the peaceful park and quiet surroundings.

I think these blossoms are from flowering dogwood. They smelt so great after the rain freshened up the air.

Overnight, the weather continued with intermittent rain and wind. It was too windy and wet to do a campfire. So we curled up and watch TV and went to bed. 

The next morning was absolutely beautiful. The sunshine coming in through the trees is such a great way to start the day.

We saw some whitetail deer go through the park, and a couple little turtles here and there. Chipmunks and squirrels were abundant. And the birds were amazingly loud with their springtime calls to each other. The woods were alive!

We really enjoyed our stay at Governor Thompson State Park. We had only been here once before on one of the rustic sites. I know at times it's hard to get in on the weekends, but all I can say is keep trying back on their reservation list. I think they have a notification system that will let you know if there's an opening. During the week I think it's a little easier to get in on a rustic site. They do have little scan codes on each post that you can drive through, choose a site, and then scan to make sure it's available. Then you can pay directly online and not have to do the reservation fee.

So that's a wrap on another campground review!