One of the challenges of being a full timer who doesn’t like to make reservations are the major summer holidays. Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day. On these big three holiday weekends we sometimes must make reservations if there is a particular place we want to be. Even on these holidays we often don’t make reservations because we seek out parks that aren’t on the water as most people who camp on these holidays seem to love to be near water! Therefore our strategy of finding parks not on the water and near big cities usually is our ticket to landing a spot without reservations.
Our park in Madison did fill up but it seemed to be mostly people like us hiding out until the holiday was over. We did enjoy Independence Day and we even barbequed some tasty smoked ribs on our Coleman Roadtrip Grill. However, we are certainly glad to have July 4th behind us. We even enjoyed a few good hikes near the park on their extensive trail system. This is the same trail system that requires a $5/person per day for biking but can be hiked on for free.
Our last day in Madison we drove over to the University of Wisconsin arboretum and enjoyed a hike. Nearly all the trees are labeled and we enjoyed ambling amongst the trees and learning to identify a few new ones. On this particular day the woods were filled with wild turkeys as they were everywhere. We even spotted a couple of Sandhill Cranes crossing one of the park’s roads. Other than learning some new trees the coolest thing we saw was a mother turkey with her two very tiny babies following her around learning to fend for themselves.
With our last day behind us it was time to figure out where we were going to go next. As usual we let the weather forecast decide for us and we headed northeast instead of west. 140 miles to the Oneida Casino in Green Bay, WI. It is a first come first serve park so we had a back up plan to go to the the Brown County Fairgrounds but when we pulled into the casino there were plenty of sites available. This park can be a bit tricky parking as all the sites are parallel to the street so if it is crowded we would have had to parallel park the beast. We had to do that last time we were here. There is only electricity and travelers need to come filled with water but we love staying at parks like this and at $15 per night we can increase our entertainment budget during our stay...
NOTE: We are still in Green Bay until tomorrow and then we will move over to the Menominee Indian Reservation and stay at their casino.
We have never traveled in that part of the US. Looks a lot like Ohio.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of parallel to the street sites. A bit strange if you ask me.
Hope you got to tour Lambeau Field...a very special place and tour:)
ReplyDeleteFirst summer we were Full-time we didn't make reservations and had trouble. So now we make reservations from Memorial day to Labor day
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine parking an RV parallel. That could definitely be a problem. Those ribs look yummy.
ReplyDeleteWe don't like reservations either, but don't go south in the summer. But we do like to reserve Thanksgiving, Christmas and presidents Day in the winter. other than that we just wing it or boondock. Most of our parks are free or $10 a night or the desert free, and we love the desert.
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