Blackhawk Camping Resort

Our site was right across the driveway from the office, store and activity center. The place was a mad house on weekends with live bands and people whopping and hollering. If you are a heavy drinker and like a big party this is the place for you. If you like to sleep before midnight I don't recommend it. I have never seen so many people wandering around on golf carts in my life.To be fair there was a lot of flooding in the area and some of their sites where in a big puddle so maybe that is why we got the lousy parking lot site . Most of the sites are seasonal, which means there are a bunch of travel trailers with rooms and porches built on. Doesn't look like restrictions or building codes. The staff in the store seem nice when checking in and the cleaning people where polite. Some of the outdoor staff could use some customer service training.

This campground is part of RV on the Go, Encore, Thousand Trails, etc. - we stayed here free because of our membership. See the blog post for more information.

The staff was amazingly helpful when we arrived and that was after hours. We had issues with site IV56 because the power plug had been damaged and we could not level a motorhome here. A 5ver would have no issues. They moved us to IV53 and that was great.

This campground is primarily a weekenders campground, this is not a quiet rustic campground. The "IV" (a/k/a Indian Village) area is prone to flooding and is open with very few trees. The wooded areas are for seasonals.

This campground is easy to get to from the interstate and is well position from Milwaukee and Madison. There are numerous tourist things to see and do in a 1 hour area from here.

Verizon worked well because it had reliable up and down speeds with low latency, but AT&T had better download speed and poorer upload speeds with higher jitter.

AS22394 Cellco Partnership DBA Verizon Wireless
Down 19.09
Up 2.85
Ping 151.96
Jitter 26.55
Antenna No
Boosted No
Test # 224
Timestamp 2019-07-14 18:11:45

AS20057 AT&T Mobility LLC
Down 27.94
Up 0.17
Ping 163.00
Jitter 51.63
Antenna No
Boosted No
Test # 227
Timestamp 2019-07-15 05:37:57

My wife and I are experienced tent campers, but new to RVing -- COVID-campers, you might say. We bought a small travel trailer (21' single axel) literally one week ago and decided to stay at Blackhawk Camp Ground for our inaugural excursion. Keep in mind that we are completely new -- think of us as "baby RVers". So, the idea of going to a campground far enough away to continue to learn how to drive my vehicle towing a camper as well as setting it all up from start to finish on our own. Needless to say, we were pretty stoked!

First, understand that your enjoyment at Blackhawk will depend on what your idea of "camping" is. My wife and I enjoy visiting Wisconsin State and National Park lands where we can take our two dogs to hike, enjoy the landscape, have a quiet evening enjoying a cocktail, a fire, the solitude, and each other. Below provides a fair assessment of OUR experience. Again, depending on what YOUR camping preferences are, you may find Blackhawk to be the perfect place for your interests:

Check-In
Virtually everything was conducted online through their website (http://www.blackhawkcampingresort.com) and they offered a virtual check-in, and physical check-in no earlier than 2:00pm (we arrived on-site at 2:45pm). Upon arriving at the campground entrance around you'll see that you can't access the area unless you have a key code to open the front gate. Well, even though we did the virtual check-in we didn't get a code via email nor a camp site assignment. My wife continued to call the office number but it kept dropping to voicemail. She finally walked to the office from the gate while I waited in the vehicle. The issue was NOT the camp's fault...we didn't listed to the menu options. So, the moral of that anecdote is 1) you WILL always get their voicemail recording; 2) Press #1 and someone from the office WILL answer. We got our code, site assignment, and off we went.

First Impressions
The campground resembled more of a trailer park than an actual campground. The photos will speak for themselves, and perhaps my expectations were part of the issue? Lots of kids, golf carts filled with folks with their open containers (scoozies concealed what beverages were being consumed) while driving, music, lots of kids at the pool and the playground. Trailer park, yes...campground, no. In this time of COVID, I wouldn't expect people who are camping together to necessarily wear masks. But I would also expect people to keep their distance from strangers. I got the sense that no one at the campsite seemed concerned about spreading a communicable disease nor did they appear to be concerned about COVID, in particular.

Site Access / Setup
Our site, located in the section called "Indian Village" (IV-28), was a corner lot butted-up right next to one of their permanent cabin-like structures. The site has electrical and water hookup that worked reliably. The size of the site was larger than expected, but the ground undulated quite a bit. That said, my wife and I leveled the camper, setup the utilities, and by 3:30pm we had our chairs out and enjoyed our first beverage.

Camp Atmosphere
First, since this was the first time I ever backed in a travel trailer to a camp site, I admit it was pretty rough. However, the people camped at the site across the road (~ 10 yards away) helped and we appreciated it. People were generally friendly -- dogs galore! There were several vehicles with Illinois license plates, and a co-worker of my wife who lives in the area mentioned (on our way home, of course) that the campground is a place where people from Illinois typically come up to party.

Speaking of party, from approximately 6:00pm until the rest of the night/early morning, the campground was alive in full carnival form! My biggest issue is there was no sense that we had any privacy. Campers and motorhomes are on top of one another and in full view for all to see...I felt like I was in a fishbowl 100% of the time, including when my wife and I were in the camper! But all through the evening there was tons of activity --several kids riding bikes up and down the gravel roads, people still driving their golf carts, loud hair metal music, loud country music, loud talking, loud laughing, some yelling (inaudible, but I could tell they were words made by humans), and it just never stopped...I mean...n e v e r s t o p p e d!

My wife and I retired for the evening around 10:00pm and tried to get some sleep. Thankfully, the noise from the air conditioner in the camper drowned-out most of the noise, but several times during the evening and into the early morning, I awoke to the sounds of people in the cabin/trailers directly next to our site; the last time I awoke and hear people partying was at 4:37am. By 5:00am I awoke again and the dogs (two German Shepherds) needed to go outside to do their business. As I took them outside, it was so quiet you could hear a whisper. As the dogs and I walked toward the west-end of the road we were setup, I saw a site with its fire still flaming and a guy reclining in a zero-gravity chair, wearing a raincoat, completely passed out. Yup -- we really saw that.

Service
The people working at the site were very courteous. One positive is the camp staff have a black/gray tank pumping service, so no need to go to a dump station -- they go right up to your RV. The campground has a sheltered entertainment area (I'm sure that's where live bands play), pool, playground, store, and a highly visible camp patrol roving the grounds. So, I did feel the company was taking an active role in managing the property. So, if there were "Stars" awarded in the rating for overall Management/Service, I would rate them with a high 3 or 4 because it was apparent people were working there and constantly working the grounds.

Summary
Understand, my rating of Blackhawk Campground is NOT because I am angry or disgruntled. The silver lining is that for our inaugural RV camping excursion, my wife and I learned what we DON'T like. So for that, I am glad we experienced Blackhawk. After all, you have to have a clear understanding of what you enjoy and what "fits" your lifestyle. If your idea of camping/RVing is to be around as many people as possible in a type of rag-tag camp in full carnival fashion with an ostensible mission to drink, drink some more, and drink even more, then you may find Blackhawk Campground to be a good fit for you. Seriously, if you are into that experience, yo'll likely find the campground enjoyable. However, if you prefer to be in a more secluded campground where you have some privacy and hiking trails, nature trails, rivers, or other scenery, you may want to find a State park or some other camp ground.

We are thousand trails members and this park is ‘free’ with our package. Park is easy to get to, includes 1 pool, pavilion with band on weekend, food truck, playground, swimming and boating In lake. SO, lots of amenities! Originally we were staying 6 nights but we also work full time from home and need cell and data service. ‘Okay’ cell service and NO data service. Do not stay here if you need to work virtually. We enjoyed the atmosphere which is very busy on weekends and lots of party’s but the park is not well maintained, pool closes early, and lack of data service within park.

We intended to stay at Blackhawk Campground for a few days while visiting family in the area. Upon arrival at 2-ish, the office was closed. The sign said it would be open until 4. Staff person eventually arrived and we checked in. The site we were given was pretty much unusable. We have been RVing for over a decade and have never had this issue. We were unable to connect the water, sewer and electricity at the same time because the connections were too far apart. So we opted to just connect electricity and water. Too late, we realized they had no internet. Our fault on that one. But on the second day, they shut the water off due to contamination and had to "shock" the well. We would be without water for the next 36 hours. One of the permanent residents said that this has happened several times since he has stayed there. That did it for us. We left and stayed at another nearby campground. On the way out, we noticed another campsite that had the sewer connection in the MIDDLE of the gravel pad! Never again.

too pricey

Very nice, clean campground. Disappointed that there was no WiFi. It's October so there aren't many people here. Too cold for the pool but it looks very nice

Beautiful place! New playground, heated pool, activity center, and lake…kids had a blast. A great stop on our roadtrip!