Best Campgrounds near Oakland, IL

Our first night, we arrived just at dusk. We set up right by the water. Mind you, we have a tent. The host asked where our Rv was, and I clearly marked that I had a tent. We woke up the following morning to find the lake is actually a large pond, 10 ft deep that is stocked every 2 years. Okay, I'm thinking the fishing would be good, even out on the boat, NOPE. MOSS EVERYWHERE! Raw sewage next to our camp site in the lake, the lake is filled with moss and black sewage overfill also. They packed the campers and tent within 10 to 15 feet if you were lucky of each other. Some of the parents were out of control, to the point the camp host even told us he wasn't a babysitter, but neither are my own two children. The lack of parenting really surprises me. We were fallowed by the host and workers on many occasions till the troubled parents came with their children. Needless to say, fishing sucked, do to moss even in the middle of the pond. Would have been nicer if we could have caught something, other than trying to pull other people's children out from in front of a MOVING RV!! And we weren't stacked on top of one another. Extremely crowded, stalker weird employees, they do not offer firewood or ice. They do offer an overcrowded experience, moss filled fishing, and free babysitting at other campers expense. We even asked multiple times if we could move spots, even if to primitive, we were told no, they were all booked, yet the spots remained empty. WILL NEVER BE BACK! If we didn't live 3 hours away, my husband even said we would have gone back home.

This park is just other-worldly.  We loved it.  We hiked Trail 3, which has the ladders, and  parts of trail 10, 4, and 2.  Trail 10 was nothing special but was relatively flat.  It was pretty crowded but people were respectful.  

As for our campsite, it was really nice.  We had site 94, which was right next to the bathhouse.  It had almost a whole extra campsite's worth of space next to it for my kids to run around.  It also had a tree for shade and was nice and level. 

The bathrooms were okay.  They were older but seemed to be fairly well maintained.  The only complaint I had was that there wasn't enough counter space to set down items for getting ready, but that is minor.  

Overall, wonderful park.

We arrived later in the afternoon and it was a little tricky to get to a spot. They have had a lot of rains lately. We did find one that was a little bit more open for Starlink. But if you want treed sites there are beautiful spots for that. The people here are very friendly and it has 50, 30, and 110 outlets and water at the site with a dump station by the bathrooms and shower house. The bathrooms and shower house are pretty simple but available there is a train that runs about a block and a half away, but I love that so it was a very enjoyable stay.

This campground was reasonably priced, had clean facilities and quite unusual and intesting hiking nearby. There are multiple trails and some quite challenging ones. No water hookups at the site but all except the "youth sites" had 110, 30, and 50 amp power. I was able to charge my ev without issue. Sites tried from all concrete to a dusty dirt and rock tent area, and all had old wood picnic tables. While the hiking was incredible, the maps of the trails were poor and not up to date, with some trails not on map at all. On one trail part of it went through box canyons up an active, though trickling, stream bed.