Best Tent Camping near Marion, WI

Just off the White River, rafting just down the road. Boulder lake is clear and cold. There’s beach area, tent sites, tv sites with a few electric sites. Miles and miles of trails. We go in October, less bugs, very quiet.

The tent sites at this camp ground are in the back of the campground located in the woods! There is a small pond with in the campground which you are able to swim in, kayak in and go frogging in! A play ground is present and the owner is wonderful! Very friendly place!

Stayed for the first time at this campground in July and loved it. We stayed on a tent site, it was huge and had electric. I love that the campground is right on the lake and there’s quite a few amenities for people who boat. It is pet friendly and the bathrooms are quite a walk but clean and hot water is available.

Great tent site on water, near excellent shower bath facilities, swimming and fishing right from site.   This is only park that is w host in national forest, many others are available that do not offer discounts for senior and disabled w america beautiful federal pass this one does allow.  With all amenities.  W in forest there are many parks and dispersed camping as well.

Campground is adequate, it has a functioning shower house and private spots. I used a primitive campsite and it cost me $30 ($15 if your from WI). That was on top of the $11 non resident park entrance fee. So $41 for a primitive tent site, $47.50 if you count the bundle of firewood I bought from them. So yeah, keep that in mind if coming here as a non resident. I’m sure there are cheaper places nearby.

The park itself is beautiful, and the trails are nice. The tent sites were on the smaller side and kind of close together. The park ranger was good-natured and patient when we accidentally set up on the wrong site.

Make sure to store your food correctly! The two sites beside us were ransacked by raccoons all night long because they left their supplies out. Three raccoons came to smell around our picnic table as soon as we zipped up inside the tents but left quickly after not finding food.

This campground is right on the Ice Age Trail and a nice place to stop off during an extended hike.

There are not that many sites available here and most do supply electricity. More people tent camp here rather than RV camping. There are pit toilets but no shower house although there are water spigots for drinking water. The sites are closer together than some campgrounds but it's not like a city block of camps like some KOA's I have camped at. The night time temperatures dipped in the low 30's in the middle of May when I was there. The campground attendants were on site twice a day to sell firewood and collect camping fees. The DNR rangers do patrol the campgrounds on a regular basis. There is places all along the river to fish and I was told the fishing is good, however I did not have very much luck when I was there. The campground firepits with cooking grates were OK and the wooden picnic tables are worn, but there is level ground for pitching tents.

The scenery and hiking along the river and on the Ice Age Trail is great. If you had better luck fishing than I did this would have been a great camping weekend. Bring warm cloths and a great sleeping bag.

The campground is part of a larger park. There are multiple playgrounds, tennis courts, splash pads and even an amphitheater and ice rinks within the park.

There is a lot of traffic during the day from park visitors. The evening is mostly quiet, but with traffic noise from the outside of the park streets and occasional loud vehicles that can be disruptive. Morning was largely quiet as well.

The campsites themselves are small — if you have a camper there’s not much room outside. Even the tent spaces are small.

There are no open fires allowed - which didn’t bother us given it was just an overnight stop. You can use grills etc though.

Being a city park it is quite well lit - which has its pros and cons. The back left corner where the nonelectric tent sites are seems to be one of the less bright areas. We slept fine with the rain cover off.

There is a 2 day minimum for online reservations. That’s not required for walk up self registration so you can do one day as a walk up. Self registration has a 3 day maximum.

There is a bathroom/shower for the campers. As a walk up registrant you will have to contact the phone number on the board to get the code. Not sure if online registrations get it in the email. There are other bathrooms (no showers) that are not locked that are a further walk into the park though.

Overall it was a nice place to stay over spending $100+ for a hotel room on a quick overnight on our way further north.

On the Wisconsin River, there are four “loops” of campsites, with some on the river side of the road and some off the river. The main RV loop looked crowded, but it is also where the very clean bathhouse is located. There are restrooms on the other three loops, but they are not as updated as the main bathrooms and bathhouse in the RV loop. Most of the tents were put on the sites around the ballfield which is across the street from the river. The good thing about that is that the dust from the ballfield seemed to keep the deer flies at bay, which was not the case on the riverside sites. It’s a good thing the road is not too busy as you have to walk along the side of the road to get to the shower house from the other camp loops. There is a nice dock that is a good spot to watch the sun set over the river if you can stand the bugs.

Campground Review

High Cliff is a generally wooded and shaded campground on a cliff overlooking Lake Winnebago. The sites are average to above average size, with a good mix of electric and non-electric sites. We are tent campers and the ground was pretty flat and there was a good spot for our tents in our site. Our site was nice and spacious with a good fire-ring that had a grate that rotated. Typically I use an adjustable tripod grill, but since was a rainy weekend, it was nice to be able to not have to get that out. The one thing about our site(and the campground in general) in the rain was the mud. Since it is heavily shaded there isn't really any grass, so the ring forest floor soil turns mucky and muddy.

There is one main flush toilet/shower building in the campground, and a bunch of pit toilet buildings. The pit toilet buildings had some issues with the lights in some of them, but the shower/flush building was mostly clean and not too far away. There is also a really nice playground nearby.

Within the park are plenty of hiking/biking trails, a lookout tower, and there is beach access. The beach/water is definitely swimmable, but this isn't the most beautiful beach for swimming. When we were here, it was cool and rainy, so the most we did was put our feet in the water. There isn't much sand, but there are large grassy areas.

The weekend we were there a local theater group happened to be performing a minimal version of Romeo and Juliet. It was awesome.

Product Review

As a Ranger for The Dyrt, I get products to test from time to time, this time I got to test the Wenzel Ivanhoe 6 tent.

I've owned a bunch of tents throughout the years, but mostly they were small backpacking size tents. We have use a large 8-person Cabella's tent for the past 9 years for car camping, but it is time-consuming to set-up, so we thought the Wenzel Ivanhoe 6 would be a nice complement tent for us.

The Ivanhoe is part of Wenzel's "Tribute" collection, with a retro-inspired design. The Ivanhoe reminds me of my parents' old canvas tent. The Ivanhoe is a single-walled house-shaped tent made of weather-treated polyester and taped seams. It held up really well in the rainy weather we had camping and there was just one small area that the seam tape failed: a"troubleshooting" tag that hangs down inside the tent.

What I like:

• The single pole design is simple and quick to setup

• There is good airflow with the large screens on the doors and the two side windows; The rear vent is a nice touch

• It has a great look and it well made

• It actually fits in the bag it came in

What I don't like

• The top peak vents don't really work

• There was a slight leak by the tag (I'll use some seam-sealer to fix this for the future)

• Since it isn't freestanding, there are a lot of guy lines that are easy to trip over in the dark

For a sub-$200 tent, this tent is awesome. It's easy to set up and looks great. It is a simple design that is spacious and comfortable for 3-4 people. It did great in rainy weather. I definitely recommend this tent for for those looking for a car camping tent around this size and want to spend less than $200.

Bagley Rapids Campground is located in the Lakewood- Laona District of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, which is about as far South as the Forest goes. This makes Bagley Rapids Campground the perfect spot for a quick weekend trip from surrounding larger cities. It's roughly 2.5 hours away from Madison and Milwaukee and just over an hour away from the Green Bay area. 

If outdoor recreation is your thing, this is the perfect base camp. The campground entrance is right off the ATV / Snowmobile / Horse Trails which connect to thousands of miles of trail systems all throughout the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I've stayed here 5 times in the last two years and frequent the local logging roads on my Dual Sport motorcycle. I'd say over 1/4 of the spots are actually located on Bagley Rapids, a very clear, crisp refreshing spring fed river that runs around the campground. It's great to wade into and enjoy after a hot day hiking and exploring trails. 

A couple miles from the campground is nearby Mountain, WI where you can get basic groceries, gas and a great bar burger. Within 30 minutes you can be in the smaller town of Wabeno, which is home to some of the best ATV trails around and also has a very cool old style downtown.

The sites are a mix of tent and RV with some really great spots with some elevation that back down into the river. It's always been peaceful during my stays and never gets loud and rowdy.

As there isn't a beach, small children should stay out of the river due to it's strong current, so this might not be the best choice if you're going purely for the water.

The staff was great to work with finding a campsite on a walk-in. The campsite was very clean and read for us to set up our tent. The hiking and lookouts were breath taking

It was a bit chilly to enjoy the lake unfortunately, but the hiking is amazing. There are great rock outcrops for bouldering and exploring. All over just beautiful. Definitely one of my favorites in Wisconsin!!

Great place to explore with the fam. Hike the trails to see pieces of Wisconsin history throughout. Some trails on the Ridgeline offer vista views and moderate inclines that add to the adventure. There's plenty to do from fishing to hiking mountain biking lookout towers and parks .

This campground is right on Jack Lake and Game Lake. There are a bunch of trails right in and around the campground, as well as opportunities for canoeing on Game Lake (there is a canoe you can just use for free). The Ice Age trail, the 1000 mile trail that goes throughout Wisconsin, also passes right by the campground.

This park is overly crowded with campsites. There’s not much privacy between the sites. It is very noisy loud and you hear all the conversations from other campsites. They also seem to attract young party crowd and it’s loud through most of the night. The ground was difficult to put tent stakes in as it was very hard. There is great hiking as the Ice Age Trail is part of this park. They do have events for kids on the weekends and some great playground so would be great for families!