Best Campgrounds near Merrimac, WI

The good- nice shaded playground under old growth trees and along a river. Nice trails in the area and good fishing. Convenience to everything you could need in Madison. You can walk or run down a couple of quiet streets and get to a river trail that goes for miles. The Big lake that this river attaches to looks nice for fishing or paddling. The bad- the road noise is VERY loud all day and night- not peaceful. Sites are close together and not private. No water or sewer. The river is full of algae. Not much to do in the park besides playground.

First, it’s a really nice location, well laid out, well-maintained, with very generous spaces, nice features (swim pond with a huge bouncy float, etc), and the hosts seem nice.

However, The Dyrt lists them as having sewer hookups and they DO NOT have sewer at any site on the campground, though they do offer a pump-out service to come by and empty your tanks (for a fee…$15, I think). The error is presumably The Dyrt’s fault, and the campground does have the usual free dump station.

My big gripe, though, is the bathrooms. There are exactly TWO unisex showers and FOUR unisex “restrooms” (sink and toilet), with one shower and two restrooms currently “closed.” The facilities are perfectly fine and clean, but that leaves one shower and two restrooms for the entire campground, and the shower is PAY.

A quarter gets you three minutes, which isn’t much, except that campground is charging similar prices as other full hookup campgrounds we’ve stayed at recently (around $60/night). It just cheapens an otherwise great place, to be honest.

Lastly, The Dyrt also says they have WiFi. They do, but there is a daily “per device” charge for it. It’s not a lot, but again cheapens the place. A charge of $5 per person for any visitors you have adds to this feeling (plus an additional $5/car the visitors arrive in).

It’s really a shame, because it’s a VERY nice campground in many ways, but the shower, WiFi, and visitor fees really irked me. And at $60/night and no sewer, this campground is a bit overpriced, IMHO. If you don’t care about WiFi, bathhouse, visitors or sewer hookups, it’s fantastic, but if you do, consider the above.

First off, I hate seeing reviews of parks and not stating which site someone stayed at. Because as tent campers, it's hard to see how the site is and if it will fit a tent. 

I had found a video of a gentleman doing a walkthrough of the campsite on youtube and i'm glad I found it! We had originally booked site 95 and on the video, he said it was quite the slope and it didn't look big enough for our campsite. I then switched our site to number 62. Wow, it is in a perfect spot! Walkways to the bathrooms and showers (yes they are pretty close) and the driveway was long enough for our car and our 12x12 canopy. It even had a grass area for our tent. Our tent is quite large, and it actually fit. The tent was slightly on the gravel but that's better than having no grassy area. 

The bathrooms were nice for what I saw of them. I just wish the bathrooms were warmer as they were not much warmer than outside.

You could also hear the highway from our campsite but honestly, to us, that wasn't a deal breaker. Being the first time out in the wilderness, it was white noise for me so I could fall asleep. 

I wish it was nicer out when we went because it was such a peaceful and beautiful campground. We ended up cutting our trip short because we weren't prepared for the weather and rain (we had a 4 month old and it was our first ever camping trip). We will be back again for sure!