We planned a large family trip (5hrs away) to St.Louis Zoo and camping Friday and Saturday nights. Our group was 21 people, 14 adults and 7 kids, we had one pop-up camper and the rest were tents. I made the reservations by phone to the campground almost 4 weeks in advance. I was told that we would pay a group rate for the tent camping of $6.50 per person per night,(15 people) plus the pop-up. That was fine, so I made the reservations, gave credit card for pop-up site and again for tent camping, like you do at other campgrounds. Then before we even left for the trip I got my credit card statement and was already charged for one night on the pop-up and tents, never had that done before, usually have had them run the card when I arrive. Okay, that was fine. I figured out what each family was going to need to pay for the trip and had given them all their totals. First thing was campground looked pretty nice, then we seen the sign for NO CAMPFIRES! What is camping with no campfires! We planned on stick roasting hot dogs at night! Okay, we could live with that, weren’t real happy about it but would deal with it. Sat around about an hour just relaxing and then started setting up camp. The next few people in our group arrived and when the checked in to see where are sites where they were asked if they were scouts, they said no, they were with my group. The lady at the desk (owner) then showed them to our site. She pulled up in her golf cart, said to me that there was a problem with the reservations; she thought we were a scout group. I told her I didn’t know where that came from because as you could tell we didn’t look like a scout group. She then said she could give us the sites for that night at that rate but, the next night would have to be at a regular rate. I said okay, I would have to figure that out, after figuring it, it was going to cost an additional $50-60 if we took one of the tents down and stuck people in other tents. She then drove her cart through our camp site; stop by where we had a beer box sitting looked and drove off. Most of our group is well over the drinking age. Well we talked about it for a while and tried to look on online on our phones to see if we could find another campground close by (remember we are already half set up). She came back with the credit card slip for me to sign where she had credited back the one night and figured the next at the new rate. I asked her way we had to pay for their mistake and she just said we though you were a scout group. Everyone was pretty upset because we had budgeted X amount of money for the trip and now had to pay more for their mistake. My husband and I decided it would be a pain to take down tents and pack everything up and move to another campground (when all we wanted to do was have a relaxing fun trip) so He and I would just pay the difference. I went up to pay the difference and she did give us a little discount but, no apology, and it is still the idea that it was there mistake and we had to pay for it, that’s why we make reservations. As for the campground, it was pretty clean, pool was nice, the no campfires and quit hours 8pm – 9am (13hours) were very different. I would not recommend this campground and will not be staying here again. We do a lot of large group camp trips. We have done a once or twice a year trip to Wisc., for the last 6 years, that includes 40-60 people and have never had this kind of problem. Our age group for this trip was between 3 months – 55 years old. If you are a family that just likes to relax and have fun as a family, I would look for a different campground than this one. We camped here in a Tent.

Overall, I'd label this park as being "okay". If you just need a place to sleep, then it might work. We stayed here to visit family in the area and "break in" our camping season, taking advatange of a free night promotion for this particular weekend - stay Friday night, get Saturday night free. So the total cost for two nights was $44 instead of $88. Let me say that I can't imagine any scenario in which I would pay $88 to stay here for a weekend... it just isn't that nice. The staff was very friendly and sites were nice and level, but they were extremely close together with only a 5 foot strip of grass between sites in some places. And maybe this is more common than I realize, but this park does not allow campfires! I couldn't believe that when I read it in the long list of fine print handed to us at check-in; it does not seem to be stated clearly on their website, and the website logo for this weekend promo was a campfire drawing. I incorrectly assumed that fires would be common and plentiful throughout the park, as in every other campground I've ever stayed in. To me, the campfire social atmosphere is what gets RVers out of their rigs and away from the satellite TV and internet to actually spend time meeting one another. Instead, I rarely saw anyone walking around doing anything outside of their RV. Everyone was holed up with the shades drawn. It was kind of depressing, and made us NOT want to be there for any length of time. I would blame this on the early season time frame, but the park was almost full so that wasn't the issue. The park is not very easy to find when approaching from one direction (the way we came) and we drove past it at first, but there are huge signs when coming off the interstate from the other direction. Perhaps some equal signs on both sides of the entrance would be helpful. The grounds are right in the middle of a bunch of industrial trucking complexes that offer quite a bit of semi truck noise throughout the day. Pretty strange place for a landlocked campground, but the website explains that none of those companies were there when the place was bought by its current owners many years ago. Not their fault I guess, but unforunately it didn't make the stay any more enjoyable. There are some obvious permanent RV residents at the campground, with RV's surrounded by skirting and other indicators of non-mobility. That's never visually attractive as a weekend/vacationer, but part of doing business I suppose. The pool was not yet open for the season, but that was stated on the website so I knew in advance. Wifi was free, but handled through a 3rd-party company website and somewhat complicated to connect using an online coupon code. We also lost connectivity after about 60-90 minutes of use (maybe it's only free for that first portion?) but it wasn't worth figuing out the problem so we just didn't use it anymore. The playground is nice, and my kids enjoyed it during the hour or two each day when we were at the park. The rest of our stay was spent away from the park, and that was perfectly fine. We are looking for a southern Illinois camping home for family visits and a place to gather and relax, and have learned that this campground will probably not be the one. Due to the location and fairly high regular rates, we will likely not be returning. We camped here in a Motorhome.

An expensive place to park for the night. Located next to an industrial park. If traveling east on I-270, this is a great place to stop and beat the St. Louis morning traffic. No CATV. Great dog run and dog walking area. Front office person did escort us to the site. Quite park away from the main roadway. We camped here in a Motorhome.