Great Camping Near Chicago

After exploring Chicago and sleeping in a comfortable king size bed for a couple of days, we were back to our tiny trailer ways setting up camp at Camp Bullfrog Lake in Willow Springs IL.

This campground is a bit quirky, and they run things differently than other campgrounds where we have stayed.  Their online booking system is not easy to understand (we ended up reserving a tent site instead of an RV site) and they lock the entrance gate at 10pm (who does that?), so good luck getting to your site if you are out and about and get back after the curfew!  Fortunately, the tent site that we accidentally booked was just big enough to fit the Airstream.  The upside was we had a great site with an unobstructed view of the lake, the downside was we had to sacrifice sewer and electric hookups for the 3-night stay. Aaaand, we had our first snafu when setting up at camp.  When unhitching the Airstream, I lowered the tongue jack down onto the wood block as I always do, but this time something didn’t seem right.  Just as the hitch released from the ball head, I noticed that the wood block was starting to tilt and I knew that the trailer would fall off if we couldn’t lower it back onto the truck quickly.  I tried holding the tongue jack and yelled to Kandace, but the weight of the trailer was too much for me to handle and the tongue jack fell off of the wood block and smashed to the ground.  We’ve had worse things happen with our other trailers, so we brushed it off and thought “minor mishap, no biggie, just raise the hitch, get it back on the truck and start over.” Well, it wasn’t that easy. We raised the hitch as far as it would go, and it wasn’t high enough to get it back onto the truck.

What we love about the camping community is that there are so many friendly people who are willing to help or offer advice.  Within minutes, a couple of the neighbors came over to help us problem solve and get the trailer raised up and back onto the truck. First, we tried a jack and quickly learned that was not going to work.  What worked like a charm though was lowering the trailer onto our stabilizers then putting our plastic blocks under the tongue jack allowing us to raise the hitch high enough to get it back on the truck – we were back in business.  About 30 minutes later we were all set up and secure, popped a beer and celebrated 🙂

The wood block we had been using was old and a bit beat up with rounded edges from years of wear and tear, so we finally decided to toss it after this stop and have been using our square plastic stackable (and much more reliable) blocks ever since.

Out with the old….

In with the new….

Camp Bullfrog Lake is a relatively new campground with several tent sites alongside the lake and RV sites on the inside loop.  The grounds are really nice, the view is great, the bathrooms are decent and after being on the go for 2 straight days in Chicago we opted for some downtime and spent all our time at this stop chillin at camp.  I did a lot of fishing and Kandace did a lot of reading.

My biggest learning lesson on the fishing front came from one of the locals. I walked up to the dock near the front office with my rod and tackle box, asked the gentleman sitting on the dock if he minded if I joined him.  He invited me to take a seat, I baited my hook, cracked open a beer and waited for the fish to start biting.  The fish were biting alright, just not my line, my new friend “Ed” pulled in three catfish while I sat there wondering what I was doing wrong.  I asked him what he was using for bait….. “hotdogs” he said.  Now, I’ve been fishing since I was a kid and never have I ever heard of using hotdogs for bait!  So of course, I asked him if he minded if I could borrow one and give it a try.  He showed me how to roll it on the hook and instructed me to give it a gentle cast so the hotdog wouldn’t fly off the hook. My eagerness got the best of me as my first cast had too much whip on it and the hotdog flung off immediately.  I felt bad for wasting this newly discovered miracle bait but as I was reeling in my line, Ed was already cutting a piece of hotdog so I could give it another go.

This time a nice gentle cast and within 5 minutes I was pulling in a good-sized catfish.  Over the next hour I went on to catch a few more but it certainly came at a cost.  This was one of those moments where I was reminded that nothing in life is for free.  I soon found out that Ed is quite the talker and since he shared his bait, I felt obligated to listen.  I heard story after story about his fishing expertise, how he visited this lake as a kid, the many fights he has been in with bloody knuckles, knife cuts and how he lived to see the next day, how his father was a gambler and went out one day to buy the family a new car but came home empty handed as he lost the money playing cards to how he is the most amazing chef and cooks the perfect egg with no runny whites and no crispy edges. In case you didn’t know, that IS how to cook a perfect egg.  Who was I to disagree? I certainly wasn’t going to offer a different opinion. I was just thinking I needed more bait, so I better not break the flow of conversation.  Well, it wasn’t long before Ed pulled out his phone to show me all the amazing food he makes.  This tough guy with a raspy voice, crooked teeth, thinning hair and a muscle shirt was all about cooking amazing food and how he does it the best. Who would have known…..  It was entertaining to say the least.

As I mentioned earlier, the people we meet at camp can be so kind, helpful and resourceful.  One couple who had offered to help us with our set-up snafu came by later to chat with us about our camper and we got to talking to them about our trip and where we were headed next.  They offered a ton of advice and highly recommended that we make a point to visit the fingers lakes.  One of our stops later that month was just outside of Syracuse but with all the new recommendations we got from native New Yorkers with genuine New York accents, we decided we had to take their advice, cancelled our Syracuse booking and pivoted to Ithaca NY at the base of Cayuga lake (which I will cover on a future blog post).

Takeaways from this stop

• If you plan on camping near Chicago, Camp Bullfrog Lake is a convenient choice.
• If you need full hook ups, make sure you choose a site that is not next to the lake as those are tent sites that only have water and 110 power.
• There is a dump station on site that we used a couple of times to empty our external grey water tank.
• Chicago is only a 30-to-45-minute drive which makes for an easy day trip (just get back before they close the gates at 10pm!)
• The campsite gives each guest a free bundle of wood at check in.
• If you plan on fishing – snag a package of hotdogs from the grocery store – you can thank me later 😉

Cheers,

Tiny Trailer Trips Crew