For our fifth anniversary, we decided to go camping in Wisconsin. We decided on Roche-a-Cri, which is about 20 minutes north of The Dells.
The total cost for 2 nights of camping was $38, but you also have to pay for a daily parking pass, which is $10 a day if you are not a Wisconsin resident. We opted for the $35 pass which allows you to park in any Wisconsin campground for the rest of the year.
Roche-a-Cri has 41 non-electric campsites. The campsites are all in a wooded area, which is nice for shade. However, the shade provided nice cover for the hundreds of spiders that infested the entire campground. I am not scared of spiders generally, but this was literally a scene from Arachnophobia. After one night, our entire tent was covered with spiderwebs. Additionally, there were complex spiderwebs on the ground AND in the trees.
Just to make our trip even more exciting, the ground cover was poison ivy—not exactly my idea of a great time.
Our dog accompanied us on our trip, which seemed like a great idea until we found out he was prohibited from going on any of the trails in the campgrounds. No literature we received prior to our trip mentioned this restriction. It simply told us dogs had to be on leashes no longer than 8 feet.
The main attraction of the park is a 300 foot mound that takes 303 steps to climb. It's a nice sight, but you have to be fairly in shape to be able to make it to the top. The stairs are rickety and a little unstable. We were most worried about the ones that were marked orange with spray paint. It seemed to us that those stairs were "next to be replaced." Scary!
To top it all off, there were only pit toilets...which were also totally infested with spiders. This left us with the choice of having spiders possibly crawling on us or going in the woods with the possibility of being infected with poison ivy.
Needless to say, we cut our trip short and only spent one night under the stars. While the scenery was beautiful and green, we couldn't escape the creepy crawlies and had to pack our things and leave...if not for fear of being bitten ourselves...for fear our little dog would be!
We do not recommend Roche-a-Cri and will not return.