Richard Bong State Recreation Area — Attraction in Town of Brighton

This is my first bad review of any place. I have never been treated badly enough to actually leave a bad review, well there is a first for everything. We just camped here this past weekend and we had a horrible first day. We got there about 4pm. No one was at the entrance areas so we put our money in the drop box for paid parking. We got to our campsite and what little bit of gravel they had they considered it a "parking spot" for two cars. One car can barely fit over there. We parked on the gravel and one of our tires barely was on it and we got stuck in the mud. Someone had to pull us out. On top of that, the site that I paid for online said that the campsite was lightly grassy. I can assure u there was not one bit of grass. ALL MUD. It even got worse when we woke up and there was wet mud everywhere. The people who stayed with us didn't even want to stay for the next day that we paid for so they packed up their stuff and tried to leave. At the end of leaving they tried to turn their big Rav around in the small gravel area and went down the mud by accident and got stuck in the mud. The next day we tried to go out and look around to see what else the campsite had to offer and saw a "beach". Well, at a campsite where you are allowed to bring your dogs, I would assume there would be access to bringing your dog to the beach as well. Nope. No dogs allowed over there. So we decided to go walking around the campsite to see everything with our dog. After we were headed back I noticed a tick on my husband. Then I went to look at our tiny dog and saw like 5 ticks all in his fur. I tried to rinse him off with water and found a few more ticks. This was ridiculous. So, we went back to the campsite when we thought we got all the ticks off. The rest of the next few hours were fine. We noticed though that all these other campsites had so much grass and a bigger area while ours had flat out wet mud. I looked online to see if we can switch sites and saw that they charge u for that. We decided to go see the check in area and talk to someone but yet again, no one was there. So we stayed at our spot. We ended up leaving at 3 am due to it being extremely cold. Then today comes and I get a call saying that we need to come back out and fix the area where our friends got stuck in the mud. They told us it was destruction of property and that they could issue us a $200 citation. Wow. That's all I got to say. So I told the lady on the phone that maybe she should change her description of the campsite from lightly grassy to mud and she should also realize how big her "parking lot" is. It's a tiny space of gravel big enough for only one car not two. The other campsites seem to have way more room to park their cars and spread their tents out, but not us. My husband told the lady that he would go out their and fix it even though they have people out there that should fix it. Not to mention we found more ticks on our dog when we got back home. The lady gave us a number to call to get a refund. I can just say that my rating would have been atleast a 3 if they wouldn't of called us up and started this huge mess. I was very dissapointed with the mud and what they gave us but to turn around and treat ur customers like dirt who paid for a site that was beyond terrible, I just don't know how u can treat people like that. I recommend people to Not camp here and if you do check the sites out in person before you camp so you don't have any surprises when you arrive. Also to add in with all of that, the bathrooms are beyond disgusting as another...

Avoid at all costs. Drive another hour. Find a new state. Camping in a Walmart parking lot is better. Wisconsin doesn't want you camping here, and they have gone to excessive lengths with their fees and enforcement to prove it.

Worst mosquitos of any park I've ever visited. Cloud of them hovering around at all times despite deep woods repellent. Infiltrated the truck and the camper. Constantly buzzing your face and ears.

Very expensive for out-of-state travelers. $15 fee added to site reservation, then they want $16 per vehicle. Your $38 electric site costs $69. This is NOT disclosed as you make your reservation unless it's buried somewhere obscure. False advertising? Maybe not, but we felt tricked.

Bathrooms are clean-ish but severely outdated and, yes, full of mosquitos. Toilet paper is the standard 0-ply type you find at most parks if that's important to you

The campsite itself was pretty nice, mostly level, and separated from nearby sites by thick underbrush and small trees. It feels pretty private. They say you can park two cars here with your reservation, but that's misleading. The sites do not have room for two cars and they're very careful to note explicit rules for not parking on the grass. The gravel that's there for parking is one car wide and the site was barely deep enough for a 17-ft camper and a pickup truck.

Lots of birds, rabbits, decent bike and hiking trails. The nature center was closed but looks nice from the outside.

Lastly, the lake access. It's there in that there is access to water, and you can kayak it if you want. You just have to brave the stagnant water, thick algae cover and, of course, even more mosquitos. This is likely their breeding ground, so expect extra annoyance on the water.

This park is probably fine for a day visit if you're local. Bring that insect repellent or come in the winter, and if you're out of state, bring wads of cash (oops, credit cards, there were no staff in the park to take cash. And you better hope you have AT&T, because Verizon and T-Mobile don't have signal). Wisconsin doesn't want out of state travelers, and they prove it by their fees.

A friendly DNR agent who stopped by to Tell us we didn't have the correct pass despite the fact that we had purchased the correct pass online and had proof of it explained that the higher fees were to deter the homeless. I'm sure this doesn't need to be said to most of you here, but higher fees deter everyone, and it's stupid to make it so expensive that it's cheaper to stay in a private campground with full hookups and no entry fees than to come to a state park apparently designed to breed mosquitoes and suck up money along...

Absolutely horrible experience. We came in at 9:45 PM and the office was already closed. We grabbed a selfservice envelope and went and found a site. We set up out tent and showered and went to bed at 11:00 with intentions to wake up at 5:00 to get back on the rode. At 12:45 AM we wake up because our dog is growling and we hear someone on our site, and it sounds like they are trying to break into our vehicle. I unzip the tent to find a park ranger 10ft from my tent looking through the windows of my car with her flashlight. She says, "oh, I hope I didn't wake you, I see that you have a filled out selfservice envelope on the dash, I'm just just going to leave a courtesy reminder on your windshild." My husband works as a park ranger in Michigan, he would never go on someone's site at 12:45 AM unless they were causing a disturbance. We could not get back to sleep until 2AM we were so upset. In the morning when we got up we found that the "courtesy reminder" was a violation notice and added a $5 surcharge to our stay. We had also accidently set up on an electric site (no one was around at 9:45 to help but they are at 12:45 to wake us up) so what we thought was going to a $34 bill (non electric for $23 and a daily permit for nor residents at $11) became $49 ($33 for electric site $11 for a day pass and $5 surchage). $50 to sleep in a tent for what ended up being 4.5 hours. We called and talked with the park supervisor that afternoon and he stated that it was their policy to issue violation notices after the office had closed and that although unfortunate the Ranger woke us up, she was following their policy. So where was she between 9:45 and 11 when we were still awake? Also we have camped in state parks in about 10 different states and my husband works for one in Michigan and we have never heard of a policy where you can't drop the envelope in the morning, stop at the office in the morning and pay, or have a park ranger stop by the site in the morning. What a joke of a policy. Some outstanding customer service there. We will not be back to Wisconsin state parks (too bad for them because we come often for being 4 hours away.) I would recommend avoiding camping here at all costs. Oh and the bathroom were not clean, maybe the park ranger should spend more of her time doing that instead of...