Bluebird Campground / Rec Hall bar and grill - campground now fully open — Hotel in Town of Medary

Ok, get ready. I remember coming to bluebird campground in 1992, I made memories that we still talk about today. That being said I thought it would naturally be a wonderful place to bring my family to for the weekend. I could not have been more wrong. It started MONTHS before checking in....we tried to reserve a campsite online, only to find that was impossible. There was a link to make a reservation, however, that was inactivated. So my husband e-mailed and called several times. Finally he got a hold of someone who “took our reservation” and said we were “all set.” Fast forward to the Friday evening of check-in, we drove 1 1/2 hours with four very excited kids. My husband got out of the truck and attempted to hunt down an employee of the place to check-in. The employees were all found belly up to the bar. The lady informed my husband they had no reservation for us. However, not to worry, as there were plenty of open sites (first red flag)? She ASKED us the length of our camper (25 foot). Then assigned us to the end of a dead end dirt road....tent site. We drove down, unknowingly, only to find that this lot was totally unexceptable for our camper (tiny spot, no hook-ups). We then had to attempt to back out of this terribly managed dirt trail we were led down. I ended up having to ride my bike down to the bar (again that’s where the employees are located), and as calmly as I could explained to them that this was not going to work. They then apologized, nonchalantly, and assigned us to a different spot. We moved to the new spot, found the set up difficult and not convenient. We had to re-hook our camper back up and reposition our camper twice, we’re not green campers. So we get settled in and the kids get on their bikes to explore. 5 minutes later they come back saying the “swimming” pond was disgusting. I told my kid, “don’t act so spoiled, I’m sure it’s fine.” Later I rode my bike down and ultimately had to agree with her observation. The pond had a thick layer of slime and algae on it. Yuck. Hence not maintained. We rode around on our bikes for a bit and attempted to not take diggers on their poorly maintained roads. The next day the kids found a large water mat by the pond they thought looked awesome, so they moved it to position it into the water. At that time a snapping turtle 🐢 scared them as it was hiding under the mat). The turtle swam into the pond. Not safe. We hung around the camp until lunch then took the kids into town to Erickson’s pool, 5/5 stars. It was a great place to get away from the mess that was bluebird campground. We got back to the campground around 7pm, ate supper and sat by the fire before going to bed. Very few of the people we ran into at the campground were friendly, very few were sober ( and I’m not knocking drinking). I got up in the morning to get ready to get the heck out of there. We cleaned up our site and drove down to dump our sewer. The garbage bin where I took our garbage was OVERFLOWING, it looked as if it hadn’t been dumped all summer. The kids and myself went to the bathroom before leaving, the bathroom was disgusting. Dirty swim diapers, beer cans, the entire situation was just disgusting. Now let me say the ENTIRE time we were there we saw the owner (woman who said her dad had owned it previously) only once, at the bar, and that was on day one when taking our money. When checking out at 10am there was NOBODY at the desk, no workers in site. I couldn’t leave fast enough. The reason I gave this one out of five stars was because we did enjoy ourselves around the fire at night. So that was nice. The owner (woman) did mentation at check-in (only time I saw her), that they were working on adding to the campground, adding things every summer to better the campground. My advice to her would be to clean up what you do have already before adding anything else that you cannot manage. If you are looking for a good campground for your family, this is not the place. I tried to be as objective as I could here, so you...

I would rate it 5 stars if you had a camper and your own bathroom. We had a rooftop tent so it wasn’t ideal for us with no bathroom or shower close by our site. There were pretty icky port a potties everywhere which I didn’t use, we just rode our e bikes or drove to the bathroom at the bar which had very limited parking.

It was quiet so that’s nice in a tent setting and not near a major road with traffic keeping you awake.

Remember your quarters for the showers. 1 quarter gets you 2 mins in the shower. My husband wasted a bunch of quarters in the men’s because I guess the little lever was broken which activates the water. Perhaps it was user error so just a heads up they’re a little tricky.

If we were in our camper (which we opted not to bring this trip) and not in our roof top tent I would have enjoyed this site a lot more for its quietness. But not having a real bathroom close made it a lot less enjoyable in our situation. Would stay again in our camper and not a tent.

We didn’t come for Oktoberfest but it would have been nice to be able to ride our e bikes to down town La Crosse but the road in and out wasn’t very bike friendly. It was way back in the woods.

The women’s toilet paper got dangerously low and one stall completely out so wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring your own to...

This place is as natural as you can get even with people, pulling in huge rigs with their own showers and satellite TVs. All of that disappears into the beautiful landscape. Rather than having it look like a parking lot like some other campgrounds, campers are nestled into the woods. The strangest thing is that. There are no mosquitoes here. It’s so nice to enjoy a campfire without having to swat at mosquitoes all night.

This place caters to the children, which is the way it should be. There is a very well designed play area for the children with lots of activities. The kids had a great time doing the karaoke night.

Even though they don’t have a swimming pool, they have an artesian spring filled swimming hole. They have a very clean and comfortable lodge where you can find dart games and a pool table and a very excellent grill. We had the Friday night fish fry, which was one of the best I have eaten....