Shades of Sherwood Campgrounds

The Pond and some of the other activities are fun, don’t get me wrong, but the service and the owner’s greed are just too much. And the business organization is just horrendous.
I called probably five times over the course of a business week, leaving a voicemail early on. I never got a response. Not like they didn’t call for a few days, like they just never called. I finally got a response when I emailed.
The reason for the attempted contact: I wanted to come visit my family and wanted to inquire over any fees. $ 5 visitor fee per person. Okay, that makes sense. More people, more fees. I had also asked, however, how much it would cost to put up a tent on my family’s campsite in case I had a few and didn’t want to drive home. They wanted to charge me the entire cost of renting a site, PLUS the visitor fee. i.e. It was more expensive to spend a night on my family’s site than to rent my own site. Whaat?
My family tried to head to a nearby town to go tubing down nearby cannon river but apparently it was college weekend or something, so we went back to the site since they offer river tubing. 90 minute wait for a tube with no organization system. There’s a signup, but it doesn’t matter. So much for the hidden gem this place used to be.

If you like drunks, loud music, feeling unwelcome, lots of seasonal units driving golf carts driving by looking at you like your animals in a zoo, and giving lots of your hard earn money away this is the place for you.

Great campground not too far from the cities!
Decent prices, especially if you split with some friends, and they aren’t overly picky about how many tents are up on one site.
Lots to do there– mini golf, a heated pool, peddle cars, a bouncy thing, tubing on the river, and arcade and The Pond.
The Pond is a man-​made swimming hole that is the best place to swim south of the cities.
It’s ridiculously deep, has excellent limestone and clay sand that is both fun to lay on and build sandcastles with. There is a shallow end for the kiddies, and several inflatable playthings in the water, including a 2 story slide you have to climb up to get to, a sort of see-​saw thing, a trampoline, and several «floating islands» you can just lay on. They are super relaxed with the rules– just don’t jump off the top of the slide– and you can bring in your coolers and booze, just no glass.
The campsites are ok sized, fire pits are really deep so you can get some good-​sized fires going. The camp store sells everything you would ever need, including slushies and nachos.
Really family friendly place, they do hay rides and bingo night, and other activities.
ONLY complaint is that the activities above (mini-​golf, The Pond, etc.) cost extra and you have to buy a wrist band to partake– a daily band good for 1 day for $ 10 or a weekend band good Fri-​Sun (I think was $ 20 per person.) I think they should have a «Family Pass» option, as it got rather expensive for our family with 4 adults and 5 kids. Also– they didn’t make it super clear when we checked in that we would need the wrist band to do these activities, so a couple of the kids went right over to the pond and then came back all sad because they couldn’t get in.

My family and I decided to camp close (about an hour) so we went to SHADES OF SHERWOOD this weekend — we should have just camped at WE Fest! Look, we’re experienced campers, have owned a number of pop-​up campers and travel trailers and have camped at NUMEROUS campgrounds around MN, Iowa and WI — this place ranks in the bottom 2! DON’T CAMP HERE! Now, before I go on a tear about this «Hillbilly Hideaway» you should know there’s some PROS, first the «wipeout course» (although NONE of the floating obstacles move or shoot water etc. «as-​seen-​on-​TV») is enclosed in a clean, sandy pond (albeit across the gravel road from the campground). There are no lifeguards, just a few campground employees with an obnoxious bullhorn. The pond DROPS off dangerously (I swam in it and it has to over 20 feet deep) — which is unnerving for parents with young kids, although life jackets are provided. That said, many of the «resident» campers tend to drift over on their golf carts (I’ll get to these folks in a moment) from the campground loaded down with blue Budweiser cans, where they wade into the pond (standing or sitting in camp-​chairs) and drink the day away; oddly I never saw too many of them leave and use the port-​o-​johns located outside the fence-​line. On a hot day the pond area quickly becomes crowded and annoying; I recommend just buying a day pass WITHOUT camping and going on a weekday. There is another MUCH SMALLER concrete pool that has seen better days inside the campground, but on a hot day campers are packed in like sardines and the Budweiser flows like… well…Budweiser. We paid $ 20 extra for each child so they could use the extra «amenities» (the Wipeout course, mini golf, the jumping bag-​thing-​in-​the-​ground, etc.). Now, here are the CONS — you’re getting CONNED! This rundown campground straddles farmer’s fields and chocolate colored water accessed (poorly) on a gravel road. You CAN go tubing, but the water quality is suspect at best. As a «WEEKENDER» camper, you cannot use a golf cart in this camping Stephen King nightmare; HOWEVER the Blue-​Bud-​Can-​resident-​Campers can own and operate these obnoxious machines. Most full-​time residents are relegated to the cool shade of the outer rim of the campground; weekenders are mostly confined to the hot, flat and often messy middle areas. The full timers on their obnoxious golf carts zoom to and fro (*well past the posted 5mph speed limit) — Budweiser cans NEVER far from reach — at ALL HOURS (late at night and crack of dawn — REGARDLESS of what management weakly enforces). These unfriendly residents (not many will smile and wave) cruise past weekend campsites (or through them) gawking at the «outsiders» with unbridled curiosity; like seeing a Panda in a zoo for the first time. On two separate occasions my two older kids told me they were almost struck by these golf-​cart-​morons. The full-​time residents roar past in the daytime and the evening in a wash of dust (gravel roads), headlights and music blaring with little courtesy for their fellow temporary camper, American flags (or the occasional pirate flag) rippling from behind their machines as their ample bottoms shift in cracked leather bench-​seats, cigarettes dangling limply from fingers, eyes red from one too many Blue-​Bud-​Cans with horns beeping, cackling laughter and drunken hoots. The Mini-​Golf course is a mess! Simply it’s run down and pathetic. The garbage dump (across the road) is poorly maintained and overflowing — as is the dump site. The staff either does not care or… well…just don’t care (one staffer decided to use the empty space next to us to clean his golf cart) — so just drive past, throw your cash out the window and keep going, you’ll be better off — and let the Blue-​Bud-​Can-​residents KEEP this pathetic campground.

We went memorial weekend. The pros– close to a city, shade trees, close to river. The cons– lots of activities cost extra, if u have air conditioning it costs u extra, quiet time not enforced well, run down mini golf, pay showers that are scalding hot