The Pampered Camper Campground at Carlyle, Il

In January of 1971 I moved onto the 45 acre property just north or Carlyle, Ill. This was basically a peninsula on the second largest lake in Illinois. The property was a former homesite that was torn down and the entire property was grown up in weeds nearly 5 feet tall. I moved there to design and construct a destination campground. For the fall and early winter I lived in my 2 room Sears tent with my shepard dog. Living with snow on the tent with the dog on the sleeping bag sometimes gave credence to the saying "a 2 dog night".

I purchased a tractor and brush hog from a local farmer and slowly cleared the entire property. Having drawn the basic design for the campground roads and camper pads I went to the local hardware store with my design for the Main building. They constructed the building with my supervision. I wanted a western design and it worked out well. Next was the purchase of another tractor with front end loader and rear blade and box scraper to put together the parking lot, roads and pads for the campers. I built drainage culverts under some of the spots in the roads from heavy 2" lumber from a local sawmill. This was months of enjoyable work and great sense of accomplishment seeing the completed results as it took shape. Eventually many truckloads of rock had to be applied to the roads and pads. Needless to say that in a deep rich field of dirt it took a lot of rock to create a hard enough surface for even the rock dumptrucks to drive on during the construction. Then the water and electric had to be installed on the campsites.

Finally, in 1972 the campground opened. We had game rooms, miniature golf ( that I designed and built with one of my partners help ), paddleboat rentals, a small store, swimming pool, and horseback riding.

In the winter when the campground was basically closed I and my children spent a lot of time with the horses, riding up the county road to a State Park.