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We are locally and written by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
And today we're welcoming slash preparing
to learn from Rachel of Lake Road Campground.
So Rachel, how's it going today? Hi.
- It's going great. - I'm excited.
'cause today in WISCONSIN we have beautiful weather,
perfect time of year
to talk about campgrounds in WISCONSIN. Yes, a
- Little stormy, but between the storms little,
- It's a little stormy. It's the best
- Time to go. Yes.
- So tell us the story. Yeah. What is Lake Road Campground?
- So Lake Road Campground is a 23 unit RV park
and it's located Intello, WISCONSIN,
which is about 20 minutes north
of LA Cross on the Mississippi River.
All right. So you can see the Mississippi from our
campground and we have two cottages that we rent out as well
and a little bathhouse.
And then you can bring your RV or we have a tent site
and come and enjoy beautiful tremolo,
the beautiful Mississippi River, lots of lakes, lots
of fishing, and nice fun. Yeah,
- It's beautiful.
And how long have you had it?
- We are going into our third season. Nice.
- Alright. And tell me,
did you start this from scratch or you bought
- It?
No, we bought it. Okay. We bought it. Yep.
So a family owned it before us
and really poured a lot of their hearts into it
and made it really beautiful.
And so they fell in love with campgrounds,
realized it's what they wanted to do.
So they purchased a much, much bigger campground
in a different part of, of the state.
And so they were looking for a family who would take it over
and love it as much as they did.
So we were very lucky to find them.
- So were you looking for a campground to buy?
- So it all began in Minnesota. Okay.
Okay. So follow me back
- To, so on the other side of the river. Yeah.
- The other side of the river, 20 minutes
north of the river.
My family planned a, my family's from the Twin Cities
and we're from the Madison area.
So we planned to meet Midway and do a camping trip.
And so we decided on Winona and
because we just love that area,
it's just beautiful along the Mississippi River Bluffs.
So we camped at a beautiful campground in
Winona, right on the river.
And I just like, that was it for me.
I was like, this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life.
I just wanna buy a campground right here on the river.
So then a year
or two later, I just randomly out
of the blue was Googling, you know,
our campground's for even for sale.
Like, how do I even find out?
And there was this little campground
for sale on the Mississippi River, 20 minutes south of
where I fell in love with the idea.
And I was like, no, like this can't be,
this can't be real, huh.
And I told my husband about it
and I was like, like, it's crazy.
Right? Like, it's crazy.
And so we reached out to them and we scheduled a meeting
and I just told my husband like, we'll just go,
- We're just gonna look at this
puppy. We're just gonna look
- At it on the way north.
I think it was for Thanksgiving.
So we were going home anyway,
so it's just a little out of the way.
And we go and we look
and oh my God, I just, I just fell in love
with it and it's just beautiful.
And so long story short, that was how we stumbled upon it
and we just kind of kept pursuing it.
And it was, it just kept like in the back of my mind,
wouldn't wouldn't leave me alone.
And there we go. We ended up doing it.
- I love the entrepreneurial mind where you're not like,
Hey, we should visit here more.
No. You're like, no, we should buy the campground.
- Yes. I always tell people I wanted to camp more,
but I couldn't afford like an RV and a truck to pull the rv.
So instead I bought a campground.
- That's funny how it's cheaper or maybe it's not. I
- Mean, can I make money?
You know, it pays for itself as long as it's cash flowing
- Revenue, cash flow.
I love that. Yeah. So tell me a story about the,
the sites I'm picturing campgrounds that have like,
the campers have wheels,
but they also have decks
and stuff like that. Yeah. So is it permanent?
- Sure. So good question. So since we're right on the river,
as a general rule, I only buy properties in floodplains.
- Oh, they're cheaper that way. My
- House is in a floodplain in black earth
and my property in on Mississippi's.
So since we're in a floodplain,
we can't have any permanent structure.
All right. So the cottages
and the bathhouse are grandfathered in,
but if we were to build, everything has to be removable.
And in our first season owning the campground, sure enough,
as you may remember, we had a lot
of flooding up in Minnesota
and that water comes down the Mississippi,
down the lock and dam system.
And so we did flood and we had to do a small evacuation
- Or a small evacuation.
- Just had to pull everybody out
for a couple of weeks and then bring 'em back.
So, all right. But yeah, so the, it's 23 sites
and so they're all movable.
We do have some that have little stairs that you can use,
but nothing can be really permanent.
Okay. Everything has to be kind of be able to move.
But it's a small, you know, I, I knew,
'cause I have a career and I,
we have a family here, we're two hours away.
So it had to be something small
and manageable that we could handle
and not feel overwhelmed.
And so it's very small.
It's like a acre and a quarter or something like that.
And, and everything is operated remotely.
People come and they check themselves in, they book online,
check themselves in through some photos that they send us
and we give 'em the code
for the bathhouse and things like that.
Our cottages, we use Airbnb and VRBO
and book on our website.
And then we just travel up
whenever we need to turn over those cottages.
So we clean 'em out and get 'em ready.
So it was low enough maintenance
and small enough manageable that
it has really turned into like, we go up every weekend
with our family, we do a little bit of cleaning
and maintenance and then we get to go kayaking
and we get to go canoeing and we get to do fun things.
- A fun business. Yeah. - Who knew? Yeah.
- So the people I mentioned, you have regulars that were
with the previous owners.
Yep. Was there any transition? Yeah.
Or people that just like, ah,
I don't like Rachel or something like that. I don't know.
- I haven't had that yet. But we, you know,
whenever there's a transition there is always,
they're feeling you out.
They don't know what your style's gonna be. Sure.
Or maybe, you know, maybe they weren't a fan of whoever was
before you and so they're gonna give you a chance.
You know, there's always that.
But we do have a large part of our sites are seasonals
and so they do purchase and stay the entire season.
So that also helps with stability. Wow. Okay.
And gave me a lot more confidence kind
of going into it again, cash flow wise.
And then we only have a handful of sites
that are turned over kind of nightly.
Okay. And so that gives me a lot of stability,
but making sure we have those sites filled is important.
And people love it though.
'cause we have folks who live there.
We had a family stay with us who were building their home.
And so they had, they sold their other house
and they were still building their new home.
So they stayed with us all summer with their kids.
- So they had a camper and
they just essentially lived there.
Yep. Yep. Oh, how clever is that? Yep.
- And then we have somebody else living there.
We get a lot of workers. So we have people laying fiber
and it's cheaper to have a camper
and take it with you to your jobs
instead of paying for hotels.
So we usually, every season we get a few of those. Wow.
So we've been able to accumulate kind
of like our steady income study folks who kind
of come down on the weekends and just camp and enjoy.
Then we have some workers and a couple people living there.
And then everybody else are the sort of overnighters
that come on the weekends. All right.
- Tell me a story about logistics. Yeah.
With the, the power, the water in the not so nice water out.
Yeah. So does each campsite have drainage
or Yeah. However that is.
- Yeah, it's a good question. So again,
'cause we're right on the river, we do
not have a dump station.
- Oh, you do not. Okay.
- We do not. Nope. So I don't have to mess with any
of the gray water or Blackwater stuff.
We have a service that comes around as many times
as we need, but they come weekly.
We're on their weekly route.
And if you need a pump out for your gray water tank
or black water tank, they come prob usually while you're
gone and they take care of it for you.
And by the time you come the next weekend,
your camper is nice and empty.
- So they're going site to site. Okay.
It's not some big tank or anything. Okay. Interesting.
And how big of a deal is that?
Are they a attaching a hose to a camper
truck? I don't aer it's
- A truck.
It's a truck. Yep. And so your camper, on the exterior
of your camper, there are your blackwater outlet
and your graywater outlet and then your freshwater outlet.
And so they come in
and they just hook up to your blackwater, your gray water.
Some people have the delightfully named honey wagon,
which is like an overflow for your, one of those two.
And so they'll clean that out for you.
So it's lovely. Lovely. Alright.
- So when you are living there, is there no such thing
as a 20 minute shower or anything?
Anything like that? Because
- Sure.
So we have a bathhouse
and the bathhouse has a water heater.
We have well water, so unlimited amount of water,
whatever much water you wanna use.
And we have a big water heater.
So generally we don't run out of hot water in the bathhouse.
We also have laundry. So we offer free laundry door seasons.
- Oh, I didn't even think about laundry. Yep,
- Yep.
So if you're living there, that was a really great addition
that we added because yeah, you, you
otherwise you're running to the
laundromat all the time and you need quarters.
So if you're living there, if you have a
seasonal site, it's included.
And so they just have to bring their own soap basically.
And so, so all of that is like at home, it's bathrooms
that look like a home bathroom.
But yes, if you're using your shower
or your toilet in your camper, you just monitor.
And if you know, you'll have to coordinate a pump out.
Maybe I'm gonna use the bathrooms, you know,
down the way a little bit instead
of using my camper one. Gotcha.
- Yeah. So you just, - Interesting.
You just make those choices yourself.
- All right. Yeah. And do they have water,
a spigot or so like that at each site?
- Every site has a, has a fresh, fresh water spigot. Yep.
Gotcha. Yep. And electric.
- Okay. - Yeah.
- Tell me, this is one of those things
that I've always been curious about since we're in the day
and age when people are mining
bitcoin, doing stuff like that.
And Yes. At a campsite, yes. There's power. Yeah. Right?
Yes. So do you ever have anybody come in
and just like, Hey, I got this camper full of servers.
- I like that business idea. No.
So they pay for their own electric?
- They do. They do. It's site by
- Site.
Each site is metered electricity. Wow. Yeah.
So if you pay for an overnight site, you're paying more
in a nightly sense than you would if you pay
for the entire season.
Then that brings the price down nightly. Okay.
So those folks pay metered electricity.
So they have unlimited water since it's just well water.
But the electricity is metered
and they pay for that based on the wat,
just the service price.
All right. And then, but the overnighters
of course don't, we don't meter them.
They just come in and enjoy.
- Gotcha. Tell me a story about the
fun, the stuff that they do.
Do you have park
or, yeah, I don't, is there some kind
of boat launch or something like that to the
- River?
Yeah, good question. So we are located
right along the river, but our property does not
have water access.
Okay. So I don't have to deal with any, you know,
boat intake or decks or, or anything like that.
So when you're there, we have a little dog run area,
so it's a fenced in an area.
The idea is where you can like let your dog out
and let them run around while you're like getting
set up at your campsite.
And then right next to that is a swing set and a slide.
So there's a little bit for the kids to do,
but we don't have, other than that,
we don't really have a ton to do onsite.
We really are sort of a nice, quiet, peaceful,
just like base camp for you to then go out
and go biking along the great river trail
or you know, go to the wineries that are nearby
or go do some fishing and things like that.
The public boat launch is just around the corner.
You can basically see it from the campground.
So very easy access to the river
and to the lakes that are just down the road as well.
- Nice. So when you went to look at this place to buy it,
what were you looking for?
Mm. Like I think of something, I wanna buy a motorcycle.
Look at the motorcycle. Is it leaking? Is it run nice?
What does it sound like? Yeah, yeah.
What kind of maintenance does it have with a campground?
Yeah. What are you looking at?
I, I don't know what you're looking for. Yeah,
- So it is a kind of a two part purchase
'cause you're purchasing real estate and
so it's a real estate purchase
and you're purchasing the business fair.
So there's both pieces.
So we definitely went through a lot of due diligence,
reviewed financials, looked at the business side of things,
and then did a full on appraisal for the property.
They looked for if there had ever been hazardous issues.
Right. Anything, when you're doing a real estate
transaction, you have a lawyer go
through your purchase agreement
and make sure everything looks good.
So definitely lots of, lots of that from a strictly sort
of like nuts and bolts perspective.
My husband and I, we, you know, said living two hours away,
it has to be low maintenance.
It has to be, you know,
it's not hard to turn over.
So a campsite can have two or three people go through it
before we need to go and dump the ashes out of the fire.
Right. Like, that's kind of the extent of cleanup.
Maybe if there's trash around, of course we would go pick
that up or sticks that have fallen in the wind or something.
But generally speaking, camp sites
are pretty easy to turn over.
So we knew if we were busy at work,
we have our kid, we've got two kids.
Right. We couldn't get up there. That would be okay. Okay.
And then the cottages, those do need to, you need to go in
and kind of manually turn them over,
but there's only two of them.
So that was important for us.
If we had more than that, that would be too much.
We, it's more than we wanted to do.
So we knew that it would be manageable.
And the previous owners were the ones
who really established the
self-check and self-checkout process.
All of the online reservations and everything.
And when we talked to her, she said, you know, you can,
you can operate this whole thing remotely.
Nobody has to be here. Huh.
So we have cameras, you know, we're, we're monitoring
and we have the cameras on our phones and things
and we can always see what's happening.
And everything's very secure.
But it's, and it's in a residential area,
which is also really nice.
It's quiet, it's peaceful.
You know, families live up the road.
There's a restaurant right there, it's very close
to the boat launch and the lock and dam.
And it's very, it's, you just walk right into town
and you can go eat at the
restaurants and there's supper clubs.
So it's just sort of the perfect, it's not
so remote that you feel at risk.
It's still very much part of the community.
It's in the village of Tremolo, it's
- Oh, nice.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if someone's like, Hey,
we need some marshmallows, it's not like, oh,
that's three hours away.
- No, not at all. You'd walk right up the road.
We've got a Dollar General just up the road.
- Of course. Right. - I mean, lacrosse is 20 minutes away.
So we, we run to Menards all the time and get Sure.
Get stuff, you know, so it's, it's lovely having
you feel remote and it feels you're in the woods.
'cause there's lots of mature
trees and the rivers right there.
And you can hear the barges
and the trains go by like, it's very beautiful and serene.
But anything you need is within
walking distance or a short drive.
- Gotcha. Tell me a story about the appraisal,
because appraiser is typically gonna look at
for real estate anyways, they're gonna look at comparables.
Don't know how many campsite change hands
that often in the lacrosse area. Sure,
- Sure.
So it is an interesting industry,
but there is, once you get into the camping industry in
WISCONSIN, and probably across the nation,
but especially in WISCONSIN, it is its own in like it's
self-contained industry.
So there are your bank people, your real estate people.
Right. Your legal people.
There are the people who know the industry.
- Oh, okay. - Yes. Yeah.
So once you get hooked up with them, you,
you join what's called Waco,
which is the WISCONSIN Association of Campground Owners.
It's our statewide what? It's our
statewide trade association.
And they're phenomenal. There's
- A trade association for everything. Yeah. My goodness.
- Yeah. And they, it's a very well run Okay. Organization.
Well that's great. They do wonderful work.
And so if you go to their convention every year
you meet all of these people, you meet the bank people
and you meet the real estate people.
And all of those people were the ones
who helped us along in our transactions. All
- Right.
Yeah. Did you know of Waco previous to buying? No, no, no.
- The broker who was helping them sell Yeah.
Is the broker who does most a lot of these transactions.
Oh funny. And so he connected us
to the organization and introduced us.
- Alright. Yeah. I'm gonna ask you this.
I don't know if you know the answer or not. Okay. Okay.
How often is there turnover of ownership of a campground?
- I don't know this, but my sense is lots
of campgrounds are family run, kinda like ours.
And so when I went to the Waco Convention last year, I went
to a young professionals group that they have
and I think I was the only person in the room
who didn't inherit it from their family
or like grew up on the campground.
Wow. 'cause their parents owned it. Okay.
And then this is their next generation,
they're learning how to kind of take over.
So a lot of the conversation was like,
how do I get dad outta the office so I can like do the work?
So it was really interesting. But yeah, just, I mean
that's a very small sample size,
but my sense was a lot
of campgrounds in WISCONSIN are family owned run.
- Yeah. That's, I wonder, I guess in my head,
the campgrounds that I've been to, it always seemed like
it's a family thing or there's some 90-year-old woman
behind the counter that you assume was born there.
- Been there. That's right. Probably. Yeah.
- And so I'm just trying to think, like, if I'm a broker
for this industry, I gotta make
that one sale every three decades.
Right. And if I don't make that sale,
- Well the other thing I will say is there's a lot, though,
a lot more than you realize,
again, until you're kind of in the
- Industry. Alright.
- So my family for this summer,
we're planning a big trip out to MONTANA
and I'm now, I know to like look
for the private campgrounds.
Oh. 'cause that had never crossed my mind.
'cause you can't get into the national PARK CIR. Right.
Like they're, they're full. Right. It's already too late.
I've waited too long. Yeah.
- You didn't reserve it five years
ahead or something. Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah. So I'm like, well, I'll just look
for the private campgrounds.
And there are so many, I mean,
there's just so many private campgrounds.
All right. Everywhere. Yeah.
- How do you determine if it's a good private
campground or not?
- Well, it's very similar to hospitality.
So when you're booking a hotel, you probably check reviews.
You're probably seeing how many stars they have, right.
On TripAdvisor or any of those booking sites.
And just like you use probably Airbnb
and vrbo, there are campground
specific apps that you can use.
And so they all have a rating system. You can leave reviews.
So it's, it's very similar to booking your hotel.
You're looking for something that people say is like, clean,
well kept safe.
Are you looking for something
that has a lot of kid activities?
Right. You can go find that.
If you're looking for something like ours that's quieter
and doesn't attract lots of children, there's those,
you know, so you can really kind of start to navigate
and think about like, what's the type of campground I like?
And then that's how you can kind of whittle it down
and then kind of go by reviews and see
- Review.
I wanna talk about pricing. Yeah.
Because people are essentially renting a very small spot
of land for a relatively shorter amount of time.
Yeah. How do you figure out what to charge?
- Well that was, you know, purchasing the business.
We had sort of the established rates.
So that was kind of, we didn't start from scratch,
but you do kind of a market analysis.
We have some of the lowest rates in the area strictly
because we don't have a lot of bells and whistles.
You come and you're getting access to a beautiful area,
but you're not getting the bouncy houses
and the, the, the pools with the big things.
Sure. Okay. And all that kind of stuff. So yeah.
So we, we keep ours moderately priced and affordable
and we just try to kind of increase it with inflation
to kind of adjust for increases in expenses
for us. But Right
- On.
Yeah. Tell me a story about taxes
because there's, is it riverfront? It must be if you flood,
- I, I, our property does not touch the river.
Okay. So I don't have any riverfront.
- So you don't have to pay the tax
for being along the water.
Okay. You, you just have to pay the,
we're flooding. Right. I
- Do have flood insurance. Okay.
- Yep. Got it. And what, what kind
of damage are we talking if everybody
moves all their campers out? Yep,
- Yep.
Yeah. So my husband and I got to go
through this two years ago.
- You say you got to, this is enjoy.
So fun. Look at this opportunity.
- So it's a fun story. I also live in black Earth,
which also floods sometimes.
And the year we bought our house was the
hundred year flood back in
- 20 19, 28. Oh, awesome. Is that,
- Yeah.
So that year we also got to go real, what
- Do we gotta - Do?
Lucky. It was so fun.
So I definitely prefer the Mississippi River
because we get two weeks notice.
So it's because of the Locke and Dam system. Wow.
It's never gonna be a flash flood. Okay.
Any rain that we get goes down river.
So that's their problem. Sorry, down river.
But if the water is coming in, snow melts too much snow
and it all melts at once up in Minnesota, that collects.
And then the lock and dam system, they alert us
and they let us know and they say,
you've basically got two weeks, we're going to be opening up
and releasing some of the water.
'cause it's getting too much up here. Otherwise
the flooding will be too bad up river.
So we get two weeks, we let folks know that they need to
coordinate, they need to just pull their thing,
pull their RV up,
and we have a parking lot that's up by the lock
and dam where they can go easily park
and we just, you know, shut her all down.
So then my husband and I went around
after we got everybody out
and you know, you just do a little bit of mitigation.
We hauled all of our picnic tables
to the highest point in the campground
and that is happens to be our site.
And you can tell that the water didn't even get up that far.
So it really is the highest point.
So we haul everything kind of up there.
We have to do a couple of things in the cottages.
In the bathhouse you have to like plug the, plug the toilets
and you have to plug so that the water doesn't kind of
une like equalize and then have backflow.
And so we had to do that process.
We lifted everything in our cottages as much
as we could up onto sawhorses.
Okay. Just in case water got in.
Luckily it didn't get high enough to get into the cottages.
We did get a tiny bit of water in our bathhouse
and so we had some mucking out to do from there,
but we thought maybe next time we would do more
sandbagging and things like that.
So you, but the nice thing is you have the time. Okay.
So it's the river we know it's coming,
it's just the countdown, you know,
and you go and you do the mitigation work.
And then we have cameras and we just watch.
So that, that year, that's it creeping. Yeah.
That year we just kept watching it
and we would take pictures
and like right on it when it was at this level
for next, you know, so that we know.
And the water slowly comes over the, over the road
and then it slowly makes its way in and it slowly rises.
So we probably had a foot
or two of water just across the whole campground.
Wow. And we had carp would would swim in the campground.
We found snakes, tons of snakes after the water receded
and we kind of went in to clean up.
So lots of wildlife Wow. That followed the river in.
And then sometimes they would die
'cause the water would go back out.
Sure. It would get Stankey. But Yeah.
- Does it, so two weeks notice, that seems like a lot. Yeah.
Yeah. And was that expected? Yeah.
Or did you know that ahead of time?
- Yes, we did. We were aware. Okay. Yeah. All right.
I know my husband's like, why do we keep buying
properties and flood plains?
'cause I love water. Like, I don't know.
- Well, I mean two weeks notice that seems like a lot
for it is like, hey, you gotta move a camper.
It's, that means that somebody could be like,
ah, I'll get there next weekend.
Yeah, it is. It'll flood later. You
- Just, you let 'em know and you say what the deadline is,
how long you need, you have to, to remove.
And if you need help, let us know. And yeah,
- It's interesting.
How do the people that figure that out know
that it's gonna be that timeframe?
- It's the Army Corps of Engineers and Noah. Okay.
So the north, north, north American
atmospheric something or other.
Okay. That's the website we go on and we watch
and they track all waterways.
So even the black Earth Creek where we live,
we can see if it's going up and down.
That is flash flood though. So Yeah.
You know, I get five minutes notice as opposed to
- All - Notice on that one.
But yeah, we spend a lot of time on that website.
- How cool is that? Yeah. All right.
Do you have to flag, like this is where the spigot is,
just in case I'm picturing a bunch of sediments
or something like that, covering
- Up?
No, it wasn't too bad. Actually.
Some of our rocks we think got moved, you know, from a site.
Why are there so many rocks over here?
And I, it just the other day,
and I said, I think maybe that was the flood,
like picked some up and carried them over there.
Oh wow. You know, so a little bit of that.
So we're working on, you know,
two years later now we're looking at our driveway
to see if maybe we need to get a fresh
layer of rock, kind of put
- Oh, - Gotcha.
Re flatten it out a little, but Okay. How,
- How that but pretty minimal damage.
Is that alright? Yeah.
And when you call people up
and you're like, Hey, in two weeks this place is gonna
flood, you gotta move your camper.
Yeah. Are they all upset
or they're like, oh yeah, this happens the thing. Yeah.
- It's, it's in their contract. Okay. Yeah.
And so we let them know when they book
that this is always a possibility.
I mean, you can see the river, it's beautiful,
you know, that's part of the appeal.
But you know, with that comes just your willingness
to put up with a little bit of risk.
- Sure. So that's an accepted, you're next
to the Mississippi River, things
- Happen.
Yeah. I mean we're definitely not the only
campground next to the Mississippi River.
Okay. We're, we're in, unfortunately,
we're in good company when it comes to like,
we're all facing this us and,
and up river in down river Sure.
Depending on when the flooding or where the flooding is.
Exactly. And so we get calls,
are you flooding, are campgrounds, flooding?
You know, so we, we try to help each other out, you
- Know, so I was just in San Diego a couple months ago
and in the ocean doing this little kayak trip
and the tour guide is explaining
how there's all this water erosion.
Yeah. And you can see houses that are Oh yeah.
Right on the edge. And it feels like a bad storm.
That house is just gonna sink in. It could be.
And they're pretty fancy houses.
And this tour guide is explaining how Yeah. Yeah.
That's gonna happen. Yep.
So in the case of this, you keep losing property.
- Well again, we, it, I suppose that could happen.
But the nice thing where we are is, so the, the lock and dam
and, and then the beautiful big river,
and then we have a little inlet.
Okay. So the water you see from our property,
you can see the river,
but the most of the water you see is actually an inlet.
So it's protected. So there's no,
- So it's not washing away. There's
- No washing away.
And we do, you know, where the lock
and dam is, especially with the tugs going up
and down, pushing the barges through the lock.
There is a lot of kind
of stirring up of the sediment and things.
So they dredge every year. Oh
- They do. And they
- Pull sand out.
Yep. Yep. So that's a fun thing to watch all the big,
big figures and the big barges. And
- I'm imagining the scale that that has to happen at
- All the way down the river too.
You know, like we're just one locking down.
There's, it's a whole system that
- Is insane. Yeah. Yeah.
- It's, I think from the Twin Cities down to St.
Louis or something. It's, it's a long stretch.
- Okay. It's gotta be what, 1520 lock and dam?
- Yeah, yeah. Something like that. We're number four I
- Think.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
That it's a lot because we, when I was a kid, we used
to take the Great river road.
Yes. We're on the Great river at Okay.
And stop at a few and you stop at little cafes in the towns.
It was always fun. Yes.
- I love that drive. So we, you hop on the great river road
and you go north on the WISCONSIN side,
or you can go north on the Minnesota side
and you get a slightly different experience, you know,
depending on what side you, you go.
And they're both beautiful. I love the WISCONSIN side
'cause of all those small towns and you can stop
and, and enjoy them. It's just beautiful.
- Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
It was always neat to see when a ship would approach
the lock and be like, oh, we get to watch this. But
- Yeah, you can get up there and there's like an overlook
and we talk to the folks and we ask 'em where they're from
and you know, where,
where are you coming from or where are you going?
All right. And you know, we ask their stories. Yeah.
It's so fun. We bring the kids up there. The kids love it.
And whenever, you know, you can hear the honk of the barge
or the tug or whoever it is, making that honking noise
whenever they're like ready to go or something.
I don't know what it is. My family's thing as we go barge,
like we stop what we're doing, we yell,
barge, and then we keep going. Oh,
- That's funny.
I always think of the little boats and you see a boat.
Just little tiny boats. I mean, I guess any boats. Yes.
Yeah. Compared to a barge is small going
- Through the lock. Yes.
- And you're down. Yes. That far.
We're just waiting for the water to come up.
That seems so creepy to me.
- Yeah. It's so cool though. It
- Is super cool.
It's cool. Yeah. Just like,
please raise the water. Yeah. I hope this works.
- This is gonna work, right? Yeah.
- It'll, it's surreal. Yeah. So surreal. Yeah.
Tell me a story about the campers that you see as far
as the physical, the RVs
that come through there. Yeah. Oh yeah,
- Sure.
So most of them are pretty standard.
I mean there's, once you get into Arby's you realize again,
just like him cross, there's so many different kinds
of Arby's and is it a fifth wheel
or is it just a tra travel trailer?
And so we get all kinds, just like the pull
behind the really, really big ones.
We get big motor homes occasionally.
My favorite though are the ice houses.
- I, that's where you can lift the wheels and all. Yeah.
- So it's like the, they look like they belong like an ice
house, like out on a lake and Yeah.
But they have wheels. And then when you get to a place,
they're these big boxy things
and then they just flatten straight
and they sit flat on the ground.
All right. And you're just like,
how did you even get this in here?
But it's because there's like a hydraulic
and it lifts them back up.
They're just wild
- Looking.
That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.
And they're using those year round? Yeah.
- Yeah. They must. Okay. And they might take 'em out
and use 'em fries fishing
and then they use them in the summer.
Huh? Isn't that smart?
- Tell, I can remember being at a campsite forever ago.
Yeah. And I'm more of a tent camper. Yeah.
So I remember my buddies and I are sitting around at this,
I call 'em golf course campsite.
Yeah. It's just all grass. And
I'm like, is this really nature?
Anyways, we're watching this guy back up his camper. Yeah.
And he's having a rough time. Yes.
- It is - Challenging. And for us,
we're kind of being jerks.
Not meaning to, but like,
we're just drinking beer watching this guy.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably not helping
him. I mean it Right.
- It's part of the experience. So
- I'm like, you showed up here.
That's right. And you got this 80 foot trailer, whatever.
And we just threw up a tent. That's, so we a few tents.
So our job is way easier.
How often are people running into things at your campsite?
- So generally people are pretty good.
I mean, they are mean for the most part.
They know what they're doing. You know,
it's only been a couple of times in the last two, two years
that somebody's like, I need help.
Like, will somebody be, oh,
will somebody be on site when I get there?
'cause I'm, I'm traveling by myself
and I have nobody to spot me in the back.
Okay. Fair things like that.
And not having staff all the time
makes it a little challenging.
But we're very lucky.
So my dad is retired
and he's a handyman who can fix anything.
Nice. I promise you. Anything
- He could good person to have in your corner.
- Yes. And I always, I have told him many times I would not
have even thought about buying a campground if you,
if I knew you didn't, you weren't like in my corner.
Wow. And like could fix things.
'cause I would have no idea how to fix many things.
So he gets to live his best retired life in an RV site
that we give him because he's our maintenance man.
And so in exchange for a lovely place to live and,
and park his boat
and go fishing as much as he wants, he,
he gets to be our maintenance man.
But he also was a truck driver with a CDL. Ah.
So he can back up anything. Gotcha. So he's off and on site.
So he has been there a couple of times to help people. Okay.
Get positioned or just spot, I mean, I've spotted people
and you know, tell 'em keep going until they hit something.
And so, but generally everybody's been very good.
We've had very, you know, no, no issues really. All
- Right.
I can remember. So I used to deliver beer forever ago
and it was one of those companies, it was a big company.
So I went there, I got my CDL through them
and it was kind of a pushman, shove 'em out.
I shouldn't have been driving that truck.
I could drive very well in a straight line. Yeah.
Backing up. I took for granted air brakes. Oh yeah.
And so I was backing up into this small town gas station,
which was very tight.
Ended up using the brakes too much.
So I used up all the air, which meant
that I was blocking the intersection.
Oh gosh. Yeah. I didn't mean to Yeah.
But like the air brakes go
and so you have to wait for the air to recharge.
Oh my gosh. And see all these people just
honking, like get out of the road.
I'm like, I would love to. Right.
And I'm doing everything that I can
to get outta the road, but we gotta wave.
Like they don't know a few. No.
- Right. And I would not know, I mean,
my dad just has had, he grew up on a farm.
Yeah. He was in the Navy, was a machinist. Oh wow.
And yeah, I mean he, and then he drove truck.
He was a bus driver. He's just the kind of guy
who can fix and build anything. Yeah.
- Yeah. It is a great respect for people that can back up.
Well yes, it is very rare. Yes. So rare.
So kudos to you guys.
I'm just worried about somebody hitting a water
Maine or something like that.
Yeah. I mean it could happen. All right. Yeah.
So someday we trust people we're flooded
for something else without two weeks
notice. Right? That's right.
- That's fine. - So after your few years, in three years
- Headed into our third season.
- Headed into the third season. Okay.
Tell me about marketing. How do you let people know
for the spots that you have available?
Yeah. How do you get on the rooftop
and yell like, hey we've got, got spots available.
- Yeah, so generally speaking, so I come from hospitality.
I used to run a hotel and so I learned a lot about how,
and it makes sense intuitively when you're traveling,
sometimes you are at home planning your,
your trip and your vacation.
Sometimes you're literally on the road
and you aren't gonna make
it as far as you thought you would.
And so I, I want find a place to stay.
So generally speaking, online marketing is the way to go.
Especially you wanna think about your website, you want it
to be SEO optimized.
Nowadays we're talking about AI optimization as well.
So you wanna make sure when you're building your website,
you are including keywords, phrases, things like that,
that you want the, you know, the Googles of the world
to find when people are searching for campground near me.
So RV sites, campground, right?
You're thinking of all the different words
that people might be searching for.
I also, at the Waco convent, this is an advertisement
for any campground owners
who aren't members of Waco, you need to join.
So when, when I went to the con, the convention,
they had a wonderful guest speaker
who talked about your website needs these five things.
Oh and that's it. Right.
And so it really helped me simplify my website.
Ah, and it was very good. Great advice.
And so I really overhauled my website
and we used a booking engine.
And so that's just sort
of a separate service that you pay for.
And so people can book directly on our website.
And we also use Airbnb, vrbo, hip camp,
all of those kind of third party.
There's quite a few third parties
that either do our cottages or our campsites or both.
And so you're just trying to get as much kind
of digital access to people as possible.
And then in addition to that, we make sure
that our literature is at, so we're very close
to Perot State Park, which is a lovely state
- Park. Oh, beautiful park. Yeah.
- Oh yeah. So that's just down the road from us. Nice.
So we're good friends with them.
We bring them our brochures
'cause they fill up before we do.
'cause they're State PARK CIR in WISCONSIN
are very also very hard to book.
- Oh my gosh. January 2nd you gotta be there. Yeah.
- Yeah. So, but people show up anyway so they show up
and they don't have any sites so they send
them to us. So it's a wonderful,
- They show up just cold.
Yeah. They love you got room for me. Yeah.
They'll try, I got a 50 foot trailer.
- Yeah. So they'll, they'll
refer people to us, which is wonderful.
So we try to go around and,
and you know, make ourselves known
and to the community so that they can help us out.
- Gotcha. So do you remember those five things for
- The website?
Yeah, yeah. It was really good homepage
with just kinda your basic
information and a map and your rules.
And then it was like amenities.
You needed a page about amenities,
you need a page about your rates.
And then I don't remember what the other ones were,
but like it was just very simple
and just that like, don't waste your time with all
of this mumbo jumbo.
These are the things they're looking for.
Alright. And just use those things.
- So tell me a story about drinking
and people being loud after hours.
'cause Yeah, I've certainly been to campsites
where I've guess I've been to campsites where me
and my crew were the loud ones
and I've been at campsites where you're with your family,
where you're like other people are the loud ones.
Yeah. And you've also been at campsites
where it's not drunk people, it's just kids.
Yeah. Or young kids that are being the loud ones. Yeah.
Yeah. Or dogs. Yeah. Just insert annoying thing here.
Sometimes you're the annoying person. Right.
How do you deal with that? Yeah,
- Well coming from hospitality made it a little easier.
'cause I've dealt with many, you know,
different challenges in my time.
And so I think the way I approach it is you sort
of are aware of your surroundings.
So is there a group of people here
who are taking up basically the entire campground?
Are they probably disturbing anybody?
Do I need to say anything or can I just let it ride?
We do have quiet hours.
So if people, you know, I had a, last season I had a group
that were having a good time
and it got to be like 11 o'clock
and I think my quiet hour starts at 10.
But I was being lenient and finally I was just went over
and I said, you guys, I just need you to just,
can you just at least turn off the music?
You know? Sure. Things like that.
And you're just friendly, keep it light
and people are, people are lovely.
I haven't had anybody disgruntled or anything.
Definitely if we start getting complaints then
of course we address it immediately.
But yeah, we just kind of stay aware
and kind of see if it seems like the kind of thing
that other people would be impacted by.
And then it's just address it
- Nicely.
Camp sits are so interesting
'cause sound seems to carry 50 times farther.
And if you're in a tent, I mean, yeah.
There's no, the canvas wall isn't exactly soundproof
and a camper is not that much better.
That's a quarter inch of plastic or whatever. Pretty much.
So yeah, like anybody making noise
of any kind, it's hurt everywhere. It
- Is.
Yeah. And we just, we really pay attention
to those quiet hours when people are trying to sleep.
Gotcha. And we've got kids,
so I mean we're, we're there too.
Also trying to sleep. Right.
- Fair, fair. Keep it down. Who's in charge over here?
Yeah, exactly. Tell me about the, the website.
Did you essentially, I wanna say inherit,
but you bought a website from
- So I did.
I did. We, we purchased, we got the logo and the website.
And I, coming from, with my background in hospitality
and I have built websites
and have done a bit in marketing, I knew
that was the first thing that I really wanted
to just create fresh for myself.
Ah, okay. 'cause I had a vision for, you know, clean lines
and just a little bit easier user experience.
And so I took the information that was on that website
and I kind of built it into my new website, got a new
property management system, which is
the booking engine side of things.
So that for me was sort of the fun of doing a,
a business startup is getting to build those assets.
- Gotcha. Tell me a story about
with your husband when you're
like, Hey, we're just gonna check up.
Yeah. Check out this camp or campground I should say. Yeah.
How tough was it for him to be convinced? Yeah,
- So my husband is wonderful.
- Okay. I have to say,
- He follows me to the ends of the earth
and lets me do all these crazy things.
But he has always, we've always wanted to own a business.
Okay. So it's always been one of those things,
especially once I got into management
and I was really good at it.
And I treat every business that I've
run as if it was my own.
And so we've always said someday,
someday we'll own a business.
Who knows what it will be. But when we, when we see it,
we'll know, you know, we'll know it or whatever.
So he was, it wasn't too hard of a sell.
I think the thing to be honest about
and transparent about, when people are thinking about a big
transaction, a big transaction like this is
that it is very scary, right?
I mean, you know, you take on debt, you, you have a,
a business loan, you know, it's a real estate purchase.
And so it's scary. All right?
And you have to really do your due diligence,
make sure it makes sense, and then check again.
Because if you make a poor investment, you know,
it can be cha you know, that becomes a challenge
for your family 'cause it's a family.
- Oh no doubt. Right? No doubt.
- And so I think it's very important to be thinking about,
you know, what you're getting into.
You have a, a really good plan for once you get in,
you've got really good systems already
that you're thinking about, you know how
to do really good bookkeeping already.
Right? Or you work, you find people
who can teach you those skills
or who can work with, you know,
'cause I think a lot of small business owners have a passion
and then they say, I'm gonna start a business
because I have this passion in woodworking or whatever.
But they forget.
And you know, maybe a couple years go by
where they haven't been keeping their books
as cleanly as they could have.
And without good books you can't read your data
and understand it and interpret it
to make good growth decisions
or to know when it's time to get out.
And then you need an exit strategy.
So it's very important when you're thinking about purchasing
a business or starting a business
that you know the beginning, middle, and end.
Like you know all the pieces, you know
how you're gonna get in, how you're gonna manage it
and how you're gonna get out if things don't go well
or if things go well and you wanna
and you're ready to sell and move on.
So that was, you know, I think
because we came at it very pragmatically,
we asked for help, right?
I mean we got legal advice, I have other,
other business owners that I know who I was able
to ask questions of.
And I have people who sell, buy and sell real estate.
And I had them look over it
and see if they thought it was a good investment,
you know, and all this kind of stuff.
So it's definitely about leveraging your relationships
and making sure that you sort
of fully understand the full picture.
And I think once we had that, we felt confident in that.
You know, my husband is like, I trust you.
I mean this is what you do. So
- Nice. Could
- Be great.
That's awesome. We'll give it a go.
- You raised a good point about people being passionate
about their business and then kind
of forgetting about the paperwork and stuff like that.
- Very important - Way back when I was,
I had a copy repair company
and I remember getting a phone call from a client saying,
Hey, you're gonna send us that invoice.
And I remember being on the phone thinking this is probably
the worst phone call I could get 'cause I'm doing the work.
Yeah. But I wasn't actually saying,
Hey, you can pay me. You need to pay me.
- Right. Minor details. Yeah.
- I was just like, are you a
moron, James, what is wrong with you? Well
- I think it's easy to forget those details, especially when
my journey's just like almost reverse
where I started running businesses for other people
and could learn on the job while earning a salary
and having none of that risk.
And then I was able to feel confident enough to say,
I think we could do this risk
and do it ourselves, you know, for ourselves.
So I think that's, I think that is sometimes unique.
I think often it's the other way. It's fair.
But you know, I think there are good resources out there
for people who are starting businesses.
The small business development center in Madison
is phenomenal, huge.
WIC is really wonderful.
There's resources like that that offer coaching, training
classes, a lot of it for free.
So definitely worth checking out those
- Resources.
Yeah. I teach sometimes at wic. That's great.
And it's, it's interesting
'cause I'll tell people I just taught a intro
to business planning class last week.
Great. And I told the students, I'm like, just figure out
where you're at from a financial point of view personally.
Yeah. And then wherever you are, good or bad Yeah.
Add a zero because
that's the way you're gonna look at numbers in business.
Yeah. Interesting. I was talking
about something, I forget what it was.
Maybe it was just creating an LLC in Wisconsin's, 150 bucks,
hundred 60 bucks and they're like $160 whatever.
And I understand that's a lot of money. Yeah.
If you're not bringing an income. Yes. Yes.
But I'm like, you gotta look at this from the point of view
that you're gonna make money with a thing.
Right. And I understand there's a point when you're first
starting your business where you're like,
I don't know if I'm gonna make money.
- Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's very fluid
and it can be very fluid and one
of the mistakes I think a lot
of people make is not clearly delineating your
personal finances from your business.
- So true. Yeah. So true. Yeah. And
- A lot of the untangling later that you have
to do later is very painful.
So it's much better. First thing we
did was we got a work credit card.
First thing we did was get a work bank account.
Like everything is separate.
We have never had anything mixed.
And my every, at the end of every year,
taxes are super simple.
We work with our accountant, I send 'em all the paperwork.
And when we're done, like it has been the easiest thing.
But again, I learned that on the job
from managing businesses
and you don't, if you've never had that experience,
you wouldn't know why it's important
to keep all your receipts or
- Oh, it's a huge deal.
Yeah. You raised an interesting point.
So with our call answering service,
we'll have some potential clients come to us
and their personal cell phone is also their business line.
And I tell 'em, I'm like, look man, I would love you
to be our client and if you wanna be our
client, I'm very happy for that.
Right. But regardless of if you come with us
or not, right, separate your business and your personal,
- I'm just gonna stop you there.
- Just, let's - Just
- Forget about us, right?
Come back to that. Just take the, yes.
I'm say five minutes for every two hours at whatever
cell phone store you're at.
Get another number. Get another number.
That new number is your personal number, your old number
that all the business people
have. That's your business number.
- So my husband and I use Google Voice. Okay.
And so that number is a different number,
but it goes to both of our phones.
Smart. So then if I'm at work
and not available, my husband's a stay at home dad,
so he's got more time and so he answers the
- Phone.
Does he agree with that answer?
- That's an excellent point. I don't, I doubt
- It.
Sure. Fair. But that's, that's great, right? Yes.
Because it's independent. Yes.
- And that was part of it too. So he
hasn't always been a stay at home dad.
He's had, but when we bought the campground, he had a job
where it was very deadline driven
and he didn't have the flexibility to like go up and clean
or go help somebody if they needed help.
So we were able to make the business decision that
with the income from the campground we were able to replace
- It.
Nice. Yeah. So over these almost three seasons,
what are some things now that you wish you learned
or knew previous to purchasing the campground?
- Hmm. Well, I think now being three years in
and having gone through a flood,
there are certain like capital things that I'm realizing
that we really need to start sort of a capital fund
because we're gonna need to replace, you know,
and then there's gonna be a roof at some point.
And you know, there, there's gonna be a lot
of capital investments that
will need to happen at some point.
So that's something that, not
that I didn't think it would ever happen,
but it's just, you know, only this many years in
and be already, I'm like, hmm, I should really, I need
to start seriously putting money into an account for that.
So things like that, that, you know, the property is going
to age and we will need to, to make upgrades.
But other than that, I mean I really feel, you know,
I think business is like part skills that you build
and you know, sort of your personality
and being, having an entrepreneurial spirit,
but also a lot of luck.
- Oh, no doubt. No
- Doubt.
So we, I just feel very lucky looking back
that we've had two strong seasons.
Our first two seasons we're, we're very strong
and we were able to pay all of our bills
and have even money left over and whoop.
Yeah, I know, right? A cash flow. Woo.
So, you know, and that is, it's hard
because when you're building a business from scratch,
often you, you won't make money the first
however many years.
And so being able to figure that out is very challenging.
So I think so far so good things.
We've only had one flood and not minimal damage
and it's been a good business
and it's been really good for my family.
I have a 14-year-old
who loves working at the campground and earning money.
Nice. And you know, he power washes buildings
and trims trees and he does a, does a great job.
And then my daughter is the camp hostess. Ah, she's seven.
Okay. And she loves people.
So she loves making friends and Oh,
- How cool is - That?
It's really fun. Alright.
- Yeah. And I imagine you get to know,
'cause you guys are at the camp around pretty often,
so you probably get to know people
that are there for the season.
- We do. We get to know people, we get to know the area.
That was a really lovely surprise.
I just didn't really think about it.
But it became our second home.
But it also is a whole new community to experience.
So it's a new town, it's all new, you know,
the local business owners all go and introduce myself.
So I get to meet a whole nother group of business owners
and managers that I didn't know before.
You know, their local village administrator is lovely
and I love talking to 'em.
You know, like it's a whole nother group of people
that we get to be part of like this.
Oh, that's awesome. Another part of our family.
Family and just that whole beautiful area that we get
to explore that we wouldn't have necessarily other than a
trip or two, maybe a year.
Sure. You know? So
- How cool is that?
Yeah. So future, is it expand?
Is it get a new campground or Good question.
Just add on what's the plan?
- Okay, so my new vision that we're, that I,
I'm working toward Alright. Is when
- Your husband's like, what? Yeah. Yeah. He's,
- He's on board.
He likes it. So our kids are, so,
like I said, my youngest is seven.
So my goal is when we're empty nesters,
someday we'll move in.
I'll have a job where I can just work
remote and do anything.
And we'll go live at the campground all summer. All right.
In a camper and like rent
out our house, you know, or whatever.
And then in the winter when we shut down, we can just go
and work wherever we want
and we could like live in a camper in by the beach
and you know, do all the things. So that
- Sounds pretty cool. So
- That's what I'm working toward now.
I have another entrepreneurial glint in my eye
for another business that I'm hoping to build
that will be at a point
where it will sustain us at that point.
So I've got 20, 25 years to build a business.
- 25 years. Yeah. Years.
You got a 7-year-old kid, you got 11. Well,
- I gotta get to college. Oh. Oh,
- Okay.
That's a, their runway.
They come back, you know, runways
getting longer there. Okay.
- Okay. 15 to 20 years we'll say.
- All right. Okay. Alright. Interesting.
Yeah, that is I guess the blessing and the curse, right?
Of being an entrepreneur where you like,
I got another idea. I
- Do, I do.
But I, I'm really good with long runways.
Like I need
to know 20 years from now what we're aiming toward.
'cause then I can back think of all the things I need to do
to lay the groundwork now.
Right on. While, you know, supporting my family
and the career that I love. Sure.
- Things like that. So interesting. I'm excited for you.
Yeah, thanks Rachel. How can people find you?
- So we are online, lake road campground.com.
- No dashes. Just all one word.
- All one word. All. Yep.
And we're on Instagram and Facebook.
You can also find our cottages on like Airbnb
or any of your favorite booking platforms.
If you're a camper and you use Hip camp
or any of those, we're on all of those. I believe so
- What is hip camp? Yeah,
- It's a booking platform like Airbnb, but for campsites.
- Gotcha. All right. That's hip. Alright.
I don't, I'm out of touch with stuff like that. Fine.
Just, yeah, whatever. Who knew?
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Is it Reo Treo? Treo on the Great River Road. It's great.
Mississippi. Yeah. Is
- That it?
The Great River Road along the Mississippi River.
- Yeah. Yeah. In WISCONSIN. Beautiful WISCONSIN.
Oh, we'd like to thank you're wonderful listeners as well
as our guest Rachel of Lake Road Campground.
Rachel, can you tell us us
that website one more time? Sure. Lake
- Road campground.com
- Doesn't get easier than that. Is it on Lake Road?
- It is on Lake Road.
- Alright, well it doesn't get easier than that. I love it.
No it doesn't. Past episodes can be found morning,
noon tonight at the podcast link.
Find to draw in customers.com Stankey for joining us.
We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome.
And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.