Dorchester Park & Campground

The campground is part of a 40-acre municipal park. Most GPS and map apps will direct you to the north entrance, which is the safer entrance for taller RVs.

The older section of the campground has a total of 26 water and electric and electric-only campsites divided into two loops. There are a few randomly placed pull-through sites that are meant for overnighters; the rest are back-in and tent sites. They all have grass lawns with gravel pads (except for the wheelchair accessible site which has a paved pad) and most of these sites are at least partially shaded.

The newer section of the campground (where we stayed) has 14 long, spacious pull-through sites with full hookups arranged in a branch layout, with an equal number of sites on each side of the gravel road that cuts through the middle. Despite what the map posted by the entrance to this section currently shows, the road does not form a loop: visitors with large RVs should park nearby and check to make sure a spot is available rather than run the risk of needing to back up and turn around at the end of the road. These sites also have gravel pads and grass lawns, as well as a picnic table and in-ground fire pit. The newly planted trees between the sites are too small to provide any shade, but the sites on the left get a bit of late afternoon shade from the trees bordering the older campground section. Our site (D34) was fairly level but we put a board under our driver side wheels.

There is no campground office: once you pick your site, head over to the bathhouse/shelter across the road from the older campsites, find the podium below the bulletin board, open the lid and fill out a payment envelope (tearing off the vehicle dashboard receipt) and insert it into the nearby mail slot. This is a first-come, first-served campground, and you can stay as long as you'd like: there were 3 or 4 over RVs who were there the entire length of our 42-day stay.

The municipal park has a lot of outdoor amenities. The fishing lake is the dominant feature of the park, home to ducks and geese and encirced by a walking trail with benches. The park also has a baseball field, a disc golf course, two sand volleyball courts, two tennis/pickleball courts, basketball hoops, and multiple picnic area and recreational shelters. Campground-specific amenities are limited to the aforementioned bathhouse with showers, the dump station in front of the bathhouse, and the sheltered stack of firewood available for free (donations encouraged). Trash cans for recyclable items can be found near the dumpster. There are plenty of open spaces to walk dogs, but no enclosed dog park.

In terms of cell service, the best speed I got on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna was 36 Mbps down and 7 up, and we had no trouble working remotely or streaming video.  The best speed test I ran on my 5G AT&T smartphone showed 54Mbps down and 6 up.  There is no WiFi at the campground.

The main downside to this campground is that it's not located near anything particularly interesting, and the closest decent-sized city is Wausau 40 minutes to the east. That said, groceries and gas can be obtained in nearby Abbotsford (<10 minute drive), and there's a Walmart and a Tractor Supply that does propane refills in Medford (just over 15 minutes to the north). And suprisingly, both UPS and FedEx will deliver packages right to your site.

We would stay here again if we were in the area.

I arrived on a Friday about 3. Only 1/3 of the sites were taken. It is first come, first serve. It is a bit confusing figuring out the layout and determining which sites had what hookups. I finally figured out all the sites in the field with no tree cover were full hookup. Later on while walking, I found a couple that were under trees as well. I struggled to figure out where to register at first. There is not a lot of signage other than speed and enter/exit drives. When I did find where to register, there wasn’t a whole lot of rules or payment methods posted. So, I paid with a check. On Monday about 2pm, the lawn maintenance guy came around and yelled out to me (I was inside working), he said that while is there no rule against outdoor mats, they need to be folded over at night to not damage grass. He also said that my dog tie out, should be up when not use so he doesn’t mow over it. He took down my hummingbird bird feeder and put near the trailer on its side so all the liquid leaked out. He then proceeded to mow and weed wack all around me. I wasn’t impressed.