Pettibone Park Resort

Pettibone is a nice park on an island in the Mississippi River in LaCrosse. Being from Louisiana it was cool to camp right beside the Mississippi River since we have levees between us and the river. We stayed one night on our way to Minnesota. There is plenty of shade. The park streets are asphalt with two concrete strips for your tires in the sites. The park was quiet except when someone decided to shoot fireworks between 10-11 pm. A little pricey at $54 considering there were no sewer hookups.

Stayed in pull-through campsite #308 which was shady. It was a grass site with two concrete strips for my TT tires. There was more than enough parking for my TT and truck and grass on either side. The site included: picnic table on a concrete pad. Utilities were located in the rear. 20A/30A electric and water. Site was a little unlevel. Neighbors are close. AT&T had 2-3 bars of LTE and Verizon 1 bars of LTE service. AT&T Speedtest: 146 Mbps down, 4.8 Mbps up. Verizon Speedtest: 016 Mbps down, 0.14 Mbps up. Free WiFi.

Would stay here again. We camped at Pettibone Resort in a Travel Trailer.

A bit pricey (we got a Good Sam discount) but you’re paying for location. We stayed overnight passing through and the place was busy on a Friday night. All sites are same price so get a waterfront if available (all back-in’s). There are also pull-thrus and back-ins in center section. All sites have elec/water, in-ground fire pits, and wooden tables w/dump onsite. Elec boxes are high up due to flooding at times. River sites are large and have beautiful views, the “bay” side water sites are a little closer together and shorter so parking a tow vehicle or toad will be tricky. Pull-thrus in center have a back-in site on passenger side in back. Bath house is old but clean and laundry onsite (2 washers/2 dryers) is economical @ $1.50/ea. WiFi worked good in our site.

We would stay here again but in a river front site. Many seasonal campers in park but rigs are newer and sites are clean. Easy access from the MN side, don’t recall a left turn lane coming from La Crosse. Large booms were going off several times while we were there (even one at midnight) but not sure it came from the campground.

We arrived on a damp evening, Oct 1st, and the young man in the office, Nick, was nice but not very on top of things. He told us that they had just cleared out today due to their Oktoberfest celebration so we wouldn't have a problem finding a spot. He told us 115, as we wanted to wake up to the Mississippi in our back yard. Well we arrived at 115 and the person from the night before was still there. So I guess they are pretty on top of things. He told us then to just go to 125. We arrive to that spot only to see the raise in the front of the pad was to accommodate at fifth wheel. These spots are extremely narrow and hard to navigate as there is no lighting around. Thankfully a perm came to help us and we all agreed this would not be good for our travel trailer. On the phone we go again to Nick. He finally says just take the next open spot we find. We finally found one, at the very back of the narrow roadway park, where there is no available turn around, BTW so we had to find something and make it work. Water and electric for $44 was a little steep and the fact that the park was so tight to navigate. The electric was on the opposite side of what it should have been and up about 10 feet or more in the air, so we could not even fully connect. No noise back in the back so that was nice. As for leaving the next day, we were trying to pass thru the narrow one lane gravel roads and trying to miss a big pick-up truck that was parked in the grass just next to the road, we scraped a 3' strip of our roof to the wood on a tree, we were trying to avoid. There are too many vehicles parked wherever, and it seemed like NONE of the staff gave a damn. When my partner was at the dump station I went into the office/bar to ask for a maintenance spot to take our trailer to look at the roof. I explained what happened, and never said anything about this being the parks fault. He quickly jumped to say "well, that isn't our fault you hit the tree. You can't say that was the park." I reiterated I was not blaming him but realized his tone was not very becoming and said again I just need to know if there is a shop near as I now have a nice hole in my roof as we were dodging multiple things in our path to exit. This man recommended the Pettibone shop up the road, he said the guy that owns the park works there. We went he was wonderful and extremely helpful. Apologized and got us on our way quickly.

The shop was very kind and helpful. As for the park, it is too tight of a space for large trailers or anything that I think you care about for that matter. Most of the trailers there are perms and don't look like the best quality. We would recommend looking elsewhere in the area.