Your campground hosts are Michael (right) and Charlie (left), who have been together for 13 years, and are both camping enthusiasts. After more than 25 years of living in the SF-Bay area, they decided it was time to slow down and live a more leisurely life, and in 2002 moved to rural south-central Illinois. It was actually a kind of homecoming, because Michael grew up in St. Louis and Charlie hailed from northern Illinois. What's more, the property they bought in fact had at one time, in the late 1800s, belonged to Charlie's great-grandfather.

With a large house in a country woodland setting, it wasn't long before friends were frequently stopping by for relaxing weekend getaways. It was some of those same friends, who happened to be avid campers, and who remarked how ideal they thought the property would be for a campground. And so, Michael and Charlie cleared brush from some level areas in the woods for tent sites and installed some electrical hook-ups for RVs in a border area, and the campground was born in 2005.