The job: Eagles Roost Campground, assistant to the Director      

My age: 11-18

Hourly wage: N/A

In 1985, my Dad bought a campground in northern Wisconsin for the grand total of $100,000. This property came with a house, 40 acres, a beach on Mary lake, and a functioning campground with 51 sites.

If you haven’t been to northern Wisconsin, it is breathtaking area that still has so many acres of untouched forest. It’s really something to behold, even if it is full of Packer fans. The natives called people from Illinois flatlanders, or worse, because we were from the flat state of Illinois.  

This all came at a time when my Dad worked full time for Sears as a buyer in Chicago. He always modeled having multiple streams of income so it was a no brainer he would buy a business to run 5 hours north of our suburban home near Chicago? Looking back, maybe not so much of a no brainer?

 For the first two years we kept the campground open in the summers full time, even running a camp store that sold food, candy, beer and more.

Our campground was a hybrid – we had people who bought ‘seasonal’ sites where they stored their trailers or RV’s, and we had day use campers who just came for a few days or a week. I can remember my dad doing ‘marketing’ which meant he placed an ad in some catalog of campgrounds. But mainly people found us through word of mouth, or their family had been coming to our spot for years. There were boy scouts who would come to get their sailing certifications, and other groups that used our spot on the 300 acre Mary lake as a jumping off point for their adventures.

I remember one summer when the boy scouts were out sailing in little sunfish sailboats and really quickly a huge storm came up and swamped many of the boats leading the boys and their leaders to swim to shore and the safety of land. Thankfully no one was hurt, but after the storm many of the sailboats were tipped upside down and had to be carefully rescued. There was always something going on at the ‘campground’ because on busy holiday weekends there could be 400 people residing at our place.  

The first summer, 1986, my sister and – later brother n law – and I, staffed the store, picked up garbage and took it to the town dump. The dump in Townsend, Wisconsin was famous because you could watch actual black bears pick through the trash there. A quick search online and there are people calling for the reinstatment of the old dumps to ‘bring the bears back’ – I’m hoping for that too, but more along the lines of my Chicago Bears who are suffering through a long drought of losing…. Picking up garbage after a holiday weekend was always fun – always plenty of fish guts which made for a nice smell in the hot sun. One benefit of this ‘garbage job’ was realizing almost any job is better than having to pick up garbage, it’s hard. I also learned to drive a manual transmission 1986 jeep CJ-7 which was our car for doing garbage runs. As a 12 year old, driving was a really cool perk to the job.

The best days would be Mondays through Thursday when we would do whatever we wanted and ignore the task list my dad gave us each week to do while he was gone. Then on Fridays we would do the entire list before my parents would arrive late on Friday night. The projects ranged from building water diversion systems to other various fix it projects.

My mom and dad would come up on the weekends and the campground kept us quite busy. There were always projects to do and campers to talk with and help out.

This ‘job’ taught me the value of hard work and that running a business was never easy. I think my dad used the campground as a tax shelter, for sure we never made a ‘profit.’

The second summer, 1987, my mom and I ran the campground and it was during this time my mom met the director of a camp down the road which became a job I’ll talk about later. It was fun to be ‘up north’ again for the summer, outside all day, playing in the woods with my dog, generally having no agenda and complete freedom each day.

My love of the outdoors was certainly cemented in my brain early with all this time during my youth spent outside in northern Wisconsin – if you know, you know.

This summer also taught us maybe running a campground full time was not the path forward in the long run. After the summer of 1987, my parents decided to make the campground ‘private’ and make it for seasonal campers only. This allowed us to not have to run and staff the store – although I did miss picking the candy and baseball card packs for the store – and just make the campground a turnkey experience for our seasonal campers. They just came and went as they pleased and we no longer had to pick up the garbage.

The ’job’ for me wound down and our place in Wisconsin became more of a true retreat vs. a job. Which, as a 13 year old sounded great.

Working in a family business you were expected to help, you were expected to show up and work hard. There never was any real ‘salary’ – but I am sure my allowance went up from time to time. We worked together and learned together. My parents modeled hard work for me, and showed what work ethic was. My dad also showed me how starting a business could add an additional revenue stream and tax advantages for our family.

My dad held onto that property until 1998 or so? He then divided up the lots and sold them off individually, and eventually sold our house and everything up there. I think in 13 years my dad took a 100K investment and turned it into 400-600k profit as a land development deal. This also taught me about the value of real estate and seeing how areas can develop over time.

I haven’t been back to Mary lake in probably 15 years, at some point I want to take my boys there and tell them the stories of growing up with endless forest to explore, trails to ride and adventure to be had. In the mean time, we will do a lot of that here in Colorado.

Did you ever work in a family business? How did it work out? What did it teach you? I’m sure glad my parents gave me the gift of this experience – hard as it was at times – it taught me so much.