Loud Thunder Forest Preserve - Illinois City, Illinois

[email protected] 01241989

Excelente lugar ?

S S

My wife and I camped at Deer Haven for a couple of nights and hiked over 13 miles around the preserve. This place is absolutely wonderful, the amenities are great for what it is and the camping spots are well kept. The hiking trails were mostly all well taken care of, the further out and less used ones can be a little closed in by foliage in some sections but overall great. I would love to have better lake views on the hiking trails and would like to see a garbage dumpster by the side of the road so when leaving it is an easy pull to the side and toss out of the truck bed but regardless my wife and I loved the place. I would definitely recommend!

Lee Meyers

Overall its a very nice park. They have three campgrounds. This time I stayed in the new Deerhaven campground. It was nice however there weren't any bathrooms/showerhouse closeby and no trees except on the perimeter. It had more of a parking lot feel. The lake is beautiful but I think best suited for kayaking. I don't catch many Bass there but other folks catch crappie. Loud Thunder has a bad reputation for there not being many fish in the lake. Online I asked L.T. how often they stock the fish and they said annually but didn't respond when I asked for quantities. If you love trails then you are in luck because they have many trails and some are on the Mississippi and some are around the lake.

Emily Steele

Beautiful place, has a lot of options. And sites are very private which we loved. Only problem we had was it took over 3 hours for the guy to clean the bathroom, first thing in the morning. Multiple people were lined up and waiting to use the restroom, and he didn't even bother replacing the empty toilet paper rolls. SO BRING YOUR OWN TP.
Other than that, the park office was very helpful and we had an overall good experience.

Mike Robinson

I love this park and campground. I've made several friends here from long distances. It's a hidden gem.

Usually peaceful and quiet, but you'll still have your loud party animals and campers with a ridiculous amount of LED lighting on. Makes for poor stargazing.

My only gripe is the terrible water on the property. I don't know what happened to it, but it has gotten sour and sulfurous in the past few years. I have to either carry all my water in from home or choose to sanitize my water system after each visit.

Many wonderful improvements to this park. If you haven't visited since 2020, stop in to see all the changes.

My favorite camping spots are White Oak and the Corral. Deer Haven has no shade at all. Will take years to get any shade over the campers. Indian Meadow would be my choice for tent camping. Nice, private, woodsy cutouts.

Clifford

We had a fantastic time camping here. Staff was friendly, the views were gorgeous, and other campers were friendly but we didn't see much of them once we were actually settled.

Christina Karnes

This place was just okay. First of all there is nothing close or available as far as bathrooms, dumpsters and dump station. The bathrooms were dirty. There were some trails but to access them was inconvenient. It was very loud. The campsites site close together so you can hear everything very well and the way it set up causes an echo. The park ranger was not very nice. He continuously argued with the camper next to us which made things extremely uncomfortable. The water connection was very far away from the campsite and hard to use. There was poison ivy everywhere along the campsite as well. We will not be staying here again.

Jen C-Z

We love the Indian Meadows loop. Rustic camping, secluded from others yet access to hot showers! This campground is rarely full with lots of space.