One of the most beautiful, special places in Wisconsin. Well kept property on Little Hills Lake is a wonderfull slice of Northwoods beauty. Multiple buildings date back to the 40s, while the main lodge was built in the late 90s which creates a mix of classic camp feel, with modern amenities. Staff is always helpful, and caring. read more

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My husband and I were married at Camp Lakotah last month. We rented the camp for 4 days and nights. We are both wedding/event professionals and wanted an incredibly unique wedding venue. We were thrilled when we discovered Camp Lakotah, but wished we had been better prepared for the reality of hosting a wedding there- so I hope this review is helpful to others who have a similar vision. I'll start by sharing the positives: Camp Lakotah is gorgeous. It is on a huge piece of property, with massive pine trees, a pristine lake, beautifully-restored buildings, and an authentic 'campy' vibe. We were given a lot of freedom with what we wanted to do (bring in our own caterers, our own alcohol, cook a big group meal on the beach, play music late into the night). The breakfasts and lunches cooked by camp exceeded our expectations- they were great. Our guests had a blast, and will remember it forever. However, the camp director and owner, Sandy Bartel made me wish we had found a different space to host our celebration. After years of working in the wedding business, I have never encountered such an unreasonable, bitter service professional. I don't think she is evil-spirited as I know how much she loves her camp, the kids, and her dogs.... but somewhere along the way she began to absolutely hate other adults and her behavior continues to cast a shadow on our wedding. It's like she forgot about the $20,000 business transaction we had made, and kept treating us and our guests like we were in debt to her. It is clear that our wedding overwhelmed her. It was shortly after we agreed on our wedding dates with Sandy last Summer, that I realized I was going to have to rely completely on myself for all logistics regarding the camp. I tried to get ahold of her (phone, text, e-mail) for 3 months to get a contract to sign, and heard nothing back- and finally, after a desperate text telling her we were going to start looking at other venues, she responded "who is this?" Because we loved the venue so much, we decided to sign the contract and keep on planning and communication was slow, but acceptable during this time. We live 3.5 hours from camp, and visited 4 times before our wedding, each time we visited Sandy was actually great- warm, accommodating, focused. Our wedding began on a Wednesday and she agreed to let us come out on the Monday before the wedding to begin setting up camp. I wrote her an e-mail the week before the wedding outlying our plan for the following week. She called me on Sunday afternoon to tell me that we were absolutely not going to be able to set up until Wednesday, and acted as though she had never talked to us about the Monday arrival (we discussed it at least 3 times). We were in our U-haul, had 3 full days of work ahead of us, and were massively inconvenienced and stressed by having to do all of our set up on Wednesday morning before our first guests arrived at noon. The wedding week went on, folks were having a blast, the weather was perfect. The camp staff stayed out of our way (which they didn't need to), took care of garbage, set out water- it was nice. They were all quite sweet, however, many guests had very bad experiences with Sandy. A couple friends who used the camp kitchen to make cupcakes (which we paid Sandy $400 to let us do) were treated horribly by her, and my best friend was looking for her phone and was yelled at for investigating a ringing phone (Sandy's) that was sitting in a cart. That crossed a major line with me. On Sunday morning when we were packing up from the huge event we just threw, Sandy sent me an aggressive text that said they would be locking the gates and we would be forced to leave by 1:00. I dug around in my e-mail to prove that we had agreed on 4:00 as a load out time, and she never responded. But the staff was cold and rude and we tried to do everything as quickly as we could. After being rushed out, we ended up leaving a few items at camp and having to drive the 7 hours round trip to go grab them the following week. We arrived to an empty camp and the most valuable thing we left (a $1500 karaoke machine) was missing. We could not get ahold of Sandy (she had just turned her phone off when she realized I was trying to reach her). After weeks of trying to get in touch, we had to contact the County Police Department who was just finally able to seize the machine and now we get to make another trip to pick it up. Sandy Bartel was the first person to pop into my head each morning for the last month. She caused me so much anxiety that I still cannot think about our wedding week without my heart rate rising. This would have been a completely different experience had Sandy just charged us to account for the cost of a venue coordinator- someone who enjoys customer service- so we never had to interact with her (and visa versa). We are service people, with great friends, and are very easy to get along with. It should have gone down differently. read more

My husband and I just had our ceremony and reception at Camp Lakotah and it was overall wonderful. I will first start by saying that all the issues that were mentioned in the one star wedding review seemed to have been mostly addressed, or have greatly improved since then. Communication between Sandy and myself was mostly done by email, and I allowed plenty of time for her to respond, plus I requested multiple face to face meeting to ensure we were all on the same page. Any issues I felt needed to be addressed, we're promptly handled by Sandy or her business partner. The facility is used year around for multiple events, however, Sandy and Cliff aren't around all the time so allowing her time for travel is a necessity. We had them prepare the food for our reception. We decided to do this because it included linens, stemware, plates, silverware, service, clean up, coffee, water, milk (although I don't ever remember seeing it). We reviewed the food tier selections and based our choices off of preference. Sliced turkey breast, and pork tenderloin. Carrots, corn, fresh fruit, salad, garlic potatoes and gravey, and rolls with butter. And a late night cheese and sausage tray with crackers. Besides the pork being dry and needing BBQ sause it was all very good. The verbalized price of meals changed considerably, compared to the actual written quoye, so that upset my husband ($16 increased to $18). But really for the amount of food, it wasn't bad. It would have been nice to be able to take left overs, even small boxes for those staying at the camp. The serving staff did an ok job, they could have been dressed nicer, tank tops, nasty tshirts, etc. But the head server, was amazing, I never caught his name, but he wore a button down shirt and a bow tie.. he was very professional! Cliff helped set the food out in the buffett, but I don't think I saw Sandy at all. And the dirty dishes were all carried to the back to be cleaned. Nothing done in the hall next to the tables. At this facility you are also in charge if bring in your own bar, we did beer and wine. We brought a beer trailer. Which worked great. We had 23 beer pitchers, we only got 1 back, we are thinking the staff were picking them off the tables. They were also quick to pick up glasses of beer or wine that people were still drinking. If you went out to the dance floor your glass was gone. Sandy would have allowed us to get into the hall on Thursday to drop off supplies. However, we waited until Friday, when she opened the doors at 11am. The hall wad clean. Each table had a clean linen still in a package on it, and 8 stacked chairs next to it. We cleaned up our on decorations the next morning, but had we not, Sandy had offered to have them packaged up for us by noon. I emailed Sandy all of my issues/comments/suggestions a few days after our wedding. Everyone who attended commented what a lovely place the camp was, and how great everything was. read more

After much consideration and despite that fact that we were very close to signing for Camp Lakotah, we decided to go with a different camp. There are several reasons for this that we are happy to share in the event that it may help future couples decide whether they want to book their wedding with Camp Lakotah. First, the communication was extremely slow and anticipated that this would make wedding planning more stressful than necessary. We had to badger Sandy to get responses. We even had a call set up that she completely missed. Second, we often felt like we were in the position of feeling Sandy was doing us a favor by letting us rent the camp, rather than feel as though we were a potential valued customer who was going to pay a lot of money. Third, when we finally got the contract after waiting and multiple messages, there was a surprise $1,000 fee for using an outside caterer was never mentioned until that point. Her prices seem to change and what is reflected on the website is not necessarily real. We absolutely understand that this is a camp and that it works differently than a traditional wedding venue. And, a wedding is a very expensive and stressful endeavor. We ultimately went with another camp that has been a dream to work with. read more

My 11-year-old son had never been to summer camp before so we weren't sure what to expect when we picked him up. Oh my, what a fantastic experience we saw & heard! The counselors were perfectly selected, with smiles a mile wide & great attitudes all of them! I'm not sure what the 1-star reviewer means but Sandy was delightful & my son said she was one of the nicest people he ever met. Plus I loved that there were only 17 overnight campers (more during the day but picked up after work) so each child got quite a bit of attention. Great friendships, campfires, swimming, canoeing, lasertag, fishing...the list goes on! He came back confident, positive & 6 lbs thinner! Maybe I'll go next time :) If there was a 13-star rating that's what he wanted to give Camp Lakotah. Already asking if he can go for TWO weeks instead next summer! read more

my wife and i had our wedding here a month ago. the location is beautiful, and nice reception hall. first time we meet with sandy, she was very nice and it sounded like we wouldn't have any problems. this was at least 6 months before our wedding. first problem came with communication. when we were there the first time we noticed the phone was ringing off the hook. it would stop and then start again 10 seconds later. she just ignored it. we had a very hard time getting her on the phone. she said to text her because it was easier. she wouldn't answer those either. we would leave 1-2 messages a week for a while and wouldn't hear back for weeks. the week before the wedding we couldn't get any answers from her. the day before the wedding we showed up and she said she said we can do what we want and she would be there by 7pm. she didn't show up until midnight. she wouldn't answer texts so we just did what we wanted in decorating. when she finally showed up she was very upset and wouldn't talk to anyone she just glared at us. the next morning she talked to my dad, and wasn't nice at all. another problem was that we had them cater the reception. first problem was all the table clothes were noticeably stained from food. she said its a camp and what do we expect. and about a third of the table clothes were very wrinkly (must of been stored in a ball?) and we spent hours ironing them the night before. she wouldn't communicate with us when we could have a tasting so that never happened. we asked her what some of their best dishes were several times, and she didn't tell us, so we just picked something. the food was good. she cooked it and her husband was in charge of serving. he was a very nice and patient man. during the best man speech and maid of honor speech though they were scraping dishes into tubs right next to the dinner tables. it was loud and very distracting. one guest asked them if they could do that in the kitchen or wait till after the speeches. they did not. we give it one star because of the service. overall it could've been worse, but we wouldn't recommend it. she was very nice to some people and very cold to others. lots of glares noticed from people who never even talked to her. not sure why the other review that was also one star doesnt show up. it seemed accurate. read more

Camp Lakotah was the perfect venue for our wedding. We rented out the camp for the entire weekend and loved all the time we had to relax with our family and friends and have the type of wedding we wanted. The setting is absolutely beautiful and over half of our guests stayed on site. We spent the weekend, swimming, playing sand volleyball, and sitting in front of camp fires. Sandy was incredible throughout the entire process, making suggestions and help us getting things just the way we wanted. The camp staff was also incredibly helpful and kind throughout the weekend. Food would magically appear and then be cleaned up, and fires would be stared before we even got there. The food exceeded my expectations and many of our guests commented on how good it was- especially some of the appetizers at our cocktail hours. Would highly recommend for anyone looking for a low key camp wedding in a gorgeous setting that your guests will love! read more