Mn State Parks

I just reserved a campsite at Itasca state park for the end of August based off of the good reviews from this post. Thanks for sharing! Excited to bring the family and discover a new park

We stayed at Cedar Lebanon State Park just east of Nashville for $20/night last April. Full hook up with a dump site area.

The Minnesota State Park sites are resevable at 8:00 am 365 days before you plan to arrive. Had been doing that to get a river spot at the Big Bog at Red Lake for arrival the Friday of opening weekend. The 2017 opener is May 13 so on May 12, 2016 at 8:00 am I was logged on to the DNR site and ready to reserve. Surprise surprise, they were all full by people who had reserved a day earlier for a Thursday arrival. So those campers apparently will spend a day and a half there with no walleye fishing just to get the choice spot.

If you’re still thinking about Bear Head Slider you’d best call first and save yourself some time. I know people who have been trying to get in all season so far and nada.

South Dakota state parks has had reservation only for a while now. You call and see if a site is open, if it is you can reserve it on the spot. The same is here in Minnesota, you can go into the office and they will look it up and see if it is reserved that day, if it isn’t, you can reserve it and camp. They are supposed to install phones at the offices to make it easier, when that will happen is anybody’s guess. Change is hard for some people. Is it perfect, no, nothing is. It would have been nice if the state trained its personnel before it rolled out the new system. $25 a year to access all 72 state parks is really reasonable compared to buying one round of drinks at the bar, or 25 pulltabs to go along with that round, or 3 dozens shinners. Suck it up Gracie, if that’s your real name, and buy your state park sticker and enjoy what the parks have to offer.

Tom Sawvell wrote:

If you’re still thinking about Bear Head Slider you’d best call first and save yourself some time.

Thanks for the warning Tom!
The only issue is that I started this thread close to four years ago

We did stay at Bear Head for a few nights on that trip and then headed up to Fall Lake campground, part of the Superior National Forest and the rest of the family fell in love. So much in fact that we just returned from a 5 day, 4 night camping excursion last week. Love the location and the easy day trips into the BWCA.

We all most always reserve our spots so the new change will not affect me much.

Personally I like the reservation. We wanted to plan a weekend in Warrens MN the county park doesn’t do reservations so I can I load the camper and to the park not knowing if there is going to be a spot? Now taking taking 1/2 the money up front is something I hate as well. Private campgrounds are doing this as well. If i dont show charge me, but you take my money now for something i booked a yr from now…

re puddlepounder: “The same is here in Minnesota, you can go into the office and they will look it up and see if it is reserved that day, if it isn’t, you can reserve it and camp. They are supposed to install phones at the offices to make it easier, when that will happen is anybody’s guess. Change is hard for some people. Is it perfect, no, nothing is. ”

Missing the point. It’s NOT if you can go into the office SAME DAY and if a site is empty, get it FOR THE DAY. It’s if you can call THAT DAY to a park and findout how many NON-RESERVABLE sites are available, plan accordingly, and get one for the duration you WANT… SO, for people that work at non-traditional schedule (off from the middle of the week through a weekend, or retirees, or others who prefer to do things on a more spur of the moment style than to make a reservation LAST JANUARY for a site in August, they’re PRETTY WELL SCREWED.

Yes, you may walk in on Tuesday morning and the office will have a site that ISN’T RESERVED, but you can pretty well GUARANTEE that you aren’t staying in it through the weekend.

“Change is hard for some people. Is it perfect, no, nothing is. ”

Stupid change, that makes the parks less inviting to a minority of users has NOTHING to do with being “hard for some people”.