Best Tent Camping near Byron, MN

This is a rustic state park with limited amenities. There are no water or electric hook ups. However clean water is available in the park. The park does have flush toilets and showers. We found these to be in good condition and clean. The showers had warm water. The water stream is on a timer and so are the lights. The shower stalls are Individual stalls. The interior roads are dirt roads with a few potholes they are very narrow. The camping sites are nice sized and relatively private. There is a gravel pad on each site and some have a tent pad. Each site had a picnic table and a fire ring. There are plenty of walking and biking trails and there are walk-in tent camp sites. However, you cannot see the lake from the campground and there is no access to the lake from the campground. We were able to drive through the campground with our 40 foot fifth wheel. But just barely, be careful! 

All RV and ridiculously expensive for tent camping

Stayed here in a tent while on a bicycle camping trip and it was adequate. It is located in a city park within a couple minutes walk of the downtown area. The bike trail crosses the south end of downtown so close to that too. This would not be a good place to camp if you'd like to be out in nature

Biggest gripe is the slope of the tent sites. The majority of the tent sites are on an incline around a pond. There are also a lot of ducks that aren't very afraid of humans. None got into my gear though. There are fire rings at the tent sites. No picnic tables at the individual sites but there are some nearby in the park and there's also a covered picnic shelter. Hammocks would be difficult to impossible as the tent area is a strip of grass between pond and bluff, which has mostly brush or too whimpy of trees to hang from at the base. There are a couple huge oaks but none in pairs.

Quarter showers and clean restrooms are available. $20/night/tent which seemed a bit steep to me considering how slanted the sites were and quarter showers. It is cheaper than the other places within immediate biking distance which were $25/night.

A nice small park but nothing special. Sites are good sized and nicely spaced. Facilities are primitive. Nice walking trail around the property about 2.5 miles. The trail does cross some of the tent sites. Maybe once the lockdown is over things will be better there.

This is a great campground with lots of shade and spacious tent pads! The large oak trees throughout the campground made for beautiful scenery and nice spots to string a hammock up. My site was right next to the bathroom building which did have a light on all night, but I had an eye mask so that didn’t bother me. $25/night for a tent site

We are new to tent camping and are fortunate to live a short drive away from Whitewater State Park. We have heard from our friends who go camping that this is a highly sought after destination and I can see why. Beautiful lookouts on trails, quiet camp sites (non electric sites are much more peaceful), and very nice amenities. The main shower/restroom area looks brand new and is very nice.

Nice distance from the twin cities for a weekend away with some nice hiking trails. The tent pads have been upgraded to pea gravel by the friends association (which seems to be quite active based on signage around park improvements). Showers and bathrooms were clean. Wi-Fi near the park entrance and spotty T-Mobile service throughout. The outside of the loop is good for tent camping but could be a little noisy if the campground had been fully booked.

Most sites are for car camping or RV's. Tent site was nice and clean and a good size. Could have set up 2 tents with no problem. Not a ton of privacy from other campers. Showers/bathrooms available. Lots of hiking trails. Camp store was never open when I checked. Swimming beach was available, but there were geese (and their poop) everywhere. This state park is nice because there are NO mosquitoes. But beware, there are bears.

This is one of my favorite campgrounds in Southern Minnesota! It is only 1 1/2 hours away from the TwinCities which makes it an ideal getaway. The campsites are wooded and have enough distance between them that noise is minimal. I especially love the view of Lake Pepin and the nice little swimming beach. On our last stay, we were able to watch eagles from our campsite, which was amazing. They have recently added 3 small cabins to rent which would be a nice alternative to tent camping. If you do plan a camping trip to Hok-Si-La and you're driving in from the Twin Cities, be sure to take Wisconsin Highway 35 through Maiden Rock, Stockholm, Pepin, and other small towns. You can loop back into Minnesota through Wabasha. This adds about an extra half hour to your drive but it is definitely worth it!

This is a convenient small campground next to a city park. The touristy shops and biking trails are within a few blocks of the campground. The RV campsites have water and electricity. We found the sites to be rather close together. The sites are first come first served (no reservations). There are also numerous tent sites, as this seems to be popular with the bicycling crowd. This really is a beautiful area of southeast MN.

Its nice to have a place this nice only 35 minutes from Rochester. Beautiful campground with great amenities available. The hike to the site is steep but worth it once you get up there. I stayed at the Talia bell tent site so I didn't have to bring much so it made the hike a lot easier. Short drive to White Water State Park. A lot of great trout fishing spots along the river. Very peaceful campground, great view of the stars on clear nights! Will definitely be back.

We tent camped here and loved it. We were able to do a lot of trail exploring and had a great time on the “scenic” cave tour. The trails were well maintained but difficult to understand in some places as signage was lacking.

There is a primitive loop with pit toilets, a tent loop with no electricity but access to showers and flush toilets, and a trailer loop with all accommodations.

There are great cold water trout streams that are shallow enough to wade in and play in if the weather is warmer. Hiking trails of varying skill levels but all in mostly wooded areas. Forestville townsite is closed during the week but you can wander around the outside of the buildings and site. No gates or posted restrictions.

We tent camped at Myre-Big Island State Park in Minnesota from September 30 to October 3, 2022. The weather was warmer than usual at this time of year, and the fall color development was a couple weeks behind normal. It was cool but beautiful during the daytime (light jacket/sweater weather). The temperature dropped at night but didn’t require anything more than our sleeping bags to keep us warm. The earlier sunset meant meal cooking and cleanup needed to be a bit earlier, but it also meant longer time for beautiful campfires in the evenings.

The trails were in great shape and beautiful with past-peak grasses and developing colors in the trees. Most of the wildflowers were done for the year, but some were still in bloom. Deer, squirrels, chipmunks, and lots of birds were active near the trails and campgrounds.

We have camped here previously, in early summer. Then the bugs were abundant and aggressive on the Big Island trails. During this fall trip, there were very few.

Walking distance to downtown and easy access to Root River Trail. RV sites were close to each other with little privacy. Many tent sites around the perimeter. Short walk to bathhouse. Showers are not free, 4 quarters for 5 minutes. No laundry available. Campground is first come/first serve and doesn’t take reservations or online payment. Payment is made at adjacent city office.
Sites are gravel, fairly level. Water and electric available at rv sites.
Nice park nearby with stocked fishing pond. There is some noise due to the park being tucked into the city. Garbage and dump station free for campers. They ask for a donation for dumping if not camped there. Tight access at dump station might make it difficult for larger rigs. Strong Verizon signal.

We spent four nights tent camping at the White Fox Campground of Myre-Big Island State Park in June 2022. This park is a combination woodland/prairie/wetland setting. The White Fox Campground is on the fringes of a woodland. Our campsite was grassy and open with trees and shrubs curving along the back of the site. The site had the usual fire ring with grill and a large picnic table.

There are some nice trails for hiking through woodlands and prairie and alongside wetlands. We saw a lot of wildlife: several deer, red squirrels, chipmunks, a raccoon, a woodchuck, lots of different birds, and several different types of butterflies. In the mornings the birdsong was pretty amazing, loud and long lasting.

There are two freeways and a rail line near the park, but the noise from them was only bothersome on one morning of our stay.

There is a second campground on the Big Island portion of the park. Big Island is wooded and has some beautiful trails that we enjoyed.

Campsites are beautiful, each one seems to have unique qualities. We stayed in site 42, it didn’t seem to have very much privacy. I was also hoping for a view of the river but I couldn’t see it from the site. We found a dream catcher in the trees, so we made another one to leave. The tent sites along the river are amazing! Each one has a path down to the river. Site 69 has a private beach and it’s deep enough to swim in. For being a stocked river, we didn’t get a single bite all weekend. I only saw 1 person actually catch a single fish. We did a couple trails while we were there. It says Chimney Rock has “over 100 step” I think it’s 199 each way! We tried using the campground’s GPS units but couldn’t figure them out. Others said the same thing. We drove through the newer campground Minneiska, the pictures online made it look bare, but it was beautiful! It was a prairie full of wild flowers! The trees were newer but old enough to still create shade. There was an abundance of staff always driving around yet there was a bathhouse that had clogged up toilets all weekend long. There is also ZERO cell phone reception. Whether that is a plus or a minus, that’s up to you.

We ran across a little camp ground called Sleepy Hollow Campground W922 Lower Eagle Valley Road, Fountain City, WI. 54629(609) 687-8351 This is one of the nicest places we have found. It is not marked on RV Trip Wizard or any others that we could find. I found it by accident through Google Maps. It looked like what a campground would look like from the air and by querying the address I found the name of the campground called Sleepy Hollow. They do not advertise and it is a small camp with little amnesties. It has a shower house with restrooms and a laundry. They are clean and well maintained. They have 13 pull through sites 80” in length and very wide with full hook-ups, eight back in sites with just water and Electric. And tent sites as well. It is on a quiet road called Lower Eagle Valley Rd. It is set in a valley with 3 to 4 hundred foot hills full of trails on a working farm. About a mile from the Mississippi just north of lock and dam no. 5A if you are looking for a quiet place to recharge this is the place for you. This is a camping site where there are adults, not designed for kids.

The winter was a long one last year and we were itching to take our new 30foot Jayco Eagle bunkhouse travel trailer out for its maiden voyage! We decided that my birthday weekend was the perfect opportunity to do just that. To be on the safe side, incase we had issues, we decided to stay close to home so we decided to hit up a new park, Nerstrand Big Woods State Park just outside Northfield, Minnesota. This park is only an hour from the twin cities and very convenient for a weekend getaway after work on friday.

We stayed In campsite 27 which was an electric campsite that was pretty open to all the other campsites. Most of the campsites there were really open and you could see and other peoples campsites so if that’s not your style of camping I wouldn’t go to Nerstrand big Woods. There is also water hook up at the park in that site and some of the other sites but that wasn’t listed when we booked the site.

The park office was just a short walk or a bike ride from the campsites and had a very nice gift shop and bathrooms there. There is also a really nice shower and bathroom building right next to the campground host site. Just off the campground was a really nice playground for the kids that utilized tree stumps and tree branches as the playground. There was a really large picnic area and picnic shelter also.

Along with electric sites there’s also just tent sites without electric if that’s your style camping.

Nerstrand Big Woods Is very well known for its beautiful waterfall that you can walk on and the trail leading to the waterfall was also a great hike.

All in all I think Nerstrand Big Woods was a good choice for a weekend getaway for a little family of four. And it gave us a lot to do because in The little city of Northfield there was a lot of little shops and cute little restaurants to eat at the shop at. Northfield is also home to the Malt-o-meal Museum and production. My husband and I are big craft brewery fans And we’re pretty stoked to find out that there were three breweries around the park. We visited Tanzenwald and Chapel brewery and tried flights at each one. Out of the two we thought Tanzenwald was the best for staff friendliness and prices. Each flight we got a 4 5ounce pours were only 4$. There was also a restaurant at that brewery with really good cheese curds.

We decided that Nerstrand Isn’t our favorite park but it’s a good option for us to be able to get away in short notice close to home with a lot of activities around for us to do.

This campground has two sections, north and south. The southern portion has been closed all summer because of flooding. We stayed in the north section in site 12, which has a small grassy overflow parking lot across from it. The campground is clean and very open. The campsites are arranged on both sides of a circle drive with trees surrounding the circle and some in the middle.

There is a play ground for the kids, but you need to drive or walk about half mile to 3/4 of a mile to it. It is located at the nature center. During our stay, they had a presentation on birds and our boys really enjoyed it. The park also offers a boat landing, which was clean and easily accessible. You could also bring your boat up to a walk-able landing near the north campground, but this is inaccessible by car. This landing did offer a sand beach, but I don't know that I would recommend swimming here because of algae. During our stay we were also plagued by little black flies, but the mosquitoes weren't bad.

The campground offered very clean restroom facilities with both bathrooms and showers at one end, near where we stayed, and at the other end there was a bathroom that offered pit toilets. You are able to tent camp or bring in a pop up camper or larger pull behind. I'm not sure that a large RV would fit in any of the sites, but a small one definitely would. There are specific sites that are reserved only for tents and some sites do offer electrical access. There are no sites with water access, but there are two water access points within the North Campground, one on each end. Roads in the park/campground are paved. The campsites themselves are not paved. They are grassy. There are no additional amenities at this campground.

While the campground itself is quiet and all campers were respectable, the frequency of trains and the loudness of their horns at night was enough to drive me nuts. Every time I was almost asleep another one would go past. I finally moved from our popup camper to our car, which blocked out enough noise to allow me to fall asleep. Because of the trains, we will not be returning to camp here. If you are not able to fall asleep right away or are a light sleeper, I would definitely not recommend staying here.

The rest of the park was quiet and did not have much car traffic. I am not sure if this was due to the fact that the south campground was flooded or if it always has few cars. I was able to run the length of the park without encountering many cars (3.8 miles round trip including running through parking lots in the park). I did not, but you are able to walk through the flooded section of the park. They are just prohibiting people from driving there. Close to fishing, boating, and unique shopping opportunities.

We got a last second site and stayed for just one night. The sites were great for tents and relatively shady, but an RV had some trouble in our loop and had to move to another site. Where we set up our tent was pretty rocky and hurt the feet when you stood barefoot in the tent even with an extra tarp, so be careful where you set your tent.

There is no swimming beach, but the ranger gave us directions to another beach nearby. Next time we visit we'll be sure to check that out. Early June is good as the bugs there aren't bad at all.

The trails were nice, wish we had brought our bikes to hit the Sakatah/Singing Hills trail, looked lovely! The fishing dock was fun for the little kiddos to visit.