Best Tent Camping near Little Falls, MN

Quiet, not quite remote and with access to enough if you need it. You get a large tent site on the Mississippi River across a road from the RV’s highly recommend.

Great rustic campground with trail access to Cuyuna MTB trails. Offers hot showers. No water/electric hookups. A couple sites allow for smaller RVs and pop-ups but mainly tent sites.

Rolled up in the middle of the night. $10 cash in the box for a tent site. Clean bathroom with shower. Felt safe and fell asleep quickly with the sound of the creek next to our site. Would definitely stay again.

Tent site is an open area with tall trees. It also offered an open view of the night sky & enjoyed watching the full moon! Next to the shower house which makes it a convenient trip to the bathroom. Stayed one night but will stay longer when bringing the kayaks. Price for this spot made my trip super cheap!

Have stayed at this campground 3x since 2021 and our family loves it. 6 RV sites and a few tent camping sites. Has 30/50 hook up and a water filling station and dump station on site. Pump track is great to warm up on. Shower house with toilets are clean. Trail connector with easy access to Bobsled is right there and you can ride to Cruser's Kettle. Highly recommend.

I pulled in at like 11pm and went straight to find an open spot, which was pretty easy.

I had decent privacy but was in eye-shot ( through trees ) of 2 other occupied camps.

Registration is easy & self service. They have envelopes at the entrance you just fill out, so you can use any payment method including card if you’re comfortable with that.

I was only solo tent camping and got there way late & had to leave way early, so I can’t speak to much else.

Tent camp here once and a while, but finally got around to officially doing the hiking club trail. Love doing a sunset hike, this trail is just over two miles, all along the river, with pretty much continual sunset views if you take the trail East to West. It's a loop, which is always preferred I think. Nice picnic area by the river. Historic signs describing the old town are along the beginning part of the trail near the picnic area. Kinda fun to read about and feel what old settlements were like! 

Easy and pretty trail, took just half an hour, went with the kids. Just an awesome sunset walk and a bit of moonlight!

This hidden gem is on the Mississippi water trail around mile 996. It is called "Overlook Park" and owned/maintained by the city of Baxter, but is part of the DNR's state water trail. There is even signage for those on the river to inform them about their whereabouts on the trail when they pass this park. 

So although this is a little private city park, there is a specific spot RIGHT on the river with a picnic table, fire ring, and nice high ground soft space for a tent. But really you could tent it anywhere in the park, but this space is set aside a bit from the rest, as it is a city park although very little traffic. There is garbage and a vaulted toilet. There are three picnic tables throughout including the tent site, and two fire rings. There is a nice canoe landing area with a few stairs to help give access up and down from the river bank. Very pretty spot on the river! The opposite land bordering this city park is part of Crow Wing State Park, so even though it's close to town, it does feel fairly remote. 

Such a well maintained park! Pretty views and some rugged trails along the river for some hiking as well.

For someone who likes to do it all Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area is the place to be!!!

From Rv Camping and tent camping to amazing secluded Yurts on a trout pond there are more than enough options to camp and stay.

The campground itself isn’t anything to rave about, and is mostly open and pretty close together but the yurts, those are a different story!

The yurts are set on a beautiful only mine pit that is stocked with all kinds of trout. The have a wood burning stove, bunk beds, table, chairs, bear locker, fire ring and picnic table. There is a pergola style shelter with a full roof for outdoor cooking.

The view of the trout pond is absolutely stunning and fishing isn’t bad either if you know how to fish trout. There is a shop in town that will deliver kayaks and pick them up when you are done for a small fee, like 50$ for the day?

The old mine pits around and in the park are pristine and literally crystal clear! You can see hundreds of feet down through crystal clear water making it an amazing place to canoe and kayak.

If you are into mountain biking, this is definitely the park for you! Some of the best mountain biking red dirt trails are located in this recreation area! Shops in town rent bikes too! The views from the trails are breathtaking!

Overall, one of my favorite places to hike, bike, camp and, paddle!

Leap Day 2/29/20-3/1/20 Frog Pond

We headed to Lake Carlos for their candlelight ski, this was our first visit to this state park. Tent camping wasn’t available and we were able to reserve a camper cabin - Frog Pond. It was a nice change and a warmer option, the cabin is gorgeous! Frog Pond sleeps 6 with heat and electricity. There are 4 cabins that share 2 vault toilets.

It was a beautiful 38 degree Leap Day and we took advantage of it. They offer a large number of ski trails so we xcountry skied before dark. The trails were icy, but still enjoyable. At dark we headed to the candlelight event. It was very busy and a huge turnout. We hiked 1.2 miles and then snowshoed 2.4 miles. There are ponds and bogs that they create snowshoe trails on, so there are even more trails to explore in the winter. It was a beautiful night and we enjoyed the wooded trails and starry skies. We had a fire and enjoyed a normal outdoor cookout before bed.

We did more skiing on Sunday and checked out the 2 campgrounds as they were on the ski route. One campground is on Lake Carlos and very open. Sites have beautiful lake views. You can apparently drive your boat right into a sandy shore and dock it. They also have a swimming beach. The other campground is a bit more wooded and more suited for tents. This campground is near the camper cabins. The trails are very wooded and pretty. We enjoyed skiing the hiking club trail and ended up hitting almost every trail in our stay. I assume this park would be equally beautiful in the summer. What a beautiful state park!

The thing about State Parks is that they don't always know what they want to be.

Are they here to celebrate nature, and provide a moments breath away from the pace of urban life? Are they here for historical facts? Are they for revenue?

Crow Wing State Park suffers from this dilemma. While the tent sites are nice and spacious, the RV sites are stacked one on top of another, with no illusion of privacy. The weekend we were there, they were pretty full, but noise coming from other campers was acceptable.

There are plenty of water spigots, and toilet/shower facilities. The facilities are clean, but old.

There is an almost constant booming, however, coming from Fort Ripley, just down the river. The Fort serves as training for everything from the national guard, to state police, to the DNR. At one point, we could clearly hear live rounds being fired.

The walks and paths were well maintained, except that some were flooded out due to recent heavy rains. The area dedicated to the Old Crow Wing Village was well done.

What causes me the most confusion though, is that someone made the call to cover the roads with sand, instead of the traditional crushed stone. So, never mind that the sand made it harder to walk up hill to the water and showers, it got everywhere. When we tore down camp, I emptied enough sand from my tent, that I could have added a fresh layer to a cat's litter box.

I am very conflicted about this park. It is very pretty, but when you get right down to it, the little quirks that surround it add up. I'm not sure if we will be back. Not that we won't, it's just that we won't be rushing back.

Small, well spaced out camp spots and very quiet. This was a wet spring and under the trees, the bugs were overwhelming so keep that in mind. Few nice trails, several museums right across the street, really nice parks in little falls and neat views of the dam on the river

This is a review for the walk-in, canoe-in campsite #C1.  It is actually located in a secluded part of the park, more than a mile from the main campground.  It is meant to be a campsite for park campers who want a more private location than the regular campground and dont mind backpacking or carting their gear in, or for paddlers from the Mississippi River who access it as a Water Trail stop by paddling to it up Pike Creek.  The park itself is located near the town of Little Falls, MN and there is easy access from Hwy 10, or from the River. In all honesty, I have driven past Little Falls many times en route to Minneapolis or elsewhere but never stopped; I never realized what a small hidden jewel this park is, and within it what a terrific camping opportunity exists here for secluded walk-in or paddle-in campers.

The campsite itself is gorgeous, a beautiful setting on the sandy banks of Pike Creek. My friend and I packed in our gear on the short hiking trail to get here, but I do have a friend who paddled in here not long ago and recommended it highly. Pike Creek is a clear, beautiful stream that is peaceful to camp on, and there are several hikes you can make from the site. There is a heavy duty fire ring with sturdy grill, tenting spots for several tents, picnic table, steps down to the water, swimming access nearby, and rack to store your canoe or kayak if you have one. You do need to hike about 2/10 of a mile to get to bathrooms and water source; you have to hike about a mile to the main campground if you want showers. But if you don't mind the trek for any of those, this is one sweet campsite!

While we were here, we hiked the trail along Pike Creek which was scenic, including rapids; there are many wooded trails, and a longer trail to hike into the location where Charles Lindbergh landed the "Jenny" in 1927 on what was then an open field on the family homestead. We also hiked to the Missisippi River, which is a nice trail in and of itself, but also leads to two history museums and a Living History Site, one operated by the county historicall society (http://morrisoncountyhistory.org/)  , the others by the Minnesota State Historical Society ( https://www.littlefallsmn.com/things-to-do/charles-lindbergh-house-and-museum ) .  The land encompassed by the park is hisotric for 2 reasons: Zebulon Pike spent the winter here with a search party who were going up river to search for the source of the Mississippi River, and probably camped right at the very campsite here on the sores of Pike Creek; and a century later it was the homestead of the Lindbergh family and where aviator Charles grew up. So, camping here is a pleasure if you are interested in history as well as nature, off the beaten path. 

In addition, you can bike a bike trail to Little Falls which then connects you to  maze of local trails, https://www.littlefallsmn.com/things-to-do/bike-and-hike , or while at the park you can paddle the river (rent gear locally if you didnt bring your own: http://www.shirleymaesoutfitters.com/ )  

You can also drive bout 5 miles to a terrific National Wildlife Refuge at Crane Meadows, we hiked there and really enjoyed bird watching and the rare oak savannah and tall grass prairie. 

This campsite is really a hidden jewel. The only reason I didnt give it 5 stars was because there is a train line that runs along the Mississippi River a few miles from the campsite, and the sound of train whistles in the evening really carries. Otherwise it is very secluded and beautiful, and a great choice if wanting to explore the area. if you are a birder, the tremendous variety of birds  (kingfishers, various woodpeckers, warblers, waterfowl, and more)  is great, though be forewarned that a screech owl hangs out near this campsite, and it was a bit unnerving the first time we heard it!