Best Tent Camping near Pepin, WI

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!

We experienced wonderful customer service, tent camping, nature center and waterfalls.

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.

Three campgrounds, first come first serve. $10/day entry $40/daily for electric hook up (non-resident); no full hook-ups, no water, only 1 vault toilet open per campground. Year round availability, however- tough to find! Very hard to get a cellular connection (T-mobile). Beautiful views of the river, right along the edge if you tent camp. Multiple playgrounds, hiking trails and loads of nature, large beach and waterfalls.

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.

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.

There is a lot of hiking (the view from the bluffs are amazing) you can rent kayaks canoes etc. and they have a boat landing. No shore fishing or swimming which is disappointing.

The nonelectric sites were a bit small (compared to many state parks I have been too) -especially considering the gravel spot they leave for pop ups - not great to tent camp on and takes up most of the space that is safely far enough from the fire pit.

The bathrooms were decent but quite a hike (which stinks late at night) the showers were clean but I never used them.

However, the bugs and mosquitos were almost unbearable. We fogged the site daily, had thermacells, and coated ourselves in bug spray - still came home completely bit up and trying to play cards at night the constant hum of bugs was a bit much.

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.

First thing you need to know: It's completely in the woods, and sites are FULLY shaded. Sites 28-38 are on a loop with a picnic pavilion in the middle with some openings for sun on the road and in the picnic area. Other than that, the rest of the campground is rather dark all the time; there aren't as many sunlight openings on the road to the other sites. This is not a good place for solar panels, but almost all sites are electric.

Nice price: Cost is $20/$16 for electric/non-electric. This is an Army Corps of Engineers park which means you pay $10/$8 if you have an NPS Lifetime Senior Pass.

Services: There are full services at this campground - flush toilets, sinks, showers, trash receptacles, and drinking water/dump station near the entrance. There is an interpretive center for Saturday evening ranger programs and a playground next to it.

Roomy sites: This campground is small, but almost all sites are large. There are 38 sites plus walk in tent sites A through G and a group site. It looks like sites 28-38 can be rented for a group; the entrance was blocked off when we were there.

Equestrian section may be open to campers without a horse: There is an equestrian campground about a half mile before the main campground entrance. You may camp in the equestrian area (E1-E10) without a horse if the main area is full. We were able to reserve a site in there a couple days ahead of time because the main campground was full. It was just us and one other family on a Saturday night, and neither of us had a horse. We moved to the main area on Sunday morning because lots of sites were open on Sunday.

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.

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 is a well maintained campground with private feeling sites. Some with firewood provided. Fire rings have attached grills. Lovely walking trails. Near Lake Pepin. One negative was orange/rusty water from hand pump well. $14 a night!!! We plan to camp there again.

This campground is a bit more spendy than state parks and regional campgrounds, but the security and family friendly atmosphere make it worth the extra cash. Stay in the N sites, they are a little more private, and a few offer great views of Lake Pepin. N1 is a prime site. If you’re staying with friends or have a large family, the group sites G0 and G2 offer views and lots of space for multiple tents. We’ve stayed here with a group of about 20 people with plenty of room.

The sites are semi-walk-in sites, where your car stays in the main parking lot, but they do allow for drive-up loading and unloading, so don’t feel like you need to pack extra light. It limits traffic driving through the campground, and is really nice to not have vehicles driving through at all hours.

Overall, I highly recommend.