St. Croix State Park — Attraction in Crosby Township

This was a very nice park and it's huge relative to other MN state parks. There are lots of activities, rivers, miles of hiking paths, beautiful scenery, a fire tower (butt clinchingly tall), but the sites are pretty close together. Note: I went on the 4th of July so it felt like we were being invaded by a bunch of people who never camp as we go camping probably 10-15 times a summer.

The sites were so packed people were too close for my confort and a the site behind us literally had a tent in our site which worked out because the kids played together but not great for social distancing. It was pretty ridiculous from that perspective. All of the tent sites are located in one area of the park and there were over 175 of them, on a normal camp weekend this should be fine. Most of the sites have some shade but don't expect full cover here and bring a screen tent, the deer flies got aggressive later in the day.

Bathrooms were open, but they were not being cleaned as often as they could and they ran out of TP on a couple of occasions. Showers seemed fine as long as you didn't use them in the later morning or night.

They had ice for sale and wood, but always check. Most of it was self service. Also this park is pretty far (45-60min round trip) to get something you forgot or if you just needed ice. Water was very available and spigot were extremely distributed and available.

The swimming area wasn't open so everyone was wading into the rivers and we found a stream about 30 min away on a less traveled trail to bring the kids to sit in where no one was sitting.

Bring an axe and hammer to chop the wood - it was in big logs here, deet bug sprays at 33%+, and a screen tent or an ability to make shade.

Overall, we liked the park and saw very little of it overall because...

I have camped in more than 30 state parks, 10 national forests and countless other campsites throughout the US. Pitching a tent at St. Croix State Park does not qualify as camping. I didn't mind the plethora of mosquitoes. I didn't mind the other campers having a good time.. I'm outdoorsy and can put up with typical "campground things". But this place was my special little hell. Here's a list of everything wrong with this State Park campground:

The campsites are densely packed together, leaving little room for privacy of any kind. In fact, the distance between individual campsites varies but on average are approximately 10 feet apart. Our campsite was, according to the ranger, "one of the more better ones", yet we felt as though we were sharing a campsite with three other groups.

There is no tree cover in between campsites. Yes, this is a literal statement. Only sparse shrubbery exists throughout this god-forsaken campground. The lack of trees contributes to the lack of privacy and results in there being no shaded areas during the day time. It is comparable to pitching a tent in the middle of a field.

The tent-only campsites appear, no the map, to be separated from the RV/Camper sites. This is not the case. The only defining barrier between these two sections is a small dirt trail lined by small shrubbery and weeds. The result is that this campground is more of an RV park than an actual campground.

This place can become incredibly busy and you will find yourself dodging people and children along the hiking trails. We heard televisions (!) and babies crying through the entire night.

I will never come back to this excuse of a campground. If you want a legitimate camping experience,...

I have been to many parks and have done a lot of camping, and this park was one of the most disappointing I've ever been to. In fact, we checked out early just because we wanted to get out of there. Never done that before. Issues were as follows:

The campground was horrid--the minute we got out of our car, there were at least 100 mosquitoes on us. I am not exaggerating. We were told it was like that all May and June, then again in Sept. You better have tons of bug spray. There is also hardly any cover for the sites and they are very close together. There were campers in three to four loops away from us who were making TONS of noise until at least midnight. The fall colors were supposed to be 50-75% and this was a great exaggeration. We even went up on the fire tower (the best part of the park) and it was pretty pathetic from up there. There were a few colorful stands of trees, but they are not accessible by hiking trails because the park is notoriously underutilized. The canoes for the fall color paddling down the river were overpriced ($45) compared to the price at some other places. It totally would NOT have been worth it with how sad the colors really were. Also, most of the trees are cut down leading from the office to the campsite because of the storms in 2011. Unless you go hiking/driving into deeper parts of the park, you will be disappointed. This might be why there are far less deciduous trees to create striking fall color. A few pluses of this park is that they have a seasonally open store with treats and food and merchandise and they have firewood and ice for purchase at the...