Glendalough State Park — Hotel in Fergus Falls

If you love long-legged spiders crawling all over your body, chair, and tent, go to Glendalough State Park in July.

I love camping in general, and I've camped at many different MN state parks. (And I'd give all of the MN parks five stars, just except Glendalough.) Glendalough offers cart-in and canoe-in camp sites and it sounded really cool. So my boyfriend and I got a cart-in camp site which was indeed very nice. You get your own cart which makes it effortless to carry all the heavy camping gears from your car to the camp site. It's also nice that there is never any cars driving right next to your site.

BUT I think the state park website should at least have some warning for campers if their park has a billion spiders everywhere. I went to Glendalough on July 10-12, and it (hopefully) might have been just that week that lots of spiders came out. But I just wanted everyone to be aware that you may suffer from spiders if you choose to go to Glendalough. Yes, everyone expects bugs (mostly moths, flies, and mosquitoes) when camping, but I doubt many people are fine with big spiders crawling on the tent, under the tent, in shoes, chairs, picnic table, bathroom, water fountain etc etc.

I'm not one of those people who exaggerate stuff, to be clear. My boyfriend and I literally killed about 300 spiders during camping there. We tried our best to minimize the time that the tent door was open, and still got a few spiders chilling in our tent with us. It was not fun. We couldn't even enjoy the camp fire or stars in the sky because we could never sit down calmly on our chairs or bench, constantly flicking so many spiders off our legs.

For campers: just make sure you are risking this when you go to Glendalough state park. For the park manager: I understand you can't kill those billion spiders, but at least warn the campers prior to their camping via the DNR website or email.

Anyways, if you don't hate spiders, Glendalough has beautiful lakes to boat and as I mentioned, cart-in sites are pretty...

The park and campground are beautiful and serene at first glance and the park rangers are helpful and nice. Then everyone starts carting in and you realize the most obnoxious, uncivilized families all come to Glendalough to unleash their little terrors on the campsites. Don't get me wrong, people should enjoy themselves but the people aren't happily camping- they're yelling at their kids so you can hear every word, yet letting them run wild all over the place, slamming the cabin doors over and over (parents and kids alike).... Then college kids (underage per their loud conversations) were shotgunning beer and being disruptive until 4am. The sites are a bit too close so you hear everyone's lectures and noise like they're standing right next to you. It's not a place for relaxation or to get away from it all. We paid for 2 nights and all we got to do was set up, cook 1 meal and lay in a tent because we ended up leaving after 17 hours. I'd been looking forward to a camping weekend for years and when I finally got it, all I could think about was leaving early. Good grief, people. This is why we can't have...

Ridiculously beautiful!! There are unfortunately much fewer official trails for mountain biking than I would have wished, but whispers I went on all the trails anyway. Outstanding how massive this State Park is, its beauty, amazing facilities, signage, and pathways. I would highly recommend this to cyclists that want a mixture of paved and dirt/groomed grassy paths. You really need to be cycling in order to see the entirety of this huge park, which is why I'm so sad that cycling is not condoned on all paths. If it's a weekday I'm sure you can get away with it, but likely not on a weekend.

I would recommend if you're just visiting for a day, going all the way to the end and parking where the rental bicycles are; this will help you to know where everything is (I was lost when I first entered). Then cycle up to the woods North of there where the pretty cabins are and entering the woods from there. There are many paths that are missable without a careful eye. Cycle all the paved paths and roads in this park so you can find them all! Have a blast!! Many great...