St Francois State Park

My son and I had a good night camping here overnight. We stayed at the basic campsite and picked a low traffic night (a cloudy Monday night) to keep a bit isolated. There was a metal fire pit with a flip over grill (which we didn’t us since we made hobo dinners and used a dutch oven for the rest of our meals). The ground was flat enough to make good camping ground. The biggest issue I had was that they don’t want you to bring your own fire wood so you don’t introduce forest destroying beetles, but then they charge $ 4 for a small bundle of wood that barely makes enough fire for one meal. There are some trails (three main ones, I think), a couple of them short (less than two hours) and one that is longer with a north and south loop. The big river runs around the park. We didn’t catch anything, but we are amateur fishermen and the water was both high and murky. We also didn’t know where the fish hit. We will probably try a different state park for variety, but it was definitely a good time. And they do have bathrooms and a shower house that was kept up very well.

I visited this park two weekends ago and came to enjoy the park. I was unable to get out on a trail so had to make do at a primitive site. It happened to be the Girl Scouts anniversary of some sort and there were tons of little girls everywhere making little girl noises. Which if you’re going to get away was not helpful. But this isn’t about kids its about the park.
The facilities are super clean and well maintained. At this time the river still hasn’t recovered from the drought so no kayaking :(Wood here is super expensive as opposed to Bass River Resort or Sutton’s Bluff in the ONF.
Next time I’ll go camp on a trail away from everyone, the trails were well maintained.