Crescent Lake Campground & Backcountry Sites

Here for a week in mid-COVID pandemic. We reserved this site six months in advance, but there are a number of non-reservable sites. We stayed in a couple of them last year, which led us to coming back with reservations this year. It's a pretty busy campground - filled up on the weekend, but there were available sites during the week.

No cell signal, no radio reception beyond satellite and our weather radio. It was so great to be away from all the news.

Spotless vault toilets with lots of TP.

Campsite 31 allows you to be back away from the road - lots of privacy. Direct access to the lake. We left our kayaks on shore. Spent plenty of time sitting on the shore with coffee (or wine), just enjoying the view.

Mosquitos pick up after dark, but they were pretty tolerable.

25 miles of fairly well maintained gravel roads to get to campground from Tofte.

We happened upon this campground after driving around on the lovely forest roads in the Superior National Forest. We had no reservations, and many of these campsites are reservable, but we lucked out and someone had cancelled their two night reservation on site 26. While we were parked right up along the campground road, our picnic table and fire ring were between us and the lake on this steeply sloped campsite. If you don't mind going up and down, this is an amazing campsite. You can leave your boat/kayak/canoe right on the shore in your campsite. We spent an entire afternoon sitting comfortable on the shore in peace and quiet.

Motors are allowed on the lake, but it's still an incredibly quiet lake. Kayaks and canoes were more common.

After two nights, we needed to move to a non reservable campsite. We chose #11, down the road and quite separated from other campsites. It was not on the lake. Very private and quiet. We were able to walk down a nearby trail to access the lake.

Vault toilets were immaculately clean with lots of TP.

The concessionaire for this campground is also Sawbill Outfitters from nearby Sawbill Lake campground. Very pleasant and helpful camp host. It seems to be a very popular campground - every site was filled on Friday night.

No cell signal. (This was a plus for us.)

We'll be back and we'll reserve either site 31 or 26.