Rice Creek Chain of Lakes Regional Park

I live across the freeway and used this campground to exile from home when my girlfriend had covid. It worked well for this purpose. The location for that regard was nice but it would also be a decent location for visiting the Twin Cities Metro area. The site was a good size and mine was a pull through site. However the pull through site did not offer as much privacy as the back-in sites. The back in sites had decent tree and shrub coverage on the sides. It wasn't terribly level side to side. The water pressure was good. I had 48 over the air TV channels. Verizon was giving me 2 bars of LTE but it was often unusable. The dump station was paved and in good condition. The park has some nice trails which goes around Centerville lake. At $45 I did think it was kind of expensive for a water/electric site. I was there during the week and most other sites were empty so it was pretty quiet.

Medium to large, spacious sites. We stayed in site 9, which had more grass room than we needed but the kids loved it. Everyone in the campground was quiet at night and we slept great.

We used the dump station before heading to our site, which was fairly easy to get in and out of. 30/50 amp electric worked fine at our site. We had water in the tank so didn’t hook up to the spigot. Site was easy to back in to with plenty of room for our 33’ fifth wheel and F350.

We checked out the bathhouse but didn’t use it. Women’s restroom was fairly clean. There are two playgrounds here, a beach (closed due to blue/green algae), and walking trails.

Verizon cell service was good enough to stream videos.

Como Park Zoo and Conservatory is only a half hour drive from here and the kids enjoyed our walk through to see the animals and plants.

W/E sites are $32/night + tax, plus an $8 reservation fee and $6/night vehicle entrance fee.

This campground is part of the Anoka County Parks system, so you'll need a vehicle entry permit ($5/day or $25/year). Rustic sites are $20/night, and 50 amp is $32/night, and all reservations have an added $8 fee. There are five loops and a group camping area. A, B, and D are all 50 amp electric and water with a mix of back-in and pull-through spots. E and F have no hookups. Each loop has a porta-potty, and there's one central restroom and shower building that can get really packed in the morning. It wasn't clean, but it wasn't awful.

The park has some nice lakefront views and trails, but they aren't at the campground. The campground looks more like a suburban yard with no privacy between sites, but there are trees and wetlands between loops and it seems most of the sites have at least one side facing nature. In my case, it was a few trees. State parks are much better experiences.

Online registration, even last-minute, was blissfully simple.