Upper Sioux Agency State Park

We stayed here on an August weekend and had no problem getting a site the day of our stay. I suspect construction on the road to the campground might have played a roll in that. We were at the Yellow Medicine campground. At the site we had there was no trees providing privacy between sites but there was ample space between the campsites to make it feel a bit more private. This didn't just feel like a big dirt parking lot like some state parks. The site we had was also fairly big. The campground was fairly quite. The only real noise was the people across from us who had a whiny baby and a dog who barked constantly when they were gone.
We had a friendly ranger stop by the first night we were there and chatted for a few minutes. We did not use the bathroom so I cannot speak to that. There is no water to fill an RV there and no dump station. We got water and used the dump at memorial park in Granite Falls. The bugs were a bit of an issues. There were a ton of flies and quite a few mosquitoes in the evening. As for cell service the Verizon LTE was spotty. At times it was slow but usable and at other times it was unusable. It seemed highly dependent on where you stood.

The campground was partially wooded but mostly had an open prairie feel. There are three sites with modern teepee tents with a plastic decking floor. All other sites are for rv’s or tents with a few walk in sites as well. The campground has a separate entrance as the main state park and is not staffed. I stayed for a week in mid September and was the only camper there for all but the weekend. There is a nice picnic area along the Minnesota river where the Yellow Medicine river joins and is only a half mile down the park’s gravel road. Apparently the fishing is good there since I watched eagles exploiting the many jumping fish as the two rivers joined. The primary drawback is road noise from Hwy 67 which is on the edge of the park. Since it is a hilly winding road at that point trucks make considerable noise slowing for the turns and powering up the hill. It’s not a highly traveled road so don’t let it stop you from using the park. But it is a factor in the mornings and early evenings. It was a typical MN state park with nice gravel rv pads relatively level and well maintained facilities. Plenty of walking trails and a nice historic area at the main entrance.

Yellow Medicine campground at the Upper Sioux Agency State Park is a lovely campground. Not much shade, but tall grasses and a few trees here and there provide a little bit of privacy. I stayed here one night in June 2017, at Yellow Medicine campground site 28e. 30A electric tested and worked fine. There's some highway noise, but it's not too awful, as the highway isn't traveled too often. I'd say I maybe heard a vehicle every 5-10 minutes when it was busy, otherwise rarely.

There's lots of hiking trails and lookouts here, plenty to do for a few days. It's about 12 minutes to Granite Falls which has some stuff, 40 minutes to Marshall which is a little bigger of a town, or a bit over two hours to get to the Twin Cities metro area.

One thing to keep in mind: there are, I believe, three entrances to things in the park. There's the horse campground, the main entrance, and then the campground entrance. If you're in an RV, make sure you don't continue down the small road in the main area (it's for the viewpoint, not campground) because it might get tough to pass someone (I made this mistake, but it was fine). The campground is a little bit further east.

Cell service at campsite, unboosted:

AT&T - three bars LTE, 107ms ping, 10.51mbps down, 4.12mbps up, plenty reliable

Verizon - one bar 1x extended. On occasion, 3G. Completely unusable. Some parts of the park have LTE.

T-Mobile - two bars LTE - I got 63ms ping, 9mbps down, 0.56mbps up. Though, not quite as reliable as AT&T. On occasion, it faded to three bars extended (E).