Veterans Campground on Big Marine Lake

Veterans Campground is a campground for military veterans, active duty, retired, and families. A lot of the people here seem to be long term stays.

There is electric, and water at many of the sites. Sewer costs $20 per dump. Those who are short stays don’t need to pay to dump, but they keep the dumps locked so you have to go in and ask for it to be opened. They also ask for a donation for short termers for that service.

The site they assigned us just barely fit our fifth wheel. We had to cut into a neighbor’s property to be able to fit in and get out. Nose to rear we were maxing out the site and the single lane road in front was not easy to get in and out of.

On the weekends, the campground gets quite rowdy with people yelling and partying at the pavilion. Lots of alcohol and drinking. People going by in golf carts carrying bottles of alcohol.

Only 3 women’s shower stalls for 156 sites, no laundry.

On a positive note, they did have a few things for the kids to do like kickball, basketball.

Everyone was nice, but it just seems like this place caters to a certain group and even though we are veterans too, it doesn’t fit our family’s usual choice of campground.

We had a tree right behind our site so we were unable to use Starlink. We had 3 bars on the Verizon phones and 4 bars with the cell antenna. AT&T was 4 bars with the cell antenna.

There aren't a ton of options right in the Twin Cities for RV parks. This is a good option just north of the city and is open to all veterans, not just disabled (in fact they just renamed it this year to just "Veterans Campground". Unlike most military campgrounds, you just need a DD-214 to show any length of service or a current ID card.

The nightly rate seems pretty high for this park but both the weekly and monthly rates are fair ($160/345). It is really set up for people staying all summer who have the lots rented for 5 years at a time and really put a lot of work into them including decks and landscaping. There are a handful of water/electric sites for nightly rental. Otherwise there is a tent loop with 15amp service to keep your batteries charged because it is VERY wooded (for solar) and they allow RV's to park back there. The largest RV back there was a 5th wheel, probably 35'.

We parked our RV at this park for 4 months in 2014 as we were preparing to full-time. That year we were in the tent section. Although wooded, the mosquitoes were not too bad, at least that year. In June 2015, we stayed for a month in a water/electric site. Because of the expansion, there were no trees near us but sites are still well spaced to not feel cramped.

They do a nice job keeping up this park. The bathhouse is brand new and kept very clean. There are a couple veteran memorials to walk though. Although on the older side, they have boats for rent for fair prices so you can at least get on the water if you want. There is a (smoky) bar with very cheap beers and you can bring your own liquor bottle to the bar and mix your own drinks as long as you buy the mixers there! There is also frisbee golf, horseshoes, a baseball field and two new playgrounds. There is a small dog park.

There is a small beach area and the dogs can swim (well, they did swim) at the boat launch area. Check for notifications, all beaches on the entire lake were closed for swimming when we were there this year for swimmers itch.

Everyone here is very friendly and it's a pretty quiet park during the week (we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves) but everyone comes up to their RV 'cabin' on the weekends. When visiting family in the area, we plan to stay here again.