If you are touring around Minnesota, Scenic State Park is a stop you must make. The nature and wilderness of the park offers a secret heaven for those who wish to have a break from their busy lives and be in the embrace of nature. In the park, you can enjoy the dazzling colors of the forest, the wildflowers and the lakes. You can also enjoy the majestic beauty of the Virgin white and red pines.
Visitors to the park get really mesmerized by the great hiking trails such as the Chase Point hiking trail. You can also visit Chase Point for an aesthetic experience. Chase Point is a couple of miles of a long and narrow peninsula that extends into the lake.
Scenic State Park, Minnesota, is undeniably beautiful! The grand beauty of tall, superb virgin white and red pines, coupled with the pristine, infantile lake shore of Coon and Sandwick Lakes gives Park visitors the opportunity to experience the true nature of Minnesota. Scenic State Park caters to most camping tastes. It is popular for camping, hiking, cross country skiing, canoeing, fishing, and bird watching.
Minnesota has one of the biggest populations of wolves outside of Alaska. Scenic State Park has an international wolf center where you can come face-to-face with the great Timber wolf. Whether you have always loved such adrenaline packed encounters or you would like to try for the first time, paying a visit to the international wolf center is definitely an exciting experience.
Scenic State Park is located seven miles east of Bigfork on Scenic Highway 7. Drive seven miles east from Big Fork on County Road 7 to the park entrance.
Also, it is located 32 miles north of highway 169, on scenic highway 7.
The roads are well maintained, even in the occasionally harsh Minnesota winters, so you shouldn't have much trouble navigating to and through the park.
In the lodge campground only two sites have electric hookups, although there is easy access to a dump station nearby. The lodge campground has all the typical state campground items such as a fire pit and picnic tables. However as the sites in Lodge Campground are narrow, it is better for RV campers to head over to the Chase Point campground.
There's the lodge campground and The Chase point campground. The chase point campground oversees the lake so you can opt for that campground if you would like to view the lake or docks with tied up boats and have quick access to the beach and other water based activities. The Chase Point campground is slightly larger and oversees Chase Point (as you may have guessed). The campgrounds are equipped with fine facilities, clean bathrooms and separate showers for males and females.
The privacy in the campground varies; some sites are very private and spacious with lots of trees and bushes along the road. Others are a little more exposed. The Chase Point campground has many electric sites and hookups for RVers. Picnic tables, fire rings, showers, flush and vault toilets, and a dump station are available.
If you are a stargazing enthusiast, you will really enjoy the star gazing opportunities in Scenic State Park. The location of the park makes it an ideal spot for stargazers. There is almost zero light pollution in the park and campgrounds due to the park's distant location from the city lights, which makes Scenic State Park one of the best places to witness a meteor shower or any other astronomical event of importance.
In winter when the snow covers the landscapes, the winter fun can begin. The park grooms about six miles of trails and makes it available for cross-country skiing along with another ten miles that are groomed for snowmobiling.
Snowshoeing is permitted throughout the park except on groomed trails. Enjoy the winter in Minnesota with the variety of winter based activities available in Scenic State Park.
The park offers its visitors 14 miles of hiking trails including two miles of self-guided trails. The trace point hiking trail is gorgeous for hiking where you can end up in the hypnotic chase point. Another major hiking attraction is the fire tower hiking trail. Either ways, the trails of scenic state park are known to be safe and easy while offering the hikers breath taking natural beauty.
The scenic view of the lake offers the park visitors a relaxing fishing experience The park has a fishing pier that overlooks the Coon Lake so that visitors can fish from shore. Fishing kits are available at the park office for rental.
If you would like to fish straight from the lake, you can rent a fishing boat and head over into the water to try your luck. You can fish for Northern pike, walleye, panfish as well as bass.
The park has a picnic area near Coon Lake. The spacious and enclosed picnic shelter can accommodate up to 225 people. The shelter has a gigantic stone fireplace and is furnished with scenic original log and branch furniture for a realistic experience.
The picnic shelter is the perfect spot for a family gathering. You can even reserve it by calling the park office to have it as your wedding reception for an unforgettable and unique experience.
Visiting Scenic State Park is a chance to experience the wilderness in a safe environment. The park is blessed with lakes, marshes, and pines. All this heavy vegetation attract many species of animals and birds.
You can grab a bird watching kit from the park's office and lookout for some of the bird species that rest and nest in the park, for example, loons, ospreys, eagles and woodpeckers as well as a wide variety of song birds.
You can also spot the rarely seen spruce grouse in addition to the many small mammals and amphibians that take home and shelter in the park. The park is also one of the best places in Minnesota to see a moose, so if you ever want to spot one, you know which park to head to.
