The first of a bunch of state park visits I have scheduled in 2020. I love the MN State Park system in general, but I love it even more in this time of pandemic and cancelled summer vacations.
My daughter picked Lake Carlos, possibly just because she liked the name. Neither of us knew anything about it. Her main goals were to fish and eat s’mores. My main goals were to hike and canoe.
You can do all of those things at Lake Carlos! So, in that respect our trip was a success.
But!
I don’t know if our visit was representative (it’s a weird year, y’all) but Lake Carlos seems to be a bit of a party park. Lots of folks there brought water vehicles: jet skis, pontoon boats, motor boats fast and slow. The lake was noisy and filled with wakes. And the camping spots were mostly occupied by huge trailers and large groups. The people there still abided (mostly) the quiet time rule, but it was a louder park than I’ve been to in the past.
And the park isn’t helped by its location; sandwiched between two state highways there’s a lot of road noise.
The hiking there is pretty, a mix of rolling prairie and forest. No big hills or challenges await. You could easily hike the whole park in a day.
Canoing was made more challenging by the wakes and such, but the lake itself is very pretty. Just expect a lot of traffic.
Fishing was a hit. Neither of us know how to fish, but the hordes of fish by the docks did not care. Want to eat a lot of sunnies? You can do that here. We did not because neither of us wanted to gut a fish.
Like frogs? Lake Carlos has an abundance! That photo is of the largest we spotted, a palm-sized Northern Leopard Frog (I think?). But we saw a ton of much smaller frogs. The smallest were about as big as a nickel. Some were up to a half-dollar in size. So many frogs!
