Rice Lake

Melissa Strehmel

A beautiful, rustic park with some huge trees, great hiking trails and birds. The lake is beautiful!

David Alitz

Nice park. Fairly undeveloped. The campsites are all pretty level. Despite being heavily wooded, the sites aren't very isolated from each other. No shore fishing due to a wide margin of reeds. There is a small fishing pier off the southernmost point.

DLM-Distribution Campervans

We really enjoyed our stay at Rice Lake State Park! The park is clean, quiet, and surrounded by a beautiful mix of woods and prairie. The lake is the highlight—shallow and marshy in areas, it attracts a wide variety of waterfowl and other birds, making it a great spot for wildlife watching and photography. The hiking trails are easy and relaxing, perfect for a peaceful walk through nature. It’s not a huge park, but it offers a tranquil setting and a chance to slow down and enjoy the outdoors. Overall, it’s a nice place to visit for birding, light hiking, or simply soaking in the peaceful lakeside environment.

Vane Plun

We reserved a cart-in camp site for one night (thankful that it was only one night). First off it is hard to tell from the online picture but our camp site was veryyyyyy close to the next site, like 5 ft or less. Thankfully our neighbors were respectful. We were grabbing twigs that were on the ground, within our campsite, and used a mini foldable hand saw to cut a bigger piece of wood that was on the ground. We immediately get a call saying that someone reported that we were cutting down live trees…we were not cutting anything alive nor disturbing the wooded area. We were lectured and told to not go into the woods, stay on the path. Isn’t being able to venture around kind of the point of camping? We had bought 3 packs of firewood ($8 each 😑) so it’s not like we were trying to get out of buying wood but whatever. So that was a rough start. Not sure if this is standard but the lights in the bathroom do not work at night, don’t know if I’ve been playing too many horror video games, but that was scary lol When we tried to go to sleep there were industrial sounds that were SO LOUD. Beeping like trucks backing up, planes flying overhead, it sounded like a construction zone. NOT the sounds I expect to hear when camping. Thankfully I had earplugs but what a bummer. The two stars were for the view and the scenery. I won’t be back to this state park though.

Ash Lindquist (Luminash Images)

Hiking Club trail is still accessible but muddy on several spots. Not too buggy. Would recommend compared to other parks in the area right now.

Wyatt W. Penke

Smaller park that's just OK. Nothing special to this park. Not much for any hiking trails or views but has a small day use area. No swimming or fishing. Campground is small and cramped. Park is very quiet.

Robert

For hiking, I thought it was a good park. There was hiking along the lake through a prairie area and quite a bit of woodland areas. I think if you hit it at the right time this fall, there would be some very beautiful colors. The bathrooms probably could use a bit of an upgrade though.

Lindsay S

The campsites is small. There is no dump station. And the park itself is small. However! The hike is a nice stroll to the park where you can fish and the campsites are decent sized. And if you like small parks this would be a good one. But for use to drive a long way we would rather go somewhere else. But still it's a state park and they are amazing We did have a large storm come through and storms can always be fun. But this one we lost our canopy and the site got slightly flooded. The kids loved puddle jumping. But IDK if I cared for it

Kendra Dawn

My Favorite and I visited this lovely state park by Owatonna. The weather was perfect for kayaking or hiking when we left our farm so we brought our boats with every intention of putting in at the landing. We changed our minds when we got there. The edge of the landing was pretty gross, per usual for many southern Minnesota lakes. Plus the lake was pretty choppy on the landing side. The launch itself is pretty cool to kayak through as there is a path through some pretty thick reefs to get out to the open water. Not this day though. So instead of launching, we parked the truck and walked through the park. The first stop was a nice bench overlooking the lake by the cart-in sites. A little further along the path we came across some signs with education about local ducks, along with some great seating from which to view the lake. There was a play set which had chains for swings but no swings. Unfortunate as it was a nice play set other than that. Just past that was a really nice fishing pier. We hung out in the sunshine on the pier until we got too hot and then continued on the path through the woods that follows the shoreline. We came out on a dirt road that led through the campsites and then walked the main road back to our truck. The only not great part of the adventure were the outhouses by the cart-in sites. A mop and a wipe down of the walls would have done wonders for the creepy/gross factor. Overall a great experience! We HAVE to come back because we only saw a tiny tiny portion of the trails and paths that lead through this gorgeous park.

Ray Brown

We loved our time at this park several weeks ago with family. We also enjoyed the trails.