We are looking at staying at Savanna Portage State Park in July. Looks like a nice park. Anybody stay there and what did you think?? Thanks

It’s OK. Things are kind of spread out like at St. Croix State Park. If we wanted to do more than hike, it seemed we needed to use the car more. For instance the swimming beach is a couple miles from the campground. I had my first close encounter with a mother bear with cubs on the Continental Divide Trail. That was memorable. We had to stand waiting there 10-15 minutes before the cubs climbed back down the trees located on the trail. We didn’t want to get between the mother and cubs.

We stayed there 2 summers ago and liked it. It is an older park and is spread across a large area. The campground was really quiet (only 3 other campers when we were there), the swimming beach was nice and the kids found enough fish to stay interested. We enjoyed hiking on the hiking club trail as well.

Its one of my favorite parks for fall camping...lots of maples for good color. The campground doesn't seem to be heavily used and there's lots of good hiking. Never been there in the summer, but between the hiking and the two lakes..(one with a paddle in campsite last time I was there) I'd say go for it. The ranger station also has a small library of books you can use.

We stayed at the group site and liked it. The little lake there had a plethora of hammer handles. Not good for swimming at the group site though.

There a couple paddle only lakes. I would have liked to have paddled the one at the north end. It looked alot like the bdub.

Thumbs up.

Very nice park, several lakes, great hiking and that beach you have to drive to is awesome. The lake right in front of the campground is a pretty little lake and offers boat and canoe rentals...just slap a troller on a boat and you are good (no motors allowed). We had pretty good luck bass fishing there. Very wild park and often overlooked.

All from Savannah Portage:

quote lindylair: "Very nice park, several lakes, great hiking and that beach you have to drive to is awesome. The lake right in front of the campground is a pretty little lake and offers boat and canoe rentals...just slap a troller on a boat and you are good (no motors allowed). We had pretty good luck bass fishing there. Very wild park and often overlooked.

All from Savannah Portage:










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We loved it when we stayed there. Visited all the lakes, hiked up to a lookout, did a bit of fishing and hiked down to the end of the 6-mile portage (from St.Louis river takeout, voyageur route). Not sure how historically accurate that put-in site was as I think they recently found that the old voyageur portage actually ended at Big Sand but it was cool to see it's possible location. Anyway, it's a great park.

Check out "Between the Waters:. Tracing the Northwest Trail From Lake Superior to the Mississippi" by Larry Luukkonen. A good read about the Savannah portage.

Happy to see this post. We've made reservations here in June with the family. Looking forward to it! I've heard the mosquitos are bad here. Anybody have experience with that?

Lindylair, huge thanks for the picture of the dock. It brings back to memory a couple of hours my wife and I spent with our kids that was a blast. They were catching small sunfish so fast we couldn't even keep bait on the hook, one of them got sick of waiting for bait and caught just as many with a plain hair jig.

Its fun to check out different state parks and have always wanted to check this one out.

Was there a lot this winter fishing etc.. Love the big pines. They have a nice swimming beach on Loon lake which is a trout lake.
Also something I might try out for you canoe people. Wolf lake is a fairly big round lake which is non motorized,except for electric motors. It has one campsite on the lake on a hill about a half mile from the landing. Almost a BWCA setting with great isolation.
Yes it is a buggy park at times, bring Deet.