Harrison Lake State Park

While we don't have Harrison Lake State Park scheduled for a trip yet in 2014, we typically make it there 1-2 times a camping season.  My main goal for this blog is to keep track of where we've been and what we liked about each place.  I figure, why not back track a bit?

One of the great things we like about Harrison Lake is that it's only an hour away, straight down U.S. 127, just across the Ohio boarder.  That hour makes a difference in the weather.  It can be cold and crummy at home, but sunny and lovely there.

A drawback to Harrison Lake is that it's a state park in the middle of a bunch of farm fields.  Sight-seeing outside of the park doesn't bring a whole lot of excitement.  Unless you really like farm fields.  The bright side to the farm fields is that watching the sun rise over the fields, with a barn off in the distance, is quite picturesque and gives you warm fuzzies about the heartland of America.

I'm a fan of cul-de-sac sites and there are 4 cul-de-sacs to choose from.  Cul-de-sacs offer bigger campsites and the kids can ride their bikes & scooters, play games, toss a ball, whatever they want in the road with minimal problems of car traffic.  The sites at Harrison Lake are generous to begin with, but the cul-de-sac sites are some of the biggest we've ever camped on.

We always take our bikes with us.  We'll ride our bikes over to the beach area & play on the play ground there.  We go and appreciate the views of the lake.  We climb to the top of the dam and go down to the bottom just to climb back up again.  We ride along the ridge over to the non-electric campsites and loop around there.  We ride up to the camp store where you check in.

On our trip to Harrison Lake last year, we just happened to be there when they were having a bike safety rally.  It was a great little experience for the kids with a road rally for them to maneuver through and all kids got a new bike helmet.

There is a lovely place to fish on the lake, near the entrance of the park.  We're not often successful, but that's why they don't call it catching.

Harrison Lake is a great place to camp when you want to camp for the sake of camping, to enjoy the moment of camping.  It is not a location to go and experience more outside of the park.

Word to the wise, when plugging the address into your GPS, it takes you to a place in the park that does not allow you to get into the campground, at least in the past.  You can see the campground, it's *right* there, but you can't get into the campground.  You need to use the entrance near Camp Palmer.  I just searched the address and it seems that they've fixed the location on the map.  Every trip since we attempted to go to the wrong place, we've seen plenty of other campers doing the exact same turn-around that we did.  We giggle because we're not alone in our defiant, "But the GPS says...!"