Bloomington Lake

3 hrs

This is a wonderful place to camp near Bear Lake. It is a long ways to go for an overnighter, but would be great place to go for a couple nights or even a week long camp. At the lake there is a rope swing you can swing out into the lake on and cliffs to jump off of.

The water is clear, the view is great and there are fish to catch. You have to hike a quarter of a mile or so from the parking lot passing two ponds to get to the lake. A lot of people go there during the day just to swing on the rope. There are less people later in the day.

To get there, go north from Garden City past St. Charles to the town of Bloomington and go west up Bloomington Canyon. It is an 11 mile drive up a dirt road that ends at the Bloomington Lake parking lot. There are restrooms there but no water. There are a couple picnic tables on the left of the parking lot, but not very level for camping. The best place is on the right of the parking up a couple hundred feet up a dirt road (see below). There are a three places to camp with just fire pits, but it's free. We have had our summer camp there twice and had a great time. We took our own tables and chairs and filled a few 5 gallon jugs every time we went down to the valley.

If this area is full, there are other places to camp. I heard that they don't allow you to camp along the river by the road up anymore. There is a nice place up Telegraph Road (1064) just after you get to the trees and another up Middle Fork Road (426). See the red X's below. If nothing else, you could camp out in the meadow. If you want a more established campground, try St. Charles/Minnetonka canyon just south of here. Most of them you need to book ahead. See my Bear Lake page.

There are many things to do close by. One day hiked we over the mountain (trail 318) to St. Charles canyon and had left cars there (at the trail head by the North Fork Campground) to take us a couple miles up the road to Minnetonka Cave and then back to camp. Minnetonka cave can be very busy so send someone up an hour or so early to buy tickets. Another day we drove up Paris Canyon to the (free) Paris Ice Caves. Paris is a couple miles north of Bloomington and the caves are about 11 miles up that canyon. It's a good place for rock climbing. And of course there is Bear Lake. The North Shore is nice, sandy and shallow. There is also Bear Lake Hot Springs just east of the North Shore. They charge half price for groups of scouts or $3.