And we have a winner! Camden: State Park Beach of the Year

I have visited TEN Minnesota State Parks this year, trying to find a decent swimming beach. It's been surprisingly frustrating. Sometimes you get a big, beautiful lake devoted primarily to boats with a swampy little beach as an afterthought. Or a beautiful looking sandy beach that turns out to hide a difficult rocky entry. Or a huge sandy beach that is clearly meant to be used for day trips but has no changing rooms or even flush toilets. I still haven't found one that matches up to my memories of McCarthy Beach (best beach in the park system, IMHO). But since I haven't been there in years, maybe that isn't fair, so I'm picking a winner for 2021. And it's this quirky little swimming hole in the southwest corner of the state: Camden State Park Beach. The park itself is an unexpected little gem of a river valley that appears out of nowhere in the middle of miles of soybean and cornfields. But this strange little beach is the real reason to go here. I've never seen anything quite like it. 

Sure, it doesn't look like much: a shallow sand-bottom pond that appears to have been created by damming up a picturesque little creek. Way over on the far side, water spills over a pile of rocks into the Redwood River. I didn't get a picture of that side, but you can see a great view of it here, on the park's Virtual Tour Page. There is also an inflow stream over on the left side. But it turns out that the real water source for this pond is a glacially cold spring under the deep end of the pond. And I mean COLD. Lake Superior cold. So cold that you literally doubt your own senses as you wade into it. According to an old janitor that looked kinda like Sam Elliot, it's 18 feet deep over there and the water is 58 degrees down at the bottom. The pond is crystal clear, probably because it is constantly flowing. There are little fish and tadpoles in there, with kingfishers diving off the dead tree. And apparently other aquatic life; the janitor told us a funny story about the time somebody carefully placed a live crayfish in each urinal in the men's room. 

Over the 85 years since swimming hole was created it has silted up a little bit, creating some shallow spots with water weeds. It could use another dredging, but it's still perfectly swimmable, and it's perfect for flotation toys (which are highly desirable, since the pond is so cold that you need some way to warm up). It is a really fun swim.


Of course this pond was created by one of those 1930's government work programs, which they topped off with this structure, the best-preserved example of a vintage bathhouse that I have found yet. Not quite as elegant as the one at Lake Shetek, but the changing rooms are in good shape in this one. It's too bad that the clothing check service is no longer in operation, but that would be expecting too much.