Want to stay in the area around La Crescent and Houston, Minnesota while you ride gravel in the driftless region? For lodging, check with our friends at Explore La Crosse — from B&Bs to boutique hotels, both in La Crescent and right across the Mississippi in La Crosse. If you stay in historic downtown La Crosse, it’s a quick drive over, or bike ride across the blue bridges on the Wagon Wheel Trail to La Crescent. Looking beyond lodging in La Crosse? Read on:
Camp
There’s plenty of camping in the area, from Ridgeway to the north, Brownsville to the south, and Lanesboro to the west. We’ve made a list with some personal recommendations and observations. Just contact the individual campgrounds to make your reservations.
Our Recommendations
There are plenty of places to camp in the region, with a wide variety of accommodations from full-hookup pull-through trailer spots to primitive camping. If there’s a big event happening, we recommend reservations, and also seeking out the lesser-known primitive camping around Houston and Brownsville.
For a first choice, we recommend Houston County’s “Wildcat Park,” on the Mississippi just south of Brownsville. There’s 51 spaces with electricity, another 35 long-term “seasonal” spaces, and a handful of “primitive” camping spaces, along with restrooms and showers. Reservations recommended.
Just on the west side of the City of La Crosse, right over the main channel of the Mississippi, is Pettibone Resort. This is a well-situated base camp for bike riding around the area, and is very scenic, but it’s also very popular, with many long-term campers staying for weeks or months or the entire summer season. Make reservations early.
In and around Houston, there’s several possibilities. The Houston Nature Center Trailhead has ten walk-in tent camping spaces that are very affordable. Crazy affordable, and the Nature Center is just across the street from a coffee shop and an easy walk to other food options. Outside of town, there’s five primitive camp spots at the Wet Bark Recreation Area, managed by the state DNR. Cushon’s Peak is fancier, with trailer hookups as well as primitive spaces.
The Great River Bluffs State Park campground is north of La Crescent, and is highly recommended. With 31 drive-in spaces on top of the ridges, there’s full amenities. There’s a kinda-weird, somewhat hidden, five-site bike-in campground down off the ridge, on the highway; it’s nicely hidden, and it’s meant for bike tourists on the Mississippi River Trail. But we’d warn that it’s down near the river and could be humid and buggy in the late summer.
For another hidden spot south of Brownsville, check out the Reno horse campground; primitive or tent camping, but significantly off the beaten path.
Further away, but with a huge number of spots and also rental cabins: the Neshonoc Lakeside Camping Resort in West Salem.
All of the remaining camp options are possible; we haven’t heard anything bad about any of them.