Raccoon State Recreation Area
- Becca & Andrew
- Jun 30
- 3 min read
We ventured to west-central Indiana to Raccoon State Recreation Area (SRA) for some camping, kayaking and exploring! (links to the fun things we did below) It's located just east of Rockville, Indiana on US36. Like any state property, the entrance fee was $7. The property is surrounded by the 2,060 acre Cecil M. Hardin Lake. The SRA features a sand beach, marina with boat rentals and a large paved ramp, several trails for hiking and a large, mostly electric campground.
The Campground
We stayed in site #208 (the best site as far as we could tell from riding our ebikes around and being nosey). It was completely level, partially shaded and away from any road noise. There was plenty of room on the site to set up our truck tent, park our ebikes and still have room to breathe! We were a short walk from the bath house and a short bike ride to the camp store. There are 317 camp sites at Raccoon and it was packed due to the nice weather. We had some cute puppies on one side of us and a screaming demon child on the other! It's spooky waking up in the middle of the night thinking Damion from The Omen is about to climb in your tent! Overall the stay was nice, the bathrooms were typical state park bathrooms and everyone behaved themselves around us (except for demon baby)!
The Beach and Lake
Of course, the crown jewel of this park is the lake and beach! We didn't get any photos of the beach, however it's shown in video form on our Tiktok and Facebook reels. There was a nice paved path from the campground to the beach area. We hung out on the beach for a few hours on Saturday. There was a nice, coarse sand that extended all the way into the water (so you weren't walking on gross lake bottom). It was pretty crowded but it was a beautiful day! The pics below were taken on the fishing pier right next to the beach area.
Kayaking
By far, the best experiences we had were out on the kayak! We kayaked both Saturday and Sunday, traveling in different directions from the marina each day. Cecil M. Harden Lake is a man-made lake and offers hundreds of little inlets to explore. Although the great expanse at the center of the lake is fun for skiing or tubing, checking out all the little inlets (and looking for shade) made it so much more exciting. We found this really cool area where some trees dipped over and into the water creating a little cave we hung out in for a while (see pic below). The water was calm and felt like bath water! We are absolutely LOVING our new inflatable kayak.
Rockville, Indiana
We did not get great pictures but downtown Rockville has a cute little square with shops, a wine bar in the old jail and The Thirty Six Saloon. We ate at the later and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise! They have a huge outdoor patio are with live music and offer BBQ and bar food. The food was decent. Nothing to write home about but the draw would be sitting on that patio and having a few drinks while listening to a live, local band!
Links to the fun things we did!
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