Bear Head Lake State Park is a state park between Tower and Ely, Minnesota. It provides ready access to outdoor recreation in the Boundary Waters region. It boasts scenery similar to the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area, with the added conveniences of road access, modern facilities, and motorboating. The most popular visitor activities are boating, fishing, swimming, and hiking. The park entirely surrounds 670-acre Bear Head Lake and three other fishing lakes. It was established in 1961 in Saint Louis County. The park also contains the woodlands surrounding the lakes, which gives a total of about 5,540 acres as well as sharing a large border with Bear Island State Forest.

For this trip, I reserved one of the remote backpack camping sites. If you plan to do this trip in the warmer months, there is a minimal maintenance road that takes you to a parking lot at the start of the trailhead. From there, you have about a mile or so hike to get to the beautiful remote campsites. If you do this trip in the winter, this road is closed so you need to be aware that you will hike longer to get to a campsite (my hike in was 3.2 miles).

I came across one couple while hiking in but not another person the rest of the weekend, so this trip was great for spotting and photographing wildlife!