I was there to tent camp over a weekend. We had a decent time. They have 2 restroom buildings easy to walk to, and a shower house. We were in the main central area. It's a huge packed area with few trees, borders hard to discern and tightly packed. I would recommend getting a spot on one the little dead ends with trees and not 1,000 people. The area the park has on the lake is not very appealing tbh. The nature center was a good diversion and they also had movie night and mid day crafts available at the pavilion. I'd give those a 5*. read more

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My family and I have camped at Cowan Lake State Park twice now and will definitely be back for more outdoor adventures. The campsites are a good size and are all in the woods, which we prefer. The bathrooms are super simple, but the women's restrooms are impressively clean. My husband did say that the men's restrooms were pretty much unusable though. I have not used the showers, so I can't speak to those. The price is good and I am happy to support a state park. We also haven't gone down to the lake or used any of the other park amenities yet, but look forward to trying them out. Each campsite has a firing and a picnic table and a paved driveway, perfect for our truck top tent. My only complaint so far is that the last time we stayed, there was a dog who truly barked without ceasing the entire time, with the exception of quiet hours because it was taken inside to sleep. I understand the dogs are allowed in the campground and that they bark, but we weren't able to relax, and the campground wasn't peaceful because the barking was that bad. I do wish there was some sort of policy for this. However, this won't deter us from coming back because I do believe it was a coincidence. read more

I was here once before, in the fall, and it was GORGEOUS!! PERFECT for a leafy hike around the lake and other well-marked trails. Just returned on a soggy winter day and it's still a beautiful spot, and if you're needing to "get away from it all," as I sometimes am, it joins a growing list of wonderful, peaceful Ohio State parks that have so much to offer all year round... Beautiful lake, nice marina, small-ish "beach," lots of trails, camping, a few nice picnic pavillions... Something for just about everyone. Check it out!! read more

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Camped here when I was a kid and we just bought our first camper, so I had to come back. 30+ years later it looks alot different, but I love it! The new area is well situated and the bath houses are clean! Can't wait to come back!! read more

Cowan Lake State Park - Boating Near Me - Wilmington, Ohio

Great place for stand up paddle boards. Nice facility, Accessible kayak launch. Easy to get to from Cincinnati and Columbus.

We have enjoyed this small Ohio State Park for well over fifty years. Our camping experiences have been fine, and we recommend. Favorite time of year to visit is in the fall; the drive from Dayton is beautiful. The Park seems private, but is public. A mid-week fall visit is recommended. Nice small sandy beach, with trails and paths. read more

I visit Cowan Lake State Park often for birding and hiking. It is well maintained with many interesting areas to hike and view the lake.

Cowan Lake is another great state park with numerous activities. As the name suggests, the centerpiece is the lake, where you can fish or boat (10 horsepower limit) - bring your own boat or you can rent kayaks, canoes, or standup paddleboards - and a swimming beach. Camping, cabins, and a nature center are also available. It also has a dance pavilion with a good view of the lake, plus some shelterhouses and picnic tables around. read more

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Came for camping as my fiancé is from the area and he grew up here. He thought it was an amazing place, tonight I have experienced nothing but for 2 days unbelievable bugs, (gnats like you would see on naked in afraid, swarming everywhere where you cannot breathe without inhaling them,) inconsiderate citizens, with loud music, bikers who think they're cool by riding through with loud music and mufflers. However, before the night began we did have park people come through and tell us we can't have two vehicles especially not one parked on the grass but there's no room in front of our camper to park a car because our camper is 33 1/2 foot long. Go figure read more

cute lake. wish my shoulders could handle canoes or kayak but bi lateral shoulder tears make that impossible right how. we don't have a boat. But came here because i heard that right now they have white pelicans .. wow that was amazing. best place to see them was a boat ramp. watched them for hours .. if your a bird nerd it was a blast. they all stayed together it was like watching synchronized swimmers. read more

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Is nice price is good bathrooms are great but the camping spot are to close to each other

Cowan Lake is very pretty. The beach area has a few picnic tables (could surely use more). Geese are still a problem however, so the beautiful grassy area for open field play or laying beach towels/picnic blankets, is also scattered w goose poo. The outer water area is nice, but be sure to be mindful of geese footprints, and enter the waters past the point they stop, or you will be stepping into goose sludge ... as you attempt to make your way out to deeper waters. There are hiking opportunities and a nice campground. Situated in a pretty country area of rolling hills. Worth the visit. Dog friendly. read more

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Nice place to stay. Campground was well maintained and beautiful. The store their had plenty of stuff. Also ice cream and a grill! Staff was friendly and welcoming going back this week for another visit. read more

Ok on the positive note the lake is beautiful to sit and watch and fish!!! Bad news the water has washed the sandy shore away!!!! Me and my family years ago used to come from everything, cookout etc you name it and best of all to swim. You can't swim no more there's tons of snakes now :( and the quit keeping it clean along time ago I miss going to this beach and swimming but it's really just for view and picnics if that... grrr. No bathroom to use either! read more

I'm sure this place gets packed in the summer, but mid spetember during the week is perfect. Tip: reserve a spot for the best location. It did start filling up starting friday morning and the bathrooms were definately more active and i missed having the shower house to myself. The campground is clean, lots and restrooms. Can't complain about either. Also visitors seem good about obeying noise curfew. We always have a great time here and ca2nt wait to come back. read more

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A few weeks ago was my first time ever hearing about this place so my kiddos and I came for a visit. We went over to the public beach first and it's more like a small section of sand/dirt combo by the lake. It was quite dirty from all the geese and the water didn't look great. My kids still put themselves in the water some (of course). Thank god for baby wipes and towels. After that we moved over to one of the trails. We were looking for the Lotus Cove and saw that we had to hit the Oilfield trail to connect us. Easy right? Well not really. This place isn't marked all that well for first time visitors. Little did I know I had to park at the visitors center then walk across the road. Thankfully it didn't take me that long to find that out, but better markings as you enter the park would be nice. The trails are beautiful and would have been great, but we had gotten a lot of rain so it was a muddy mess. My kids and I still had fun, but super muddy. It was also too early in the season to see the American Lotus, but I'm hoping to head back to see them. I do hope they clean the beach area up a little more and put a little more work into making signage better, but overall a nice half-day trip from my house. read more

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Tent campers beware! I wanted to love this park, I rarely have a bad experience at an ohio state park and I have never had an experience so negative that I left a review but I want to warn other tent campers. Maybe this was unusual but I doubt it, one of the ppl who worked there told me good luck shortly after arriving and I wasn't sure what they meant, but the electric section was loud all night long with adults partying til 2 am, then it was loud 6 am on when they kicked their kids out of the rvs to go play so they could sleep in. Soooo awful. No quiet hours, I know they are posted but no one cared so they may as well not exist. We left the next day because we were tired and when we went down to the lake and it was so dirty we didn't even want to kayak in it. When we drove around the tent only section was quiet, but you'd either have to drive to a bathroom or walk down to the beach to use the bathroom down there if they keep it open overnight, and it's definitely not close. The only reason we stayed in electric was because we were camping with friends who rv, and maybe it's not like this on the week days, but there are too many beautiful places with great amenities to camp at in ohio (john Bryan, hocking hills, lake hope, blue Rock, Hueston Woods) to put myself through a night like that again. read more

I really enjoy coming to Cowan Lake. I first came here as a child with my parents many years ago to swim at one of the beaches. Several years ago a friend and I were looking for a place to spend some time on the weekend and he found out about a place that had lotus flowers growing. We had just recently come back from a trip to Southeast Asia and had seen plenty of them there and did not realize that they grew around here. It turned out to be at Cowan Lake and I was excited as I remembered swimming here when I was young. We drove up from Cincinnati and rented a canoe and discovered a field of lotus flowers in one of the inlets. Now my wife and I come here every summer, often multiple times, in order to enjoy the lake and the flowers and we often bring friends to introduce them to this beautiful sight. The lake itself is quite peaceful as there is a 10-horsepower limit for motor boats. Most of the boats that are on the water are sailboats, pontoon boats, and kayaks/canoes. One of my favorite sights is on a beautiful day when the lake is full of sailboats gliding across the water underneath a blue sky with white puffy clouds. I really enjoy the fact that there are no fast and loud boats disturbing the peacefulness and it also makes it safe for paddling across the open areas of the lake. Fishing is popular at the lake as I often see a lot of people fishing whenever we visit. There are two beaches at the lake, one small one by the camping area and a bigger public one. There's a small marina by the southwest end of the lake that offers rentals for canoes, kayaks, pontoon boats, row boats, and small motor boats. This is where we always rented before purchasing our own kayak. The American lotus flowers are a fantastic sight to see. They have leaves that float on the water and rise up out of the water that get up to around two feet in diameter. The bright yellow flowers start as large single green buds on the end of a stem rising out of the water. When they are in full bloom the flower is bigger than your head with a seed pod in the center. They are beautiful and are present in at least two inlets in the lake. The fields of flowers are huge and amazing to wind through in a kayak. It's around a one hour drive from Cincinnati and is well worth it in my opinion. I love spending the day here paddling and stopping for swimming and a picnic. Like I said earlier, we come here every summer and recommend it whether you have a boat or need to rent one. read more

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This review is ONLY for the public "beach". It's very small -- maybe four football fields long and about 75-100 yards deep -- and roughly half of it was unusable because it was occupied by a flock of geese. The water was, well, gross. If you're expecting crystal-clear waters and smooth sand under your feet, you'll want to lower your expectations. Copious amounts of algae greet you as you enter the water, the ground is essentially slippery mud, and you'll genuinely not be able to see anything. My four year old said "daddy, this water is disgusting." Yup. Add to that the cigarette butts and frequent piles of goose poop on the sand (for real: watch where you walk), and you're looking at a subpar experience. Again, this is only for the beach. We didn't go into the rest of the park, which I've heard is nice. read more

Beautifully kept state park. Clean, friendly and mostly private, wooded sites. The commissary had great food and delicious ice cream with a view of the lake. We'll be back! read more

Good spot to take a break as we travelled through Ohio. Cabin 14 was clean and neat and tidy. For $100 it was just fine. Playgrounds, beach area...kids had a lot of fun playing outside. Well maintained. We saw many animals-deer, bunnies, a white squirrel, raccoons close to the cabin, geese, Cardinals. read more

This is a pretty little lake and surrounding trails. It looks like some of the other reviews are actually for the campground. We didn't stay there. We just drove in to hike some of the family friendly short trails down to the lake and back. They were perfect. Love the frog song. You can canoe or rent a real boat and go fishing. And they have a small beach-like area except for, you know, canadian geese. Fucking bastards and their endless shit. read more

Bed bugs!!! They know they have a problem and don't care because "it's the busy season". I set up a trip to Cowan Lake with some other couples and our children. As soon as the sun went down raccoons came begging for food. I understand that it's not the park's fault that these raccoons are so used to being fed by people that they come within a foot or two of you but they're a problem worth mentioning. Once we got tired of shooing away the rodents we went inside to go to bed. At 2 AM one of the other couples called us to say they had woken up because they were getting bit by bed bugs and they were leaving. We turned on the lights to find our foot board had them as well. We threw everything into trash bags that we had brought with us and left. I called the next day and couldn't get in touch with anyone at all in the park so I called the general reservation line. Long story short, the person helping me said she didn't know when someone at the park would get back to me because it is the busy season (next weekend is labor day) but I should be called within the next 14 days to process a refund. I told her she absolutely had to stop these cabins from being rented out again (cabins 25 and 26) until this was fixed and she said that wasn't something they could do. These cabins are reserved for the next few weeks and they have no sense of urgency to fix this problem as far as I can tell. So, sometime in the next two weeks I MAY get a refund but for now I'm stuck with a weekend of trying to figure out what to do with a car full of clothing and children toys that I need to find some way to sterilize. What really stinks is that my family and friends have a ruined weekend and this problem is going to happen to the next family who rents if nothing is done. UPDATE: 8-30-16 I called the park directly yesterday (Monday) to speak to the park manager. I was told he wasn't available but he would call me back. The woman who did answer though seemed to have assumed authority over this complaint so I explained the above situation to her and she told me I would get a refund plus vouchers for a future stay. I let her know that this seems to be a fairly common problem with their cabins lately based on social media reviews and she said "it's not uncommon for there to be bed bugs". REALLY?! Not uncommon? What makes this worse is that she called me back 5 minutes after I contacted her to let her know about the bed bug issue and she said she "was just calling to confirm I left at 2 AM like (I) said because the housekeeper said she was waiting on us to check out yesterday so she could clean". Apparently there was a cooler left behind as well as my fishing sandals (that were outside) because we left in a hurry and they thought we were still in the cabins. There are only two conclusions from this first call, she was more concerned that we were trying to scam them for a free rental than the fact that they have bed bugs and the first report I filed (Saturday morning) wasn't something she could even see a the park level. A third option is that the park has absolutely no training and negligent management. I am absolutely positive that I left early Saturday morning and if the cleaning person can't see that 4 SUV's aren't in the cabin parking spaces, I don't see how she is supposed to find bed bug nests in the mattress seams. A second call came in from this park representative about 3 hours later (as of this update the park manager has still not called me). She said that they found bed bugs in cabin 25 but couldn't find them in cabin 26. I offered to send her pictures but she wanted to know where we saw them. I told her we saw them on the foot board of the room with twin beds however the couple in the queen bed had bites on their legs. She told me that those bites could be from chiggers instead of bed bugs. Even after finding bed bugs in one of the cabins we described and having photos of them in the cabins, this representative was still treating me like a liar by saying our friend just had chigger bites because they couldn't find bed bugs. FINAL UPDATE...I hope Shannon called to express his regrets over our stay. Let me say that I am convinced he sincerely doesn't want us to get bed bugs and that he understood our issues however he did say that they did not find bed bugs in cabin 26 despite the fact that we saw them and have photos. I argued that the only conclusion is that his process is wrong and he said his extermination company is to blame. I do understand that Shannon's job is park manager, not bed bug expert however ultimately it's his job to keep people safe. Unlike what I was told on the phone earlier, they plan to close the cabin down for 2 weeks, not a month. He did say they were going to bring in dogs to check cabin 26 as well since they had not found them in there yet. He did not elaborate on the cleaning procedure after fumigation but he did say they had a procedure in place. read more

Cowan Lake State Park - Bed bugs at Cowan Lake - Boating Near Me - Wilmington, Ohio

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The property is very well cared for even with the government budget cuts. We spent two nights with 13 adults in two cottages 8 women staying in one and 5 men staying in second. We all read the instructions that stated that utensils are provided and that we need to bring dish soap. Well...between the two cottages we did NOT have the utensils/pot or pans to make biscuits and gravy or spaghetti and meatball. It took 1 hour 30 minutes to warm canned gravy and bake two cans of biscuits. It took 2 hours to warm 2 jars of spaghetti sauce and 2 pounds of spaghetti noodles with 2 loves of garlic bread. So either start very early meal prep or bring pop tarts and peanut butter-jelly. Cooking takes you out of the vast amount of fun that this park offers. The hot water is hot, the shower is good and the cottages are clean enough for the setting. On our last morning we had the pleasure of seeing a Bald Eagle. We are taking about another visit next year with the plan to bring our own kitchen or better yet pop tarts and cold cuts. read more

Cowan Lake State Park - Boating Near Me - Wilmington, Ohio

Nice cozy campground that's family friendly. Campsites and drives are all paved making it nice for strollers and bike riding. The have a commissary/camp store that has very well priced scooped ice cream, a grill, and all your camping essentials you may forget. read more

Cowan Lake is truly one of the nicest state parks in our area. Their campsites are well maintained, fairly level, and spacious. The bath houses and restrooms are clean, and nicer than most state parks. They have great hiking trails, and prime real-estate for bike riding. Their camp store has a grill where you can get a bite to eat. They also rent bikes, canoes, and kayaks. The view from the back of the camp store is top-notch. Their public beach is well maintained and the boat ramps are easily accessible. read more

This was our first stay at Lake Cowan in the cabins/cottages. I am so disappointed. First off they are nasty trailers not cabins or cottages. Everything is in severe disrepair from blinds missing to windows being held in with duct tape. Some are just gone or falling out. Light bulbs missing & light switches not connected to anything. It is advertised as a complete kitchen- but there is the absolute minimum, not even any bowls. The sheets don't fit the bed & the bedspread is from the 70s. We have stayed at state park cabins in KY, PA, GA, & OH and this is our worst experience. There wasn't even bar soap in the bathroom or dish soap in the kitchen. All this for only $100 a night & we stayed in the "premium" cottage! read more

Bed Bugs in Cabin 14! Let me first start by saying this was our second year in a row visiting Cowan Lake State Park and outside of having Bed Bugs in our cabin it is a very nice park with amazing views from the cabins and the rest of our family in other cabins had a good time. When we arrived Friday night the heat in the cabin was set at 82 degrees which makes me wonder if they knew they had a bed bug problem. What State Park who has signs everywhere to conserve electricity cranks the heat to 82 degrees unless you know you have a problem. We stayed the night and when I got up in the morning I found a bug on my arm and killed it smearing blud on my arm. I immeditately ran to my bed to find another crawling on the sheets (in which I took a picture). I yelled to my wife sleeping with my daughter in the other room. Once inspecting their bed we killed two more crawling on the sheets. We immeditely packed everthing we had in Plastic bags and took everything to a laudry mat to dry everything to kill them. We did report the problem to the manager and did receive a full refund. They asked if we wanted another cabin but I will not be staying another night in these cabins. read more