Life in a Tent

Portage Lakes State Park Beach and Playground

Sometimes, heading off to your local park to sit by the pond or have a picnic in a field just isn’t quite enough. This past weekend, we decided to take the bike out for a ride and we thought we’d check out Portage Lakes state park to see what it had to offer.

As it turns out, there was quite a bit there. They’ve got an awesome playground, a beautiful beach, eight miles of hiking trails, eight boat launches, a 900 foot beach with a protected swimming area and tons of parking.

900 feet of beach along Turkeyfoot Lake at Portage Lakes State Park

Portage Lakes State park includes Turkeyfoot lake, Nimisila reservoir and the tiny Relax lake.  The beach that runs along Turkeyfoot lake in the park was a great discovery.  I knew Portage Lakes State park included quite a few small connected lakes, but I had no idea there was an actual beach there.

The beach runs for about 900 feet and includes a protected swimming area that’s roped off with buoys. It was a nice sand beach and actually clean enough I wouldn’t mind my munchins playing in the sand. The beach also survived my “see my feet” rule. (Sidebar: I’m a chicken…a big chicken. Jaws messed me up and I don’t go into water where living things live unless I can see my feet. If you’ve ever been to Lake Erie, that means you can’t go more than, oh…1/4″ in. Here…you could probably go to your waist.)

The other nice thing about the beach is that you walk through a small grassy grove of pine trees to get to it. There were quite a few picnic tables and a few charcoal grills scattered about. These are the perfect place to dump your cooler and picnic supplies on your way from the parking lot and they’re close enough to the beach your kids can play in the water while you’re getting setup for a meal.

A view from the trails along Turkeyfoot Lake

We ended up walking along some paths that run along side the lake. Next to the beach, there’s a nice wide open sanded area that had some beach volleyball courts.  About 100 yards away from the beach there was a latrine. (nice as far as latrines go, but still…it’s  a latrine, so how much can you really expect?) There were some nice wide trails that were big enough to take a trucks down them, but you could also veer off onto some side trails that were only wide enough to walk in a single file line. We passed quite a few places where you could walk right down to the water that would be perfect for fishing or skipping rocks or even just taking really cool pictures at sunset.

The thing that intrigued me most was how many pontoon boats we saw both on the lake and tied up along the shore. I ran a quick Google search from my iPhone and found a handful of marinas that rent them out either by the hour or by the day. In fact, we’ve added that to our list of things to try at some point.

The park covers more than 400 acres and more than 2000 acres of water, and is only about 30 minutes from Canton. If you’re looking to stay for more than just the afternoon, the Portage Lakes state park campgrounds offer 74 campsites that run about $25 a night.

(Sidebar: The interesting thing about Portage Lakes state park is that it’s divided into two sections. We learned this the hard way the first time we decided to camp there. We drove to the park office only to find there’s a completely different park, entrance and office for camping…which meant a 10 minute drive in search of the campgrounds. If you’re looking for the campgrounds, you’ll need to call the park office for directions.)

The playground at Portage Lakes State Park by the beach

The last thing we checked out was the playground. I already knew my kids would love the park because of the beach, but I’m always on the hunt for nice playgrounds. (Beach + picnic area + awesome playground = entire day of fun.) This one was between the parking lot and the beach so if you’ve got mad mommy skillz (and eyes in the back of your head) you could setup at a table in the pine tree area and keep an eye on kids at the beach and kids back at the playground.

While this wasn’t a super gigantic playground, it was pretty good size and had a lot to offer. There was an awesome climbing wall, a couple of tunnels, a suspension bridge, some slides and quite a few different places to climb and swing.

There were plenty of park benches spread around the playground, so finding a place to sit and keep an eye on the kids would be no problem.

Where is it?

5031 Manchester Road
Akron, Ohio 44319
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