A Week in Okoboji

March 30, 2016 9:23 AM

We are set to spend a week in July at Lake Okoboji with my in-laws. We have a toddler. Any tips?

The Babbbiee will be 22.5 months at the time of our stay.
We will have our own car.
We'll be staying at a house on the west side of West Okoboji Lake, near Triboji Beach.

I would love the names of beaches/playgrounds to seek out, the names of family-friendly restaurants that have decent food, good places to walk with a stroller, and activities/things to do/sights to see that we should put high on our list. Anything we should avoid? And, um, where would you go if, say, it's been raining solidly for three days and the toddler needs to be let loose to scream and run and climb?

It's a family-friendly vacation area, so there should be plenty to do. I know the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri pretty well, and that's what I'm basically preparing for. Still, kid-friendly activities are not always the same as toddler-friendly activities, so any tips would be fantastic. Thank you!

posted by aabbbiee to Travel & Transportation around Okoboji, IA (1 answer total)

Okoboji's place to be is a town/region/tourist-trap called Arnold's Park, which has a little boardwalk and a roller coaster and a boat tour of the lake, but it's not huge; Okoboji is a touristy area, but it's no Lake of the Ozarks -- it's more like the lakes region in Minnesota, lots of little locally-owned shops, a few 'event' attractions, but mostly the fun is just hanging out. Beaches are small; it's a land-of-ten-thousand-lakes glacial pool style lake, but the public beaches will be around Arnold's Park, or noted here.

Have you seen the Vacation Okoboji website, or Okoboji.com, or Explore Okoboji? It has been twenty years since I was there, but looking around the websites not a while lot has changed.

(also, buy some University of Okoboji swag when you're there)
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:41 AM on March 31, 2016