Oftentimes when folks plan a camping trip, they opt for heading east or west to a big name national park such as the Great Smoky Mountains, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite, etc. But there are also some terrific places to camp in the great Midwestern section of America. Let’s look at a few.

Starved Rock State Park

Illinois may not be the first state on a camper’s list, but they’ll love this 2600 acre hidden gem located on the southern bank of the Illinois River about 90 miles west of Chicago. Instead of the usual flat, featureless farmland that covers a majority of the state, you’ll discover steep rock wall canyons and a multitude of cascading waterfalls, best viewed in the spring during the snow melt or after a rainstorm. Explore the canyons as well as the park’s quiet forests along 13 miles of well marked hiking trails.

Other outdoor activities include horseback riding, canoeing, kayaking and rafting. And don’t miss taking a peek at the historic majesty of the Great Hall in the Starved Rock Lodge, originally built in the 1930’s!

The campground boasts 133 Class A campsites with electric hook-ups, flush toilets and showers, including seven campsites accessible to those with disabilities.

Badlands National Park

This scenic and rugged landscape located in southwestern South Dakota may at first seem barren and even other-worldly. But this geological wonder will captivate you with ancient mineral deposits that splash color onto its promontories, pinnacles, and ravines. Lying awake at night, you may even hear the mournful howl of a wolf or the distant sound of neighing, as the park is the home to wild horses as well as bison and big horn sheep.

Hiking trails range from 0.25 to 10 miles long and they let you experience both the current wild life and also the extinct. This area has one of the largest deposits of mammal fossils found in America, so you may run across the remains of one of the park area’s former inhabitants like the rhino and saber-toothed cat.

Camp in comfort at Cedar Pass Campground with amenities such as electrical hook-ups, water and bathrooms. Or try Sage Creek Campground. It only has pit toilets and covered tables, but the camping is free and you may even encounter a majestic bison wandering through! Or if you prefer true solitude and tranquility, try backcountry camping. Permits are not required.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

To experience sand and surf, you need not travel to any of the coastal areas. Sleeping Bear Dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan was named by ABC’s Good Morning America as the “Most Beautiful Place in America”. With its towering sand dunes, sparkling lake shore, incredible sunsets over Lake Michigan, along with the beauty of the surrounding land, this is a place to add to your bucket list. Besides the summer activities of swimming, kayaking or just catching rays on the dunes, Sleeping Bear also has its share of winter activities such as snowboarding, cross country and downhill skiing.

The park’s 100 miles of designated trails will take you on a journey of diverse terrains. Hike the lakeshore and dunes, ramble through meadows bursting with wild flowers, or explore serene forests.

Your camping choices here are special. If you don’t want to rough-it, check in at the Platte River Campground. It has all the services you’re looking for. Or, for the more rough-and-ready, there’s the D.H. Day Campground. Or take a ferry over to either North or South Manitou Island. The thousands of acres of each island are open for hiking, camping and exploring. But there’s no fresh running water, so be sure to bring water filtration equipment with you.

Brown County State Park

Located in south central Indiana is the state’s largest park, just an hour’s drive from Indianapolis. This area is nicknamed the “Little Smokies” because it bears a resemblance to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. Besides camping, there are extensive horse riding facilities, hiking, mountain bike trails, fishing and swimming. Scenic drives are also popular in the area because historic covered bridges dot the surrounding landscape.

This state park is particularly popular in the fall when the leaves burst forth with spectacular shades of red, orange and yellow. Take advantage of the 10 hiking trails to get up close and personal with this stunning natural wonder. Trails range from easy to rugged, being 0.75 to 3.5 miles long.

Brown County State Park has 401 Class A and 28 Class B campsites, including electric and primitive sites for horseman camping.

No matter where you prefer to camp, whether it be in quiet green forests or near the lapping waves of a lake, on windswept prairies or vast painted landscapes, the Midwest has an abundance of camping choices for you!

Before the late 1800s, the knives commonly used by outdoorsmen were virtually the same type of knives used by butchers. Most survival knives had a relatively thin design, and the handles did not offer much in the way of grip support besides two crude wooden wedges loosely bolted to the tang.

The eventual emergence of serrated edges came out of the increased demand for knives that could be used for sawing wood and scaling fish. At the dawn of the 20th century, Webster L. Marble introduced what would be known as the earliest predecessor to our modern hunting knife.

Unlike the rickety improvised butcher knives, Marble’s hunting knives were designed with more weight in the blade. In addition to a heavier blade, cross guards and pommels were implemented. By the 1930s, the redesigned hunting knives became the main survival knives used by soldiers, outdoor enthusiasts, and explorers around the world.

In time, various manufacturers of cutlery began to offer knives with a design similar to Marble’s redesigned hunting knife. Case and Cattaraugus were among the knife manufacturers that were inspired by the newly introduced hunting knife design, and their innovations were largely responsible for the modern survival knives that we have the privilege of using today.

Though the abundance of high-quality survival knives that we now have access to is far superior to the lackluster butcher knives of the late 19th century, not every survival knife is made equally.

You can spare yourself the headache of buying a second-rate knife by always looking out for the most essential qualities. So long as you pay close attention to the following essential qualities, you can ensure that you’ll make the best choice of knife possible.

Knife Grind Shape

Before you spend any time browsing knives, you will have to determine just exactly what it is that you intend on using the knife for. One of the most vital factors in determining just what the appropriate use of your prospective survival knife would be is its grind shape.

Different tasks are completed more efficiently by different knife blade shapes. The grind of the knife is simply the fashion in which the craftsman has chosen to give the steel composing the blade it’s cutting edge. There are many different forms of grind, but the most common types of grind are hollow grinds, flat grinds, and convex grinds.

Hollow Grind

Hollow grinds can be identified by the blade’s triangular shape in which the sides are slightly curved, which allows for the steel to be given a particularly fine edge. Hollow grinds are well-suited for general purpose slicing jobs.

Flat grinds

Unlike hollow grinds, the triangularly-shaped blade of a flat grind has straight edges. While hollow grinds are designed for general purpose slicing, flat grinds are designed for both general purpose cutting and may also be employed as improvised hard edges.

Convex grind

The convex grind features a triangular blade shape in which the sides curve outward. The outward-curving sides of the triangle give the blade a particularly strong edge.

Out of all of the different types of grind, convex grinds tend to be one of the most challenging to create, as they generally need to be manually ground with the slack-belt grinder before they are complete. Rather than cutting and slicing, convex grinds are valued for being well-suited to chopping tasks.

Serration grind

Serrations are particularly useful whenever you have the need to cut any material with a fibrous consistency, like nets or thick ropes. Serration grinds are generally used more situationally than the other grind options, and it is not advised to rely on them for the same cutting tasks that you would normally give to a convex, flax, or hollow grind blade.

Scandi grind

One of the more popular grind types for outdoor knife enthusiasts is the Scandi grind. The Scandi grind resembles a flat grind at a glance, though its design lacks a cutting bevel. Because of the absence of a cutting bevel in the grind’s contour, Scandi grinds are known for being extraordinarily sharp.

Prospective owners should be advised, however, that Scandi grinds do happen to be slightly challenging for novices to sharpen due to the fact that the entire angle needs to be registered to whatever mediums you are using for sharpening. Generally speaking, those who have a high level of manual knife sharpening experience will be able to get the most value out of their Scandi grind.

Knife Steel

After you’ve determined exactly what the primary use of your new survival knife should be, you will certainly want to spend some time considering just what type of steel would be best. Much like the shapes of the grinds, the particular steel of your camping knife will have a direct effect on its efficacy and survivability.

The type of steel composing the blade of your camping knife will have a direct effect on its overall durability, edge holding capacity, and level of susceptibility to rusting.

Corrosion resistance

Because hunting knives will oftentimes come into contact with a much more diverse range of substances than knives made exclusively for indoor use, the level of resistance that the blade has to corrosion will be highly important.

There are far more things than water that are capable of causing a camping blade with low corrosion resistance to rust. One of the most corrosion resistant steels in the industry is H1. VG10 and N690 the also boast a particularly significant level of resistance to all forms of corrosion.

Toughness

The blade’s level of toughness will determine its tolerance for bending against significant pressure without suddenly breaking and becoming useless. For camping knives used for the most labor-intensive tasks, a durable blade that can survive its cutting jobs and pass the test of time will be essential.

There are two particular steels that are neck-and-neck when it comes to the camping knife blades that are made of the toughest steel in the industry: 3V and INFI.

Sharpness retention and hardness

While a knife’s toughness determines how far the blade can bend without breaking, the hardness is a measure of its resistance to bending at all. The knife’s hardness will also have a significant effect on its sharpness.

The harder the blade’s steel is, the longer that the edge of the blade will be able to preserve its optimal cutting power. It goes without saying that your blade’s ability to remain capable of actually cutting the objects that place its teeth on will matter.

Some of the hardest knife steels in the industry are M4 and the ZDP-189. The hardness of a knife’s steel is measured on what is called the Rockwell Scale, and the hardest steels of all will generally fall within the mid-60s range.

Generally, folding knives tend to be slightly harder than chopping knives on average. In addition to being able to maintain the sharpness of the edge for a longer period of time, a sufficiently hard steel facilitates a much cleaner and deeper slice than softer steels.

Be advised that the corrosion resistance of a knife will usually be negatively correlated with the toughness and/or hardness. The most well-prepared outdoorsmen will typically diversify his camping knife set so that they can effectively compensate for one another’s weak points.

Size

When it comes to the size of a camping knife’s blade, don’t just settle for whichever blade is the largest. Smaller blades are better-suited for more precision-oriented tasks, while larger blades will be able to handle strength-demanding tasks like chopping and splitting wood.

The Best Camping Knives

With all of the hundreds of thousands of survival knives available at a discount for anyone out there with a credit card and an Amazon account, there is a real risk of wasting your money on a hastily glued-together knockoff that isn’t fit to cut through cottage cheese.

The following survival knives are genuine articles of expert craftsmanship that any experienced outdoor enthusiast can respect. For their durability, sharpness, versatility, and all-around quality, the following fixed edge and folding edge knives have been recognized as being among the best available on the market for their value.

Banner Knives Ti-G10 (High End Fixed Blade)

The Banner Knives Ti-G10 is priced quite a bit higher than the other knives we mention below, but if you have the extra cash it is absolutely worth it. It has a full tang blade made from high quality steel that is coated in titanium, and it uses the popular G10 handle material that is known for being able to withstand extreme conditions.

Billed as a survival knife, the Ti-G10 will be perfect for any potential thing you could throw at it when on a camping trip. It also comes with a sheath so that you can easily carry it.

Survivor HK-106320 (Fixed Blade)

The Survivor HK features a fixed tanto blade with a cord-wrapped handle. The blade is designed with a magnesium-alloy fire starter and lanyard. The full length of the knife from handle base to blade tip is 7 inches, and the length of the blade itself is approximately 3 inches. The blade’s material is 440 stainless steel, and it has a thickness of about 4 mm.

The thick green nylon rope wrapping around the handle is useful for giving the owner secure grip at all times. For the owner’s convenience, there is a fitted nylon sheath with a hook, loop belt fastener, and a fitted pocket for the fire starter.

The grooved tanto blade is designed with a full tang for optimum stability. It can be used for both camping outings and survival training with equal effectiveness. The Survivor HK is available in four different color variations: 2-tone green, black, military green and pink.

MTech USA MT-20-12 Hunting Knife (Fixed Blade)

The MT-20-12 is a tactical military style hunting knife that features a black bowie style fixed blade, reinforced by black titanium-coated 440 stainless steel. The 3mm thick cutting edge ends with a curved spear point for cleaner slicing and also features a sawback.

The body of the knife, from the base of the handle to the tip of the spear point, is 10” long. A nylon fiber sheath and belt clip are included in the package. The synthetic handle houses an extended tang and has been designed with finger grooves for ergonomic comfort. A lanyard hole at the end of the handle allows the owner to attach extra cordage if needed.

OutXPRO Tactical Pocket Knife (Folding)

The OutXPRO has been designed for an enhanced level of durability and sharpness retention in the stainless steel blade. The base of the blade features a convenient serrated edge segment at its base that can be useful for multipurpose cutting needs.

The blade comes with a belt clip and nylon pouch included in the package. As an emergency knife, there is a light stick along with five additional features to make outdoor expeditions much more convenient. The twine cutter attachment can be used for the purpose of cutting lumber bands, opening boxes, and various other features.

A magnesium fire starter is included, along with a seatbelt cutter and a window breaker. When closed, the overall length of the knife is approximately 5 inches, and the stainless steel blade is approximately 3 inches.

The knife is available in one of four different color variations: black, camouflage, gold, and gray.

Pro Iron Hunting Knife (Folding)

The Pro Iron Hunting Knife features a 3.25” dropped-point blade. The half-serrated blade is made of 440 stainless steel. The knife is designed with a rope cutter, glass breaker, can opener, and a belt clip.

The folding knife has a spring-assisted opening that can be activated with a thumb stud. The thumb stud is ambidextrous, so both left-handed and right-handed owners will be able to release the blade with ease.

When the blade is folded out, the liner lock tightly secures it into position. The length of the knife when closed is 4.75 inches, and when the 3.25” blade is folded out, the overall length becomes 7.75 inches.

The Pro Iron is available in one of three different color variations: black, blue, or a woodsman camo print.