Corning, Iowa (pop. 1,635) is our featured rural community this week! The thriving scene in Corning is the result of a forward-thinking community that is full of vision for their small town. We'll be sharing stories throughout the week from local leaders and business owners who are making an impact here. Today's guest blog post is from Travis Paul, Director at Lake Icaria.

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Lake Icaria is just one of the many beautiful natural areas that we have here in Adams County. With the small population of our county (less than 4,000 residents), Lake Icaria is a vital tourism resource to our community. Located just four miles north of the town of Corning, the traffic and the people the lake brings through the Corning community helps sustain many of our local and main street businesses. For a community with such a small population we are blessed to have so much to offer! Grocery store, hardware stores, restaurants, and retail stores that will rival communities with a much larger population are thriving here due to the local community support and the support of visitors that are in our community visiting Lake Icaria, Lake Binder, public hunting areas, or the race track.

I am so fortunate to be able to raise my children in this small town community with so many big city amenities. We have such a great community support system here in Corning! It’s so nice to see our community members take pride in our town, our parks, and our entire county. We look forward to sharing our community with the many visitors we see each year and if you haven’t been here yet, we look forward to meeting you all!

Before you come, let me give you a taste/snapshot of all that Lake Icaria has to offer:

CAMPING AND COTTAGES

The park is about 1,300 acres total and has a beautiful 650-acre lake! We have two campgrounds: Lake View and Timber Ridge. The Lake View campground has 67 sites with 50 amp electrical service and beautiful views of the lake. Ten of these sites offer full-service camper hook-ups. Both shower houses in this campground are brand new and offer campers a clean, comfortable restroom and shower experience. This campground also is home to 14 cabins! We offer six full-service cabins that have their own restroom/shower and a small kitchenette. The other eight cabins are a sleeping-style cabin with heat/AC, a microwave, and a small fridge. The sleeping cabins share the same restroom facilities as the rest of the campground.

Timber Ridge campground underwent a complete renovation in 2016. We happily offer 39 full hook-up sites and 23 electric-with-water sites in this campground. Part of the renovation included massive amounts of dirt work to level sites and extend the site lengths to 50 feet or longer. We can accommodate most any campers in either campground.

The newest additions to our facility are our 10-person cottages. These are 3-bedroom/2-bathroom houses with all the amenities of home! Two queen beds, two full-size beds, and two twin beds leave sleeping room for 10 people, with all of the bed linens and towels included. A full kitchen comes stocked with a coffee maker, toaster, pots, pans, plates, and all of the basic kitchen supplies. Satellite TV and a beautiful covered deck as well as a boat dock top off the cottage experience! Reservations for these facilities can be made by visiting mycountyparks.com, where we take reservations for the Timber Ridge campground, cabins, and cottages.

MARINA

Lake Icaria has a wonderful full service marina for all of your fishing supplies or boat rental needs! Rent a pontoon, canoe, paddle board, or kayak for some fun on the lake, or to try your hand at catching some of the wonderful fish out of the lake. Icaria boasts excellent populations of walleye, crappie, bluegill, catfish, bass, and wipers.

BEACH AND SWIMMING AREA

We also have a beautiful sand beach and swimming area. The beach is always free to swim! There are several nice picnic shelters in the beach area to bring your own lunch or dinner. If you aren’t feeling like cooking, come enjoy the food trucks at the beach on Friday evening, Saturday lunch and dinner, or Sunday morning breakfast or lunch! When you’re done with your picnic, bring your discs and enjoy our beautiful new 18-hole disc golf course! Our disc golf course starts near our marina area and loops our entire picnic area hill, goes down by the beach area, and eventually ends up near the marina where you started.