Michigan State Parks for Camping: The Ones Worth the Drive

Michigan has more than a hundred state parks, and the conversation, online at least, tends to orbit five of them. That is partly fair (some really are that much better than the median) and partly a function of search engines rewarding repetition. What gets lost is that the system was largely built in two pushes — the CCC camps of the 1933–1942 stretch, when crews put up the stone bathhouses and timber shelters that still anchor places like Ludington and Wilderness, and the postwar build-out under the old Department of Conservation, which stitched together the rustic outposts in the Upper Peninsula. Almost every campsite you'll book this year sits on that bones.

Before any of that, the land was Anishinaabe — Ojibwe across the UP and northern Lower, Odawa along the Lake Michigan coast through what is now Petoskey and Charlevoix, Potawatomi in the south. The logging companies came through between roughly 1860 and 1910 and took the white pine out in a hurry; what you camp under today, with the notable exception of Hartwick Pines, is second-growth that has had a century to recover. Worth knowing as you pitch a tent.

The Porkies, and what "wilderness" actually means here

Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, on the Lake Superior shore west of Ontonagon, is the largest state park in Michigan and the one most worth the long drive — even from Detroit you are looking at nine hours, which is the point. The park protects roughly 35,000 acres of northern hardwood-hemlock forest, including one of the last large stands of old growth east of the Mississippi (a fact the DNR signage repeats a little smugly, but earns). Geologically the Porkies sit on billion-year-old Precambrian basalt and conglomerate, the same Midcontinent Rift rocks that made the copper boom possible at nearby Calumet and Houghton.

The main car-camping options are Union Bay Campground (modern sites, on Superior) and Presque Isle Campground at the west end of the park (quieter, smaller, with the river gorge five minutes' walk away). The park also keeps a string of rustic cabins and yurts that book out the moment the window opens. The Lake of the Clouds overlook is genuinely the picture you've seen; the trail down to the lake from the escarpment is steeper than it looks on the map.

Tahquamenon, Hartwick, and the white-pine ghost

I am going to put these two together because they are, in a sense, the same story told from opposite ends. Hartwick Pines State Park, outside Grayling on I-75, preserves a 49-acre remnant of the old-growth pine that once covered most of the northern Lower Peninsula; the campground is large and modern, the logging museum is better than it has any right to be, and the Old Growth Forest Foot Trail will make you a little angry about what happened between 1870 and 1900, which is the point of preserving the remnant in the first place. Tahquamenon Falls State Park, near Paradise on the Lake Superior shore, sits on river-worked Cambrian sandstone and includes both the Upper Falls (which gets the crowds) and the Lower Falls (which is what I'd choose). The river runs the color of strong tea from tannins leached out of cedar swamps upstream — Longfellow used the wrong falls in Hiawatha but never mind.

Tahquamenon has four campgrounds; the Rivermouth unit, where the river meets Whitefish Bay, is the underrated one. Hartwick Pines's campground is fine but not the reason to come; the trees are.

Ludington, and the CCC at its most ambitious

Ludington State Park, between Lake Michigan and Hamlin Lake just north of Ludington on M-116, is the CCC's finest hour in this system. Crews built the stone Great Hall, the bathhouses, and most of the trail bridges between 1934 and 1939, and the work has held up better than anything constructed since. The park has three campgrounds (Pines, Cedar, Beechwood — Beechwood is the quietest loop), about eight miles of Lake Michigan frontage, and a lighthouse, Big Sable Point, that you walk to along the beach. It is also extremely popular; the prime summer weekends evaporate the moment reservations open.

Shoulder season is the move, here as everywhere. Mid-May before Memorial Day, or the back half of September — the lake is still warm enough to swim if you are willing, the dune grass is gone yellow, and the campground is maybe a third full. People call this place a hidden gem; it is not hidden, it has hundreds of campsites and a paved bike path. It is just very good.

The Lake Michigan dune parks, and how to choose

Calling something a "dune park" lumps very different landscapes together. The southwest dunes near the Indiana border are different ecologically and geolgoically from the perched dunes around Muskegon, which are different again from the active blowouts at Silver Lake. Pick by what you want to look at, not by proximity.

• Warren Dunes State Park (Sawyer, southwest corner): closest to Chicago, so you are sharing it; tall foredunes and reliable Lake Michigan surf.
• Grand Haven State Park (Grand Haven): pure beach camping, no real forest cover, RV-heavy, the pier walk at sunset is the draw.
• P.J. Hoffmaster State Park (Muskegon): the geology is best explained inside the Gillette Visitor Center; textbook perched dunes on glacial moraine.
• Silver Lake State Park (Mears): includes the ORV area, which is loud; the non-ORV side is quiet enough.
• Orchard Beach State Park (Manistee): small bluff-top campground, no direct beach access by car, often skipped, which is a reason to consider it.
• Wilderness State Park (Mackinaw City): not a dune park exactly, but the Sturgeon Bay sites are on as fine a Lake Michigan beach as exists in this state.

Of those Hoffmaster is the one I would point a first-timer toward. It is the the closest to what the dune ecology actually does — a teaching landscape, with a good interpretive program tied to the visitor center.