Michigan Recreation Passport is required for vehicle entry into state parks and recreation areas, state boat launches, state forest campgrounds and state trail parking lots. The Michigan Recreation Passport does not cover local, county, municipal, or metropolitan parks or recreation areas. Learn more: https://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-350-79134_79210---,00.html

McLain State Park Campground

Located in the heart of the Keweenaw with nice sites that have a great view of the lake if you get one of the sites near the shore. Big park area, beach with both sandy and rocky places, a ice shop, and not far from Houghton/Hancock.

Great Campground, Awsome Views

This campground has phenomenal views of Lake Superior. Somehow you can watch sunrise and sunset from the campground. The sites are close together and lack privacy but the views really make up for it. When I was there, the bathhouse was kind of gross, but they are in the process of renovating it.  This is a campground that really stuck with me. I can’t wait to go back and see how they’ve improved it. 

Surprised Me

Mclain State Park Campground is the first Campground that you will encounter upon entering the Keweenaw peninsula of Michigan. It is located directly on the shore of Lake Superior off of Highway 203, and is within quick driving distance of many food options, grocery stores, and gas stations, not to mention Walmart. McClain has campsites and cabins available, reservations are recommended as it does get busy in the summer. The cabins are available for year-round rental and make for a cozy place to come back to after hunting or snowmobiling.

Nice lakeside campground right off the highway

I try to avoid state parks when I can, because they are just slightly too crowded and the sites are always a little small.
This particular trip we kinda ended up with minimal options because everything was so busy. I will say, the swimming and sunset were amazing. The site we ended up with wasn’t 1/2 bad either. The bathrooms were clean the park has some really nice trails and views. Definitely not the worst place I have ever ended up having to stay at. 

Not too shabby...

What a surprise! Some campsites are right on the lake shore with beautiful views of the lake. Fantastic sunsets, swimming in clear waters. Cabins are clean and well kept w electricity and AC. Woodsy sites are buggy.

Camp on the shores of Lake Superior 

Nice sites either blacktop, gravel or grass. Majority of sites have lake superior views. Has beachs. One for humans and one for canines. Great for bicycling, hiking, lazy days at the beach. Lake superior water is cold! Has jetty near beach with lighthouse. Great for fishing. Canal to Houghton/Hancock empties into lake next to beach. On western side of keeweenaw peninsula. Has very beautiful sunsets.

Beautiful Michigan park

The sites are overly spacious and well disbursed. Everything is super clean. Over a mile of beach gives every camper enough room to feel like the entire lake is there‘s to enjoy alone. I couldn’t be much happier with this campground. The best state campground I’ve been to in Michigan so far. It’s a gem. 

This is the campground we’ve been looking for

Great campground with secluded sites. I really enjoyed staying here. We stayed on campsite 75 and had a beautiful view of lake superior. There were no mosquitos when we were there. There is only one shower house for hundreds of campsites :( 

Secluded campground

We stayed on the west side of the campground, and we’re apprehensive at first because these were all newer sites (made from previous parking lot).  We really loved it! The sites were close to level, spacious, and our back window had a great view of the sunsets and the lake.
Electric only sites, but we filled up on water when arriving and our holding tanks made it through the weekend.

Lots of space, beautiful views, hiking trails, and more...

We knew we’d be happy near the lake, but wow… this place is stellar. Bathrooms are modern and clean. Park staff is very friendly. The beach is lovely. And our campsite is perfect. 

Wow wow wow

The wife and I are about to return to McLain after stumbling across it 7 years ago. We stayed in one of the cabins last time, this year we will be in a tent. Campground has beautiful sunsets, the lake is a stones throw away from anywhere you camp here. Showers were clean. Lots to see on the Keweenaw. 

I’ll do another review after my next trip end of August. 

Revisiting McLain after 7 years. 

A short drive from Houghton brings you to the shore of Lake Superior. McLain sprawls along the shore giving almost every campsite a beautiful view. Our site has a picnic table and even a couple wooden deck chairs looking towards the sunset. Every site has electric with water available at a few locations. There is a dump station near the trash bins. 
With the park stretching a couple miles you can get in a good walk along the paved camp road. There are a few extra trails to add some adventure. We found some that parallel the road and head to the beach - there’s even a dog beach! There are plenty of shelters and benches to find some personal space. Humans can walk down to the sand and sit by the beach (no dogs for most of it). Some folks put their kayaks in to paddle a bit. 
One drawback is the sparse restrooms. A centralized shower house is by the entrance. Vault toilets are around but you could have a bit of a walk. 
Tips: the entrance is earlier than google will take you so keep an eye open. Another camper told us to stop by the Jam Pot in the way north along 26. The monks make and sell a variety of things but Greg kept raving about the cupcakes. It’s nearJacob falls. We are stopping by on our way out tomorrow. 

A busy spot but enjoyable 

When we got close to the park entrance on MI 123 our GPS wanted us to go another.5 mile to the campground(CG) but a trailer was turning into a state park road so we followed. Good choice as this was the correct road that led to the gate where you register and checked in. The road the GPS was taking us to is currently only used as an exit from the CG. After a not-so-informative check-in, we headed into the park to find water. From the online map, we believed there was a water spigot near our site so we drove to the site only to find it was not a water hose assessable spigot. Then we headed to the dump station where we did find two potable water spigots on each side of the dump station. There was a permanently fixed hose coming out of the spigots, but the first one’s threads were worn out and wouldn’t stay screwed in. We had to wait for another rig to get fresh water and dump before we could move forward to the second one that did screw in so we could fill our fresh water tank. After that, we headed to site 110 that’s an easy back-in but only electric(50 AMP/30/20). The 100s loop is newer and it's big rig friendly with sites nicely spaced apart. Site 110 is probably the most spacious and private site in the CG as it sits in a little berm. Site 112 is nicely spaced, but you will get highway noise. Concerning RV sites in the main CG area, there is a separate tent-only area on the lake, and RV sites closest to the lake tend to be smaller in site length but we saw a couple of 36 to 40-foot 5th wheels with the tow vehicle parked wherever. In the 20 to 40 numbered sites that are not on the lake, we noticed larger class As and a couple of toy haulers. In the mid-30s sites across from the lakeside, large rigs were parked willy-nilly to make their rig fit. All the original sites are pretty much crammed in together but if you want to be where all the action is i.e. partiers and kids, this would be your area. When you get past site 40 there are 90-degree back-in sites of various lengths with most having a lot of trees and vegetation between sites giving more privacy. The 35ish-foot 5th wheels we saw in there, didn’t seem to care about tree branches scraping the roof. One note about the 41- 60s area is that the power boxes are behind every two sites and shared. Depending on how you are positioned on the pad, and where the power cord connects to the rig, you may need about 60’ of power cord to reach the power box. We also noticed on our walks around the CG that due to the poor to nonexistent cell signal here(1 bar on Verizon), people especially teenagers were sitting around talking to each other versus staring at phones. There were plenty of nearby trails to explore with the dogs, including a dog beach. McLain makes a great staging point to explore the area and take in Eagle River and Copper Bay attractions.

Good Base to Explore the Area

This place is awesome. Make reservations ahead of time. New modern bathrooms since our last visit in 2015. Beautiful night skies, if your lucky you will see northern lights. 

We love this campground. 

Great state park but campground does have a few downfalls. The best spots are tent only, and most of the “big rig” spots don’t have any privacy. We also had a really hard time finding a spot that we would plug in because the boxes were so far away, even though we have a 20ft extension cord. Aside from difficulty with a spot, it was a great stay. Not a lot of people there, beautiful views, greats waterfalls all around, clean bathrooms. 