Best Cabin Camping near Elmira, MI

Several campgrounds near Elmira, Michigan provide cabin accommodations with varying amenities and comfort levels. Otsego Lake County Park features four lakefront cabins positioned directly along the water, while the Gaylord KOA includes cabin options with electric hookups and climate control. Cabins at these locations typically include beds, basic furniture, and access to nearby bathroom facilities. "The campground has 4 cabins to rent right on the lake," notes one visitor to Otsego Lake County Park. The Petoskey KOA also offers cabin rentals as part of their accommodation mix, with most providing more comfortable amenities than traditional camping.

Rustic and deluxe cabins are both available, depending on the location. Sites like Beaver Creek Resort provide cabin options that vary in size and amenities, suitable for families or small groups. Most cabins require advance reservations, especially during peak summer months from May through September. According to one camper, "There are cabins available for rent on site, but those are managed by a completely different company." Pet policies vary by location, with some permitting dogs in designated cabins while others restrict pets entirely. The recently developed Alpen Bluffs Outdoor Resort is planning to add 30 new cabins when it opens in 2025.

Most cabins include beds but require visitors to bring their own linens, towels, and toiletries. Basic kitchenette facilities may be available in premium cabins, though many only provide minimal cooking arrangements. Firewood is available for purchase at most locations, including Otsego Lake State Park and the Gaylord KOA. Camp stores at these properties stock essential supplies, though selection is limited. The more developed KOA properties generally offer better-stocked camp stores with food basics, ice, and camping supplies. Winter cabin rentals are available at select locations, with Beaver Creek Resort noting year-round availability for their cabin accommodations.

Best Cabin Sites Near Elmira, Michigan (49)

    1. Otsego Lake State Park Campground

    24 Reviews
    Gaylord, MI
    12 miles
    Website
    +1 (989) 732-5485

    "Got into the park late (around 1030) but it was a great clear night. Spacious campsites with both a bench and picnic table. Bathroom with showers was clean."

    "One complaint we had was that most of the electrical outlets are shared between 2 or 3 sites."

    2. Young State Park Campground

    19 Reviews
    Boyne City, MI
    15 miles
    Website
    +1 (231) 582-7523

    "Very friendly staff and clean park. Family friendly and pet friendly, beach was close by and clean. Reservations were very easy to make online and allows you to pick your site."

    "This campground has so much to offer, some of those things include a nice Beach, small store, fishing, paths, great location with a nice bike ride to downtown Boyne city."

    3. Gaylord KOA

    10 Reviews
    Gaylord, MI
    12 miles
    Website
    +1 (989) 939-8723

    $61 - $95 / night

    "While it was pricey at $65 night, we had a very spacious full hookup site within easy walking distance of pool. Shower house was very nice and modern, with 4 shower stalls."

    "Large sites, amazing hosts, does charge for a band for kids to do activities like jumping pad etc. this includes a bike rental and golf but was an added charge."

    4. Petoskey State Park Campground

    28 Reviews
    Conway, MI
    24 miles
    Website
    +1 (231) 347-2311

    "We were here two days and fell in love with the town, the surrounding area, and never got tired of beautiful views of Lake Michigan. "

    "Be sure to check out sites before hand, some are far better than others. Well shaded. Stones get picked over early. $31-37/night. Vast bike trail. Bike rental available."

    5. Otsego Lake County Park

    5 Reviews
    Gaylord, MI
    10 miles
    Website
    +1 (989) 731-6448

    "This is a great campground South of Gaylord on Otsego Lake. I believe all sites have electric. The park is beautiful with a many sites having lake views."

    "Nice for a state park campground. Lots of trees, sandy beach, updated playground and good boat launch."

    6. Magnus Park Campground

    16 Reviews
    Petoskey, MI
    22 miles
    Website
    +1 (231) 347-1027

    "The park is run by the City of Petoskey and sits on 21 acres in downtown Petoskey overlooking Lake Michigan.  "

    "It is a municipal campground so we didn't expect much but the access to the Little Traverse Wheelway and views of Lake Michigan were awesome - and full hook ups for the price was great. "

    7. Hartwick Pines State Park Campground

    18 Reviews
    Frederic, MI
    24 miles
    Website
    +1 (989) 348-7068

    "Well maintained grounds, with a fire pit and picnic table. State park, so no WiFi. AT&T is 1 bar. Restroom and showers are updated and clean."

    "Large wooded campground with nice sized sites, picnic table, fire ring, electric hook up, flush toilets, and year round activities."

    8. Petoskey KOA

    15 Reviews
    Conway, MI
    23 miles
    Website
    +1 (231) 347-0005

    "The KOA campground is close to Petoskey, but outside town enough to be a bit quiet.  A short drive to breweries, wineries, and dinner. "

    "We’ve chosen to rent a cabin. Simple yet clean. I’m a bit fussy about having a firm mattress; no problem, I brought a firm air mattress to put over their marine covered like mattress."

    9. Alpen Bluffs Outdoor Resort

    2 Reviews
    Gaylord, MI
    10 miles
    Website
    +1 (989) 470-7070

    $105 - $403 / night

    "With a whopping 271 sites, including a fantastic mix of 30 cabins and 14 yurts, there's something for everyone."

    10. Beaver Creek Resort

    2 Reviews
    Gaylord, MI
    10 miles
    Website
    +1 (989) 732-2459
Show More
Showing results 1-10 of 49 campgrounds

2025 Detourist Giveaway

Presented byToyota Trucks

Review Campgrounds. Win Prizes.

Enter to Win


Cabin Reviews near Elmira, MI

509 Reviews of 49 Elmira Campgrounds


  • Amanda L.
    Jul. 29, 2018

    Timber Ridge RV & Recreation Resort

    Busy, fun-filled place

    If you are looking for a camping getaway, this may not be the place for you. It is always bustling with action, but can be lots of fun! I would definitely say this is geared more towards children and families than an escape into nature. There is a camp store, turbo bikes, a variety of family activities, a pool, playground, bike park, equipment and rentals, laundry facility, cabins, cottages, and yurts for rent. This is also a pet friendly campground, so there are many dogs. Probably one of my favorite parts was dodgeball... and the multiple bike trails that connect to the VASA trail system.

  • Kathie M.
    Jun. 20, 2020

    North Higgins Lake State Park Campground

    Overnite stay in cabin

    One nite stay in cabin. Cabin had electricity, mini fridge, electricity and bunk beds. Only complaint was cabin was close to fairly busy road.

  • Nancy W.The Dyrt PRO User
    Jun. 8, 2017

    Traverse City State Park Campground

    Great Proximity to Downtown, Beach, and Breweries.

    The location of this campground is great and it's best feature in my opinion! This park is just two miles to downtown Traverse City (one of Michigan’s most popular resort towns), a quarter mile from a pretty beach and the beautiful blue waters of Lake Michigan, and it sits along the TART Trail which is a 10.5-mile bicycle trail running through the city.

    While the park is small at just 47 acres, it holds pretty many campsites – approximately 350 (and two cabins). Campsites are set among tall pine trees so there is a bit of shade but that also means that they are sandy with little grass. Roads are paved and narrow if you are trying to maneuver with a large (40+ RV) and you may have difficulty backing into your site with the numerous trees lining the road. All sites are back-in with electric. Sites and patios are sandy with varying degrees of levelness. There is a dump station and water spigots are scattered throughout the campground. Picnic tables and fire pits are at each site. Sites are $31/night ($49/night for the cabins) and reserveable online.

    This park is right on US-31/M-72 which means there is easy access in and out but it can be noisy if your campsite is close to the road. Expect the campground to be very busy on weekends and in the summer and tightly packed.

    Amenities include: picnic area, beach, fishing, hiking/bicycling trail, three bathhouses, playground area, camp store, pet walk (no off-leash dog park).

    Outside of the park there is a lot to do in Traverse City. Early July is the ever-popular Cherry Festival which lasts for a week. But you better book your campsite early if you want to enjoy all the festivities (which happen to be close to the park). The summer farmers market is great and held every Wednesday and Saturday. Early in the season, asparagus is plentiful and locally-grown asparagus is the best you will ever have being super sweet, tender, and inexpensive. For beer drinkers, consider paddling the beer trail that takes you from Boardman Lake to Lake Michigan and past numerous breweries where you pull over for a pint. If it's ice cream you want, you have come to the right place. There are multiple creameries with Moomer's being our favorite and for some reason eating it right at the farm stand was the best.

  • Allison H.
    Mar. 1, 2021

    Leelanau State Park Campground

    beautiful, small rustic campground.

    This is a smaller wooded campground at the very northern tip of Leelanau Peninsula.  It is rustic, with no electricity or modern bathrooms (pit toilet). Most of the sites are wooded and some are a little smaller. Perfect for tent camping and smaller popups.  Since it's at the end of the land mass, the waves are stronger and always in the back ground.  It's a wonderful way to fall asleep!  There is a lighthouse you can tour and a small maritime museum on the property.  The beach is a fair size but all rocks (no sand).  There are a couple small cabins with bunks, electricity and grills.

  • Nancy W.The Dyrt PRO User
    Jun. 24, 2017

    Magnus Park Campground

    Great Location to Downtown and Lake Michigan

    This park has some strong positives that outweigh the negatives so depending on what really annoys you about a campground determines whether you may or may not like this place. The park is run by the City of Petoskey and sits on 21 acres in downtown Petoskey overlooking Lake Michigan.  Petoskey has a really cool downtown with great restaurants (we liked Beard’s Brewery, Palette Bistro, and Grand Traverse Pie Company), shopping, a free art center (Crooked Tree), parks, and a pretty marina with a scenic breakwater lighthouse. If you have never been to this part of Michigan, you should definitely come for a visit. 

    The campground is very popular because of the price and location with about 1/3 of the park occupied by seasonal or monthly rentals of people that have been coming for many years.  There are 71 sites which can be used for RVs or tents.  Roads are paved and sites are grass/sand. There are fire pits and picnic tables at each site and a nice large grassy area in the front of the park near Lake Michigan with multiple picnic tables in a common space. 

    There are many positive attributes of this park. The location of this park could not be better and the price of $30/night (water, sewer, 30 amp electric; $28 for electric and water only) is a great deal. (Especially because other private campgrounds in the area are easily $60+/night in the summer season.) They have free wifi that worked well and we were able to get over-the-air antenna television channels. You are really in a prime location with Lake Michigan in front of you. Many of the sites in this park have a great view of the lake (especially sites 1-16). Running through the park is the Little Traverse Wheelway which is a paved bike path spanning from the cute towns of Charlevoix to Harbor Springs. (If you don’t have a bike with you there are plenty of rental places nearby.)  

    Now for the negatives. The bathroom/shower houses are old and tired but were clean. The park sits between a hospital and water treatment plant, one of which can be smelly on warm days the other of which has a very loud HVAC system generating lots of noise. The park is located close to the busy road M-31 so there is a bit of road noise. The sites are very close together so there is not much privacy. The park is open to day-use and has a heavily used bike path running right through it so there are lots of people coming and going.

  • Lee D.The Dyrt PRO User
    Nov. 3, 2022

    Magnus Park Campground

    Convenient to Petoskey

    General: Nestled in between Lake Michigan, a waste-water treatment plant and a hospital is Magnus Park, a public city park and campground. 77 sites, 36 with full hookups, and the remainder with electric hookups. There is also one cabin. 

    Site Quality/Facilities: The campground is laid out in typical RV park fashion with zero privacy between sites. Each site has a picnic table and a fire ring. Although some of the sites have somewhat of a gravel or dirt driveway, mostly it seems like areas where the grass has just worn away. IMO, if you are not able to get Sites 3-16 or Sites A-C which face Lake Michigan, then the best sites would be the ones that back up to the trees. When we reserved many months ago, we were lucky to get one of two available sites, and ours did back up to the trees. Be aware that sites 61-68 back up directly to the hospital. Other than it being imposing and detracting from the feeling of camping, the only thing I found objectionable was more frequent loud sirens of ambulances arriving. On the other end of the campground, there are nine lettered sites (A-I) that are larger but are on a grassy area with no driveways or defined separation. These sites (as well as 18,19, 20, 22) are close to the wastewater treatment plant. When I walked by, I did not notice any offending odor, but other reviewers have said they did. I did, however, hear a humming noise emanating from the plant. By luck of the draw, the site NEXT to ours (51) flooded significantly with heavy rains overnight. Ours did not puddle up too badly.

    Bathhouse: Was generally clean considering it is part of a public-use city park. Rarely did I see anyone in there as most of the campers were in RVs and on our second day, it rained so no one was at the beach. The showers were warm with somewhat wimpy but adequate water pressure. They were on the small side, however, and are only available to campers with a code to access (although there was one shower in the restroom that could be used by all). 

    Activities/Amenities: There is a centrally located playground. Easy access to the bike trail, however, it was closed just south of the campground due to erosion (north is not a problem and a short walk into the town of Petoskey). WiFi is available and you are given the access code upon check-in, although I did not use it so cannot comment on how reliable it was. 

    Our first thought upon arrival was “yikes, why in the world did we decide to stay here?!” but the proximity to the town of Petoskey (less than a mile walk), and views of Lake Michigan outweigh some of the negatives.

  • Nancy W.The Dyrt PRO User
    Jul. 1, 2017

    Young State Park Campground

    Young State Park.

    Here’s what we really liked about this park … it sits on beautiful Lake Charlevoix, is just a few miles away from the super cute town of Boyne City, some campsites with access to water right out of their back door, and the park has lots of beach to enjoy. Young State Park has a typical rustic campground feel. The park covers 560 acres which encompasses a campground, hiking trails, a large beach area with concessions, boat launch (located in the Terrace Campground loop), picnic area, playground, baseball diamond, basketball courts, and fishing pier. 

    Reservations can be made on-line via the Michigan DNR site. The advantage of making reservations online is that you get a really good description of the site which includes length, width, hook-ups, amount of shade, length of site, distance to restrooms, and best of all - pictures.  We visited Young State Park in the summer but in talking to locals this place is wonderful in the winter and great for cross-country skiing with trails that wind through wooded areas. The price ranges from $20 to $33 per night depending on the season and electric hook-ups.  

    There are three camping loops – Terrace, Spruce, and Oak.  Campsites in the Spruce loop don’t have a designated “pad” so you can arrange your RV or tent any way you like. This was the case with groups of friends who had two or three sites and arranged them so they faced each other with a common area in the center. The Terrace and Oak loops have less sites and seem a little quieter. The other plus of these loops is the easy access to water (some of which have great water views). All campsites are a mix of 20/30/50 amp or 20/30 amp with water spigots scattered throughout the loop. Each site has a picnic table and fire pit (firewood is for sale in the campground on the honor system with the nice thing being that you have access any time of day to purchase it).

    The pros about this park are the easy access to Lake Charlevoix and being just a few miles from Boyne City (which has a great weekly farmers market, delicious food and beer at 7 Monks Tap Room, and a weekly Friday “Stroll the Streets” with live music). The park has a large beach area with a camp store/concession stand that has food and items for rent. It is really convenient that you can rent beach chairs/umbrellas/watercraft instead of having to bring them. Behind the concession stand is a fishing pier that was really popular with the kids. 

    The cons are that the roads in the campground are pretty narrow and when someone was backing into their site it caused a traffic jam.  Sites are close together and the park has a very crowded feel. The bath/showers are not large enough for the amount of campers in the park and despite being cleaned daily they got lots of use and were always busy and by the end of the day, they were pretty dirty.  

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-NzcOOzCSk

  • J
    Jul. 13, 2024

    Mackinaw City / Mackinac Island KOA

    Great park near Mackinac Island ferries

    Our site was $99.89 night.

    We were in Site# 98. We had Full hook- up with a gravel pull-through.
    We travel towing a 14 foot trailer and were able to fit both in our pull through site along with my jeep. The site was easy to level.

    Our site was not shaded with limited trees (many were shaded though). This was a smaller lot with our neighbors fairly close.

    This lot (a premium lot) comes with a concrete patio with a round table with four chairs, two Adirondack chairs and a fire pit and a charcoal box grill.

    It is an easy access to the campground from highway -(approximately 1 mile from highway).

    There is free WiFi. They offer Cable TV and there are many channels.

    There is not a community outdoor kitchen or community fire pit.
    They sell wood for $7 a bundle.

    They pickup your garbage at your site daily.

    You are allowed to ride personal golf carts. They also allow you to rent regular bicycles and e-bikes. They do not provide golf cart rentals. There is really not a need to have a Golf cart because it is a smaller campground.

    They do have a Swimming pool. There is a Playground. They also offer Gaga ball,horseshoe, and corn hole. There is a Reading lending library and board games to borrow.

    They have a great general store. There is an electric car charging station. They sell propane.

    There is not a snack bar/restaurant on site.

    The streets are gravel so not great for riding bikes.

    There are great places to ride bikes outside of campground. From the campground, there is a nature trail that you can take your bike that leads you to the. North Western State Trail.

    They have cabins for rent and tent areas.

    They have one shower house. The shower house has individual showers. Toilets with sinks are in a shared bathroom. These are kept very clean.

    There is a laundry facility. It is a cash only facility. There are approximately 5 washers and 5 dryers. It is approximately $2.50 to wash and $1.50 to dry a load.

    They have a fenced in dog park.

    Bugs (mosquitoes/flies)did not seem to be an issue.

    There were trails to hike off of the campground.

    Some fun things to do outside of the campground are go to the beach (1 mile away); visit Mackinac Island (both major ferries will transport you for free - this KOA provides you information for Shepler’s Ferry). Both ferries offer packages that include horse drawn carriage rides, Fort Mackinac admission, Island Hotel Admission, Butterfly House admission, Mystery Town admission, and Parking options). There is a Jack Pine Lumberjack show.

  • Amanda L.
    Jul. 10, 2018

    Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park & Resort at Grayling

    Themed Weekends!

    I love going to the Halloween themed weekends with trick-or-treating at the campground. People decorate their sites, dress up, and hand out candy. Great campground filled with wonderful staff, a cute camp store, hiking and biking trails, wild berries, mini golf, a pool, and plenty of activities! Afforable, easy to find, and I’ll definitely be back.

    One of my favorite parts is the outdoor cartoon theater. You sit on logs, blankets or camp chairs if you're in the back and watch cartoons on the big screen. It reminds me of the drive-in movie theaters. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll even run into Yogi Bear himself!

    Tent, RV, Camper, Cabins and Cottage sites/rentals are available with bathrooms, showers, and a dump station.


Guide to Elmira

Cabin camping near Elmira, Michigan offers a perfect blend of nature and comfort, allowing visitors to enjoy the great outdoors without sacrificing the comforts of home.

Cabin campers appreciate these amenities

  • The Petoskey State Park Campground features electric hookups and drinking water, making it a convenient choice for cabin campers.
  • At Young State Park Campground, guests can enjoy well-maintained facilities, including showers and picnic tables, enhancing the camping experience.
  • Camp Petosega offers a serene environment with beautiful sites and access to firewood, perfect for cozy evenings around the campfire.

Explore nearby attractions

Some prices for cabin camping range from $35 to $50

  • Cabin camping at Gaylord KOA typically starts around $40, offering a family-friendly atmosphere with plenty of amenities.
  • At Petoskey KOA, expect to pay approximately $50 for a cabin, which includes access to a pool and nearby bike trails.
  • Rapid River Campground offers cabin sites starting at $35, providing a quiet retreat with essential facilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is the most popular cabin campsite near Elmira, MI?

According to TheDyrt.com, the most popular cabin campground near Elmira, MI is Otsego Lake State Park Campground with a 4-star rating from 24 reviews.

What is the best site to find cabin camping near Elmira, MI?

TheDyrt.com has all 49 cabin camping locations near Elmira, MI, with real photos and reviews from campers.