Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Ishpeming, MI

We come up every year for the meteor shower, and every stay is a great one. New shower rooms, and huge dog park are awesome!

Beautiful & clean. Great site overlooking Lake Superior. Need to walk over highway to get to water. Very orderly and great Park Manager. Family & pet friendly with awesome playground.

Open, level gravel sites and some concrete pads scattered throughout this pretty new campground. A few baby trees in the open meadow are trying to get started, but other than those there is no shade. We stayed in a full hook up 50 amp site, and experienced no power issues despite 2 days of freakishly high winds and scorching heat in the 90s. This is an immaculately clean and well run campground. Wi fi is ok for email and phone scrolling social media. The only reason we didn't give 5 stars is due to construction in the campground with dump trucks and beep beep beep of machinery backing up every day. Once they are finished and the shade trees grow this will be a premier campground in a beautiful area. Pets allowed on leash. Trash receptacles convenient to each area of the campground. Bath house with coin laundry machines.

We stayed at Van Riper State Park three times during June and July. The park is always clean and well-maintained. The bathrooms and showers and generally always nicely maintained as well, and there are plenty of both. The bathrooms do tend to run out of soap and toilet paper at busy times. Dogs are not allowed on the beach but also cannot be left unattended in your site. The rules are heavily enforced in this park. Park staff will ask you to move vehicles if you have more than two, and you will be asked to turn music completely off upon quiet hours. This is not the place to go if you want to party.

Sites 15 and 17, as well as several other sites along that side of that loop, now have a wooden fence at the back of them, so they are not as large as they appear in the photos online.

We have stayed in sites 14, 90 and 93. We travel with a 34’ trailer.

Site 14 is narrow but manageable. It is well-shaded by large pine trees on the site. Site is entirely dirt. There are trees to hang hammocks or clotheslines in.

Site 90 is on a corner by the propane tanks. It is a large site. It does have some roots and low spots. It is partial grass. It has nice shade and is adjacent to the bathrooms. There are trees to hang hammocks or clotheslines.

Site 93 is a large site that backs up to a small grass/tree buffer. It is across the road from the bathrooms. It has nice shade. There is a place to hang a clothesline but not hammocks.

Pros: Clean, well-maintained park

Quiet

Lots of playground equipment

Bike/scooter pump track

Excellent beach area

Lots of green space

Hiking trails

Wood and ice available for purchase at the entrance

Laundry is available; one washer and two dryers

Very kid and pet friendly

Cons: Park website has out of date information, specifically that there is no longer a store on the beach, nor are there kayaks/SUPs to rent

The Water Warrior Island is no longer in the lake

There are very few sites with buffers between

It is sort of far to the beach and laundry from the modern campsites

No non-reservable sites available

This place was amazing. Very roomy and just beautiful. The camp host was horrible they would yell at us to slow down when we we under the speed limit. There dog was off leash and bit one of our dogs and one of our campers. They were horrible worst hosts ever!

During our trip through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan this was one of my favorite campgrounds. The only reason we didn't stay longer was fear of our rig not starting up again and leaving us stranded. This campground had LARGE campsites with 2 separate loops and plenty of room between campsites. There was only one other group at this campground on the second loop which we never saw. The road to this campground is gravel and is a very pretty drive winding through the woods. At night it is very surreal as the only sounds you hear are the ones you make and an empty night sky. The canopy tree cover makes it tough to see the night sky but there are openings where you can see the sky full of stars. The lake was very peaceful and calm. There were a couple of small docks at each of the campground loops. If you have dogs beware the lake bottom is heavy dark mud and can be troublesome getting off your dog if they decide to take a dip. They also have clean vaulted toilets which is always nice(just beware of large spiders). We would recommend staying at this campground for an extended stay!

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Nice place, on a lake with a beach and life Gaurds good size park tons of cycling trails. Next to presque isle remember the isle doesn’t allow dogs outta your vehicle. Clean park well maintained restrooms/ shower could use some updating though

This is a state park with a host usually at camp. Games available for campers from the host site as well as dog poop supplies. Great waterfront improvement with a store, kayak and SUP rentals, and inflatable water feature to use for a fee.

This campground has it all! Rustic or modern you will enjoy the beach, hiking/biking trails (many right from your site), boating, fantastic fishing, kayaking and year round events! The sites are large and clean! Even a park for the kids! We love it and its dog friendly to boot!!

We camped right on the lake at number #13 which is the last site towards the back of the camp ground. Even though the signs said it was full, we rolled the dice anyhow and ended up getting a cancelation site for free! The guys at the office were very nice and accommodating. Camp was clean, quiet and dog friendly. Great fishing right off the waters edge, swimming and paddle boarded the lake as well. Super close to downtown Marquette, like a 10 minute bike ride.

Rippling Rivers Resort is new addition to an area that lacked a decent campground.

Amenities include bathhouses and shows (which have code locks on them), shared water access, picnic tables, fire pits, campstore with bar, and access to an outdoor pool and hot tub.

We stayed at one of the walk-in tent sites and also had the pleasure of enjoying the Carp River. The river was about 10 fee away from our site.

The staff is extremely friendly, to both people and dogs. I was very impressed with how dog friendly this location is. Even the other campers were respectful of each other.

Our tent location was entirely shaded and made it feel as though we were camping in a forest. 

The downsides. The tent sites were too small and not level. We had a very hard time finding a place to put our tent.  The sites were also very close together. Our neighbors were backed right up to use. 

As mentioned above, the shower/bathhouse requires a code to access it. It was kind of weird. And made it a challenge if you had to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. 

Parking was very limited. Not a problem if you have only one vehicle, but we had two. One of us had to park on the other side of the campground, which became an inconvenience.

the campground is very nice and so are the campground hosts. its very close to 41 so you hear a lot of road noise (reason for my lower score). there are train tracks behind our site. we’ve only been here a few hours and havent had a train come by. it seems to be close to orv trails, lots of people here have sidexsides and quads. no one has been loud though. bathrooms are nice and clean and showers seem clean too (havent used them yet). no laundry here if youre looking for that. dogs are welcome.

We are not a big state park fan as, in Michigan, there are very close sites and tons of noise. This one was relatively quiet. The site were the standard Michigan close but the campgeound was t full and there many options to choose from. The lake is real nice and the beach area is clean, spacious and it has a general store that has firewood for sale. We first reserved a rustic site, then changed to an electrical hook up site after arriving. The ranger was very accomodating.

Van Riper State park has very unlevel sites with no water and 30 amp service. Unacceptable with today’s campers. Time to update Michigan

The Michigan Recreation Passport Solar does not cover local, county, municipal, or metropolitan parks or recreation areas.

We liked this campground. Sites were close but plenty of trees to help you feel spaced out. Convenient to Pictured Rocks, which is why we made this trip to Michigan.

We took a week long trip and toured Michigan. We spent 2 nights at Van Riper, the other campers were nice, the playset was large, and the beach was nice. The beach was steps down to the access (difficult with a wagon- we didn’t know), and the bathroom wasn’t the cleanest during our stay. The stars were gorgeous.

Stayed on our drive from Mackinac to see the pictured rocks lake shore. The campground is surrounded by 18 miles of trails. No camp store, but a convenience store is a quarter mile away. Northern Michigan university is at the door step as well. Lake superior is 1 mile away. We biked there and fished at the campground beach. Lots of Brook trout there.