Best Glamping near Johannesburg, MI

Packed like sardines. Stones get picked over early but still the best I’ve found. Sandy Beach just down the road. board walk great for biking and jogging. More of a Glamping Park, with little shade.

The location makes this campground. Stayed 6 nights as it was so relaxing.

Pros:

• Right on Lake Michigan
• Only a 15 min walk from Petoskey downtown

Cons:

• The sites are quite close together
• The showers are pretty basic

Would stay here again.

Enjoyed our overnight stay at this clean fairground. It had everything we needed for tent camping. The cool northern Michigan air felt refreshing as well as watching the seagulls & Canadian geese. Adequate showers & restroom. Will stay here again.

Very clean and nice campground o. Lake Huron. Clean bathrooms. Some of the sites are not as deep as others. The lower numbered sites are closer to beach access. Great activities for kids, nice bike paths and hiking trails. Close to the only Falls in lower Michigan that are a must see!

We stayed here at the end of October. The campground was pretty empty. There are camp sites along Black Lake, which is the 7th largest lake in Michigan. The lake side campsites are very close together but you are right by the water's edge. There is a playground area with swings, sand pit and jungle bars. There is also a boat launch and small beach.

I have visited Magnus Park several times, it's a beautiful little campground in downtown Petoskey MI. The park as a full array of sites, but mostly caters to RV's, I paid the same rate to pitch a tent as it would have costed to park a large RV. The campground has a perfect location, along the Lake Michigan Shore, and about 4 blocks from downtown Petoskey.

This is a cute little campground located in Central Lake. Many of the water sites are very close together, but it offers you access to the lake for fishing, paddling and more. There is a little creek that runs through and the playground for kids is actually next to the campground. There is a boat launch conveniently located next to the campground. Bathrooms are decent. Walking distance from a cute little northern Michigan town. Look at the campground map online because there are more sites up on the hill. It’s a very quiet campground.

Love being shaded by full mature trees everywhere yet the campgrounds are very well cared for inside and out. 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. My brother put his 38’ trailer on a pad with full hookups. We wanted to follow figure out the best scenic bike route to get into Petoskey and beyond toward Charlevoix to go along the shorelines as much as possible. Customer service is amazing and they printed of a map for us as well. Lake Michigan beach is about a 5 minutes drive.

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.

We stayed for a week at Young State Park in September of 2020. Our site was at the end of a row and we enjoyed a decent amount of space for a truck and trailer, 30 amp service, and AT&t cell service. (I ended up needing to use Teledoc :( and my husband was able to turn on the hotspot and laptop and use the web.) The site is dirt but was level.

Some sites were not in use because of high lake levels and park water problems. Leaking pipe? The small dune area leading up to Lake Charlevoix makes you feel like you are at Lake Michigan. We saw some beautiful sunsets from the edge of the water. There are a walkway and observation platform. There is some hiking, a place to walk your dog, swimming, and bathhouses. We used the campground as a base to explore surrounding towns like Boyne City and Charlevoix, but mostly for kayaking. It was very quiet during the week and was packed on Friday and Saturday nights. The fall color was building toward a peak and the scattered maple trees mixed with cedar made it very pretty. We would stay again in the offseason.

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.  It has a small bathhouse and the sites are pull-though with back to back setup (so utilities are at the same post as one of your neighbors) but we scored that the 2 sites in front of us cancelled (it was wet, cold, windy and in general miserable weather but we lucked out day 2 and got a bike ride in to Petoskey State Park and a stop at Burnt Marshmallow Brewing before rain rolled back in) so we had a big open space for the kids to bike around on and allowed a view of the lake.

link on The Dyrt doesn't work - try this:

https://www.petoskey.us/departments/parks\_and\_recreation/campground.php

PROS: was really quiet, our neighbor is a regular and was extremely friendly and helpful.  The bike path to Petoskey State Park is right in front of the campground and takes you by the harbor and can branch off into town too.  Really close to downtown (which we did not explore but looks really nice).  We originally planned on staying at the state park but the campsite was half closed due to construction (so it will probably be really nice next year) but this worked out great.  Full hook ups on long pull thru sites for the price was great.  Firewood was available at the check-in kiosk and there is a playground on site.  Bathhouse with showers.  Less than 1 hour from Mackinac Island.  I read mentions of the hospital noise and while trucks unloading during the day was noticeable during the day, we didn't hear anything from there at night - the camp ground did have a transformer that was loud the first night but it was fixed by the next night.

CONS: it is no-frills and could be packed in during summer, but that should be acceptable for the price if you are looking for an easy base camp with access to everything in Petoskey.  The bathhouse was clean but dated.  The campsites look like they did not get a lot of cleanup - I filled a grocery bag full of trash from our site and the 3 open ones next to us.  

Ideal site would probably be as close to the lake as possible - the road in front is not travelled much since it dead ends at the campground.  There was a city facility at the end but it was not open on the weekend and we were told is pretty quiet when it is open.

NOTE: This was our first MI campground as part of out trip from GA to MN via TN-KY-IN-MI-WI-northern MN before staying in MSP for a week, then return via MN-IA-MO-IL-KY-TN-Home.

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