The Dyrt is here to help plan your best camping near Rapid City. Aside from great camping spots, you'll find hiking and many more outdoor experiences. Thinking of traveling with kids? You're in luck—Rapid City is surrounded by family-friendly activities. Find the best campgrounds near Rapid City, MI. Read reviews from campers like you and find your perfect campsite.
"While I typically prefer more rustic camping, this was a fantastic and easy way to enjoy Traverse City."
"300+ sites, pet friendly, sites for all shapes and sizes. Open year round, with heated cabins. It's a great location, just across from Traverse Bay with just across the road."
$60 - $260 / night
"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."
"We were searching for a super last minute campground near Traverse City for Memorial Weekend and everything within a quick drive seemed booked."
"1/2 hr outside Traverse City. Nice away from the busy areas.
The campground needs some attention which will be addressed by the new owners. Very dusty, loose sand uneven entrance.""They only have 15 full hookup sites and none were available for our time frame. They have several long term tenants. Roads are narrow but most sites are ample."
"Bathrooms were large and clean, water and electricity available. If you go by the bath house you can get Wifi. Little playground for my 4 yr old, not so much for 11 year old."
"Showers were hot, but the wall heater was a little scary (propane). The owners were very nice. We came after dark and left early, so we didn’t see too much of the campground. Nice treed setting."
$30 - $40 / night
"Water and electricity with plenty of pressure for the water. Yes it is basically a large yard turned into a campground, but it is done well and easy in/easy out."
$20 / night
"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. "
"Very quiet campground on the Shores of Lake Michigan. Sites are large and private with large fire rings and picnic tables. Vault toilets only but they are kept very clean."
"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."
"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."
"There is no swimming pool, no tennis courts, no shuffleboard, no fitness center, no playground, in fact there were not even bathrooms/showers (except for porta john and tent shower in the rustic camping"
"The tent camping area has 10 sites, is nestled in the trees, with a picnic table and fire ring at each site."
"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."
RangerIf 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.
LegendOne nite stay in cabin. Cabin had electricity, mini fridge, electricity and bunk beds. Only complaint was cabin was close to fairly busy road.
TravelerReally nice little campground. Not fancy, but clean and well kept. Pool and petting zoo for the kids. Small store with ice, few necessities and ice cream. Pond in the back on the small river for fishing. Quite a few seasonal campers. Anywhere from rustic to full hook up. Pet friendly. All gravel/dirt/grass sites. Most have trees. Fire pits quite small. Bathrooms very nice and updated.
LegendThe 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.
GuideThis 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.
LegendThis 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.
LegendGeneral: 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.
LegendHere’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
RangerI 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.
Cabin camping near Rapid City, Michigan offers a perfect blend of nature and comfort, allowing you to enjoy the great outdoors without sacrificing the comforts of home.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is the most popular cabin campsite near Rapid City, MI?
According to TheDyrt.com, the most popular cabin campground near Rapid City, MI is Traverse City State Park Campground with a 4-star rating from 51 reviews.
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