Rifle River Campground

The only complaint about the week I spent was they didn’t cut the grass, other than that I had an amazing birthday week at Rifle River Campground,  we found amazing flowers blooming  like yellow and pink lady slippers I even found Agates, fossils if you’re a rock hunter and when you climb up the tower there’s a extremely large eagles nest.

The fishing wasn’t very successful I only caught a small one but the water was warm and clear you could see the sand doons.

Rifle River offered a nice variety of camp sites. There is a cluster of quiet sites, a track of sites tucked away in some pines, and then the modern sites. The campground itself is large and has a couple lakes to go fishing in. There is no camp store on the grounds, but there is a nice one across the street from the entrance to the park.

Came here on Father’s Day weekend, the campground was really nice and a ton of fun! If you book at the right time, you can get a spot right by the river which is super appealing.

Lots to do if your if your into exploring. Lots of hiking trails, bike trails. Lots of lakes, great beach areas!

Rifle river camp ground is a yearly trip for us! A lot of fun going down the river on tubes! Typically not a family friendly location as it’s more of a party campground.

if you haven’t been to the rifle river, I do suggest going just because it’s a Michigander past time. Going up for the weekend with a group of friends and floating down the river in tubes/canoes/kayaks and drinking your day away! The water is not clean however, and if you find yourself floating down and feel the liquid courage kicking in telling you to climb a 100ft rock wall—DON’T. Our last trip my boyfriend fell from the top and contracted a flesh eating bacteria. Lesson is that fresh or open wounds anywhere and this water don’t always mix well 😅 but that should not scare you from having your own laughable Rifle River stories!

We camped in what was called a “rustic” site. Which really meant that it was a lawn in the middle of the campground with no hookups. We came in late and only stayed one night but I would love to go back and try the river tour, because they allow dogs to go with you! My sister in law set up the site and was unimpressed with the way the front desk staff treated her she felt they could have been more professional. And at $15 per person I felt that site was a bit overpriced.

This campground offers sites for tents and RVs, has water and electrical hookups available, and has bathhouses (if you can call them that). You can also rent canoes, kayaks, and inner tubes to traverse the river with; they drop you off upstream and you bank right at the campground for them to collect the various watercraft. There are fire pits placed periodically around the camp, however, they do not correspond to specific sites and are communal with whatever sites are nearby.

While the views of the river are great from the majority of sites, the entire campground is on a hill. There are few - if any - level areas to camp, and very few hammock-friendly trees. The staff are crotchety and disorganized; they will give you one answer one hour and a different answer the next; they add charges on for every little thing (including showers & firewood - you cannot bring in your own), while the cost to rent a site is exorbitantly expensive (compared to other, comparable sites) to begin with. We attempted to rent kayaks; they were out and told us that we would have had to reserve a year and a half in advance, while others of our group managed to rent them with no problem. The times for the bus to take us upstream were constantly changing with no notification Standard policies such as amounts necessary to rent a site, security deposits, minimum nights required, and how many people were allowed per site were also fluctuating depending on who you inquired with and when you did so. It must be said that when we camped there the camp was far from full, so an overwhelming number of campers could not be to blame at the time.

I would not recommend this campsite or canoe livery to anyone.