Rock Harbor Campground — Isle Royale National Park

After 50 miles of hiking Port to Port, it was so nice to grab a beer from the small store!!

Campground is right outside of the rock harbor port. There are bathrooms with flush toilets at the port and outhouses in the campground. There is a store with souvenirs and food items and beverages (finally got a much deserved cold beer after our 50 mile, 5 day hike across the island!). most sites had shelters and a picnic table was provided. You have to stay in the shelter unless not everybody can fit in there, and honestly the site we had would’ve been hard to pitch a tent outside. Getting to this campground later in the day, you may find that all the sites are taken and may end up sharing one of the sites without shelters with others. This site only allows 1 consecutive night stays due to it being popular with those just getting to the island and those preparing to leave the next day.

A lot of people around. It has a small store for supplies and a small cafe if your hungry. Not far up the trail are shelters if the weather turns bad. They are first come first serve but can be shared.

Stayed in a shelter (there are 9) - they are no additional cost. There was one open when we got in on a Saturday afternoon in late June. 

It is the most established campground we stayed at. It had pottable water on tap. It had a ranger station and a small store.

busy campground, usually people’s last stop before taking ferry back to U.P. Outhouses and bathroom access. Lots of shelters. A resident bull moose that frequents the area that is out all hours of the day.

The shelters at Rock Harbor Campground were especially welcoming to us at the end of our 40-mile trek across Isle Royale in June 2016.

We started in Grand Portage, Minnesota, and ferried to Windigo. From there we hiked around 40 miles across the spine of the island, on the Greenstone Ridge Trail, all the way to Rock Harbor. When we arrived, we were happy to see that there were still a few wooden shelters available and we wouldn’t have to pitch our tent the last night before catching the ferry back to Grand Portage in the morning.

Isle Royale is one of the most remote and least visited national parks. It was the 51st (of 59) that we visited during our year on the road, and it was not a disappointment.

While our long backpacking trek felt like we had accomplished something major, we would also recommend just sticking around the Rock Harbor and completing some of the shorter trails as day hikes.

The Rock Harbor Campground was nice: its wooden shelters provided good protection from the rain and a place to spread out after feeling cramped in our tiny backpacking tent for the previous two nights. It also had a picnic table, water and bathrooms nearby.

Don’t forget to plan out your trip thoroughly with a ranger ahead of time!

You can read much more about our three days hiking across the park on our blog: Switchback Kids (Isle Royale)