Chain O' Lakes State Park Campground

We stayed in the campgrounds for the weekend. Nice state park. The campgrounds are well maintained. Use the state park website to book your exact site. The website does a great job at giving you the dimensions and services available at your particular site such as 30/50 amp, fire pit ring, picnic table, etc. We stayed at site 78 which was described and a slight incline. It also gave us exact distances to showers, water, bathrooms, playground, and a few pictures on the website that matched what we saw when we arrived. Exactly as advertised. My only complaint was the showers were a little dated and could use a refresh. The showers were not terrible, just a little old. Still had hot water, hooks to hang towels and clothes, and a place for your shampoo. Like I said, just looking a little old and tired. But, if that’s the worse thing you can say about a campsite, that means it’s pretty good. Lots of variety in types of sites. Good camping store. Great activities available including several hiking trails with easy, moderate, or difficult ratings. Ask for a park map so you can decide which trails best suit you. Paddle Boat, canoes, kayaks rentals available to see all the lakes and channels. Park rangers offered some great educational programs and entertainment throughout the park. Again, ask at check in for activities going on or see the website. Free WiFi available at park headquarters. Warning, cell service is extremely limited throughout the park. But, we actually loved being off the grid for a relaxing vacation weekend getaway and only checked in once at the park headquarters when we were there anyways for other resources.

Overall this campground had a lot of room to walk and activities to do. The beach was nice and trail 3 was a beautiful short trail that led to the beach. Being able to rent a canoe or kayak was also great so you could get out on the lake even if you weren't able to bring one yourself. We did rent a canoe for an hour and the lake was nice to go out on. We didn't go on any other trails having two little ones, but the one was nice. This campground has a lot of kids running around which seems like a normal thing for a family campground, however, these seemed like older kids who were going way too fast on bikes and scooters, coming close to hitting walkers and other little kids. We had a 2 and 4 year old so we were constantly having to watch out when on walks. Other kids with our group also mentioned a lot of the older kids being pushy at the playground. Our campsite was on a little loop and had a nice spot for the kids to play in the center of it and there wasn't too much traffic there either so we played a lot of games there. The major downside to our site was that it was right up against the woods and as some of the other reviews have mentioned, mosquitoes were horrible!! Our kids were eaten alive! I would definitely go back to this campground but may look at some sites in the middle to avoid being so close to the woods. The campground store was nicer than most with a lot of supplies, however their antihistamines and bug bite relief products were all sold out, so make sure to bring your own just in case! Overall the campground was pretty clean, they even had receptacles for recycling, the beach was clean too, but the bathrooms were downright disgusting, the floors had bugs and hair clumps all over.

While this park is pretty and its lakes are scenic, the campground was chaotic. It was the busiest campground I've ever experienced, made worse by the fact that sites are on top of each other and people bring so much stuff it fills each site, making the campground like a packed sea full of people, campers, and gear. This is NOT the campground for enjoying nature or peace and quiet. If you're into a festival or state fair atmosphere, you may have fun here. We also had a camper show up to our site at 9am on the day we were to check out (check in/out time is 2pm), claimed it was 'his' site, and parked his truck at the end of our pad waiting for us to leave. The front gate had checked him in at that time, despite the campground being full. Overall horrible experience here. Fortunately we were able to de-stress away from the crowds at one of the lakes before hitting the road.

We love exploring state parks, and we'd heard MANY good things about Chain-o-Lakes so we were excited to stay here for the first time this summer. We arrived on a Friday afternoon and the campground was fairly full - as we expected it would be. It had been rainy and more rain was in the forecast, but we were determined to make the most of our time.

We appreciated having a sturdy picnic table and fire ring (with cooking grate!) at our back-in site that was located off the beaten path just a bit and almost on a corner. We had electric only for this weekend, but it was plenty for us. The campground had a nice store with both souvenir-type offerings (we were able to get a patch for our RV and a Christmas ornament) and practical offerings (like citronella candles).

Things we loved during the weekend? Plenty of space to ride our bikes, both around the campground itself and on out into the roads of the state park. Working on the 9 lake challenge...we paddled our kayak around half the challenge on this visit and plan to come back to finish it. (We love conquering challenges, so this was extra fun for us.)

Things we did not love? ZERO signal or service of any kind. We've stayed places before where we didn't have any internet or TV service, and that's fine, but we didn't even have a phone signal here, which was challenging. Though this next part is not the park's fault, the extreme mosquito infestation was a problem for us. I got 26 bites on the first night alone, and that was with bug spray and not sitting outside our camper. We were unable to hike trails because of the mosquitos. (We tried to hike the trail closest to the old schoolhouse and ended up running it while flailing our arms to keep our faces safe from bites.)

On our last day, we strolled through the campground to pick out sites we would choose on our next visit (24, 27, 42, 86, 158, 164, 242, 346, 347), and we do plan to return. Next time we will plan ahead on internet usage so our blog and emails are caught up before we go. And we'll notify our people that they might not be able to reach us. We also plan to finish the 9 lake challenge and hope the mosquito situation has calmed down enough to allow us to hike the trails!

There is so much to do here. The swimming, canoeing, kayaking, biking, and hiking options are the best. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single level site on the property. “Slight” grade is not slight at all. Along with the angle of all the sites, the gravel is almost gone and most have a big hump. We had zero signal on Verizon and AT&T but we’re able to get a T-Mobile signal. I would recommend all the beautiful campgrounds in Shipshawana and just come to this park for the day.

The RV/tent campground is a busy, generic midwestern campground. But there's also a hidden gem at this park, the four canoe-in campsites, #001-004, located at the northeast corner of Rivir Lake. It's a nice shady clearing in the woods, accessible by canoe or by hiking. It's roughly 3/4 mile by canoe from the landing at Miller Lake, or 2 miles from Sand Lake. The four sites are all together in one spot, so you'll probably have company. There's an outhouse, trash cans, picnic tables, fire rings, a little beach, and a cute footbridge over the creek. It's very quiet, with nice fishing and a nice view of the stars. Coordinates are 41.333327, -85.406573.

We rented a canoe for around $5 for an hour, which seemed like a heck of a bargain. Getting from lake to lake via canoe/kayak was nice and scenic, though there was an algae warning in the lake so be careful.

We had a shaded site (283) which was great. The campground itself was busy, and I don't use that word lightly. I think this was the busiest campground I have ever encountered. People were constantly driving and I couldn't figure out why. Maybe folks were driving over to the lake? Maybe getting a site in a smaller loop would be better but the best sites in the part were non-electric so it wasn't a great fit for us.

As a side note, I had an issue with cell coverage here. I had to turn off LTE on my iPhone 11 (AT&T provider) for it to be usable.

We had a really great time. Good cell coverage. Lots of security, playgrounds, well kept trails, a beach, general store. This place is MASSIVE.

You will need to pay a one time entry fee 9 for out of state, 7 for in state. After you check into the campsite you will have a pass.

We got a space with direct access to a huge playground, but it was closed for Covid. Major bummer. There are LOTS and LOTS of playgrounds so we had a lot of temper tantrums from my normally very well behaved toddler. He goes days and days without fussing but seeing playgrounds he can't use is too much, lol

The swimming area is great for kids. They have lots of stuff for sale. I posted pictures so you can budget.

Overall this place was perfect, the only downside is the temporary closures. A Walmart Supercenter is 30 minutes away. The general store really has anything (including tents) that you might need but it's overpriced as you would expect.

We were able to stay on property all 5 days! Extra bonus!

We were here on Memorial Day and we saw 0 people on a morning hike.