Hartwick Pines State Park

If you're looking to get away from it all then this is the right place to camp! Don't plan on using your cell phone unless you have a directional external antenna. The cell sites are 3mi East & 3mi West and you're in a bowl. You'll have to drive to the entrance or visitor center to get a decent signal. Crappy over-the-air TV with external antenna also. Satellite is your only hope....but, you didn't come here to watch TV or Internet or make business calls all day right??? Lots of walking/bike trails, even a paved bike trail to Grayling (about 10mi). Historical logging museum & old growth forest. Very spacious sites, plenty of room for your slides without intruding on neighbors or trees; good solid foundation (but sloped from center for drainage so center your rig for the perfect level); nice grass, great fire rings. Unlike National Parks, this State Park can accommodate any size rig from monster Class A+ to your tent! The restroom/shower facility is top notch with individual room showers. Michigan DNR does know how to take care of guests!

Hartwick Pines, like many Michigan State Park Campgrounds, is really well maintained, with nice sites and clean facilities. This particular campground also has some local activities and an interesting museum with a wood-shaving festival in the summer.

The campground has a variety of sites, some completely wooded while others are in more open areas. Bigger rigs may have trouble getting into some sites and a few of the bends are somewhat tight, but we had no serious issues in our 42ft class A.

I was hoping for better cellular internet performance than the previous reports, but I'm sad to say that nothing has changed. Despite being in an LTE service area on both the Verizon and AT&T maps, we could not get LTE service on either, even with the use of antennas and a booster.

The local towers are also very congested in the evenings, so expect very poor network connectivity here. The best I managed to achieve was about 5Mbps in the very early morning on AT&T. Most of the time download speeds were well under 1Mbps on both Verizon and AT&T.

But other than that, we enjoyed our stay and the central location is convenient as a hub for visiting nearby areas.

We stayed at Hartwick Pines State Park because of its proximity to Grayling, MI and fly fishing on the legendary AuSable River. The Logging Museum and Old Growth forest area are both a short bike ride away and well worth the visit. As a bonus, this MI State Park has several full hook-up campsites. The bathhouse was immaculately clean and like most Michigan State Parks, has separate, individual shower stalls. We had site #111 and it was a large pull-through site with trees that provided privacy from site next door. The only downside to our site was the weird access to it with you tow vehicle (I honestly can’t explain it!)

Grayling is a 15-minute drive away and is your typical northern Michigan town, except a little bigger than most. We went to the Black Bear Brewery in town and it was ok. We had a really fantastic dinner at the Gates Au Sable Lodge, located east of town on the Holy Waters of the Au Sable. I also used a guide from Gates on two of my Au Sable River floats and I highly recommend them. In the summer there are several rafting and canoeing places in town so you can rent something and float the river if that’s your thing—it’s a very lazy river flowing through sandy hills and pine forests.

We have stayed a week at a time at Hartwick Pines Campground for the last several years and have always enjoyed it! The campground is well maintained, bathhouses are clean, sites are reasonably sized and those in the wooded area all have good privacy due to shrubs and trees between sites. Lots of good hiking trails, and the logging museum is a must if you are staying there! Fun for kids and adults equally.