Woodland Park Campground

This is a large fairly crowded campground with first-come first-served sites just east of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore with water, electricity, and cable but no sewer hookups. The bathhouse is ok. But this campground is really about the location and views. Site 45 is a “basic lakeside” site so it costs a few dollars more a night but across the road are views of Lake Superior from up on the dune. Site was deep enough that a tent behind our 30’ fifth wheel and our truck fit, but it wasn’t much wider than the camper with the slide out and the awning open. Larger “premium lakeside” sites are a few dollars more a night if you can get one. Stairs lead down to the beach from 3 points in the campground and a short walk to town has a more sheltered bay beach for swimming when it’s unsafe on Lake Superior. Sunsets are beautiful from the beach.

We have been coming to Grand Marais each summer for about the last 12 years but have always rented a cabin for the week until getting our camper this year. We enjoy the quiet (when there isn’t some festival taking place) little town and frequent trips to various places in Pictured Rocks during the day. There are a few places to eat, and some gift shops as well as a small grocery store and gas station in town but be warned that supplies at both can run out. The “West Bay Diner” is also a must experience place in my opinion despite frequent long waits for food when busy.

We visited Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in late August of 2016 and ended up staying in Woodland Park Campground for just one night after we tried and struck out twice to book a campsite within the boundaries of the National Lakeshore.

We arrived after dark so no one was on duty in the office. As other reviewers have noted, their first-come-first-serve check-in system isn't really all that efficient, and with the park almost at capacity, it was a bit tricky navigating the crowded sites in the dark with our bus. Though a primitive site would have been preferable, all were already taken. We managed to snag an electric site for the evening and were too tired to really care about how noisy the campground was at the time.

The park does have a nice location, earning it a 3rd star. There's a path from the campground that takes you right to the lakeshore, giving you easy access to a clean and scenic beach. Took the dog for an early morning walk around Grand Marais and found it to be a cute, picturesque small town.

We wouldn't choose to stay here again, though it is convenient if you're visiting the area.

This campground is one of very few options in the area, Verizon coverage was good, and provides easy walking access to the town, bay, and beach. This was our first '1st come, 1st served' campground experience, and we found their approach to be frustrating and annoying.

A friendly gentleman from the office gave us a rundown of the park areas and pricing, and helped us find a primitive site in the far back of the park. We were told to pick our site, setup camp, and come back to the office to pay... we did just that. Our first attempt at a site was a little competitive with another family who wanted one of the few last remaining primitive sites, but our rig would not clear the ditch between Braziel street and the campsite (116). We ended up settling into a site in the back behind the baseball diamond. When I returned to the office, I was told that the site we'd selected was only available for half the week, due to an upcoming music festival, and that we'd need to move to another site mid-week, or leave the park earlier than planned. Trying to find a new site to move into proved to be more work than it was worth, so we decided to cut our stay short.

Our primitive site in the far back, near the baseball diamond was mostly peaceful and quiet, but the main park area is tightly packed and noisier than we would have liked. Trash, water, dump, and bathrooms all seem convenient enough.

We had two bars of Verizon LTE coverage un-boosted inside the Airstream, providing speeds of 19Mbps/2.5Mbps. Turning the booster on gave us 4 bars of LTE and 19Mbps/11Mbps.

This park is 1st come 1st serve, but not in the traditional sense, where you go to the office and they give you a spot if it's available. When we arrived they told us there might be a site available, so we should try and park in it and then come back and pay. It was already occupied.

We had friends in the primitive section who texted us that there was a spot available next to them. We stopped at the office and asked if we could camp there, and they said we needed to get our trailer into the spot first and then come back and pay.

When we returned to pay, they said we could only stay in that site for 3 nights because there was an event happening at the pavilion, but if we wanted to pay for the week we'd get a discount and would have to move to another site by Wednesday.

The office told us that when we move, we should get our trailer into the spot we want to move to and then pay the difference once we're in the new spot. This morning, we hitched up around 9 am (checkout is 11) and moved over to a section where many people were leaving only to learn that other campers had already snagged those spots even while they were occupied by the previous campers. They do this by making a deal with the occupant and then going to the office and paying.

So the advice about getting our trailer into a new spot was bad advice. Really, they should have told us to go make a deal with someone leaving and then go pay for the site before anyone else did.

This creates a competitive and unfriendly environment between campers and I doubt we're going to be able to stay past Wednesday even though we paid for a week.

The crazy thing is, this campground isn't even worth the battles it perpetuates between campers. It's crowded, the sites don't have privacy and only a few have semi water-views.

Verizon - DOWNLOAD: 9.93Mb/s, UPLOAD: 2.54Mb/s

This is a big campground along Lake Superior offering little to no privacy and smoke from your neighbor’s campfire – not what we normally seek. But lakeside camping along Lake Superior in or near Pictured Rocks is limited. Twelvemile Beach, the picturesque lakeside primitive campground (see Campendium reviews), operates on a first come, first served basis and is almost always full during the summer months. This leads to a game of morning musical chairs where hopefuls circle through the campground with their rigs, praying for a site to open up. We decided not to play. Woodland Park, fortunately, has its own (different) charm and an incredible beach that makes up for the tight camping quarters. It’s an older park with friendly staff, and it also operates on a first come, first served basis. We called enroute and were told that our chances of getting a site mid-day were good. This was true, but we would have been out of luck if we had arrived later in the day. Sites are on grass off gravel loops. Woodland isn’t fancy and doesn’t try to be; instead it offers basic facilities, including laundry, and a stunning sand beach that extends as far as you can see. Just walk about 200’ from your campsite and down 80 stairs from the bluff and you’ll find heaven on Lake Superior. Take a day trip to tour Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which is adjacent to Woodland Park. Walk into the little town of Grand Marais and have a pizza and beer at the Dunes Saloon. We generally don’t go for big campgrounds, but we had nice neighbors and enjoyed what Woodland Park offered us for our two night stay on Lake Superior.

This is a large city park c/g in Grand Marais, MI a cast off from the old "Northern Exposure" TV show. It is remote, quietly alive during the summer months and shoulder deep in lake effect snow in the winter. C/G is grass with gravel access roads. Electric, water and a dump station. You are close to town and shopping/eating. Near the well protected boat harbor, there's a Coast Guard station and light house on the break wall that is interesting. The town is a stitch and a fun place to visit.

The c/g fits the town perfectly, nothing fancy, just down to earth and practical. It can be busy here on summer weekends and holidays.

We rode out several hurricane class wind/rain storms here nose into the wind from the NW. Twenty to thirty foot waves were breaking on the beach and breakwall. Quite an experience.

Good beach hiking, light house tours, agate hunting all are past times here in Grand Marais.