Ausable River Camping

Beautiful!

Beautiful waterfront site but lacks any privacy. Other campers must walk through the middle of the site in order to reach theirs. Disappointing site layout.

Can’t say enough about how wonderful this canoe camping experience was. I brought my Japanese girlfriend during her trip to the United States, and she was absolutely blown away by the pristine beauty of the Cook Pond, the perfect July Michigan weather, the helpfulness of the park rangers who helped us find and make our amazing reservation, and the excellent site we had (065C).

Beautiful huge and very private site. We went in spring and had perfect weather. A few trees to hang hammocks overlooking the water and sunsets. Trails to the water are super sketchy though. We went down two of them anyway. Tough getting back up and no water access at the bottom because the banks are too high.

This is a wonderful gift of a spot. There is great birdwatching and swimming. Some of the biggest trees on the AuSable are in this stretch of woods. The unfortunate thing about this site is that it has an easy boat access, which means that lots of the pontoon boats and motor boats like to stop by and use this landing as an outhouse because apparently they can't think of another solution. This means we often have toilet paper and messes to clean up before we can sit with nature and not think about oblivious drunk humans who really have a whole different way of enjoying nature, like ripping it up with engine noise and wake. Just be prepared to be a true steward of nature and build your merit cleaning up the mess that humans have so often become.

A beautiful, quiet spot to camp. Nice large sites. Perhaps because there is no camp office or hosts there, but a group of teens was driving at a high speed through the campground, cursing at us as they flew by before running directly into a tree. They were injured but could have killed someone walking through. Not sure if this type of behavior is typical here, but it certainly put a damper on our trip.

great view but tough hike up from the river

This is a wonderful site with great views of the river, forest, and sky and a few hangout zones away from the road and overlooking the dune. One note, it is VERY hard to access the river from this site. I read the previous reviews and thought it would be totally do-able but didn't realize how long/high the dune is. It's very long and very steep! My partner and I are fit and in our early/mid 30s and it was a TRIP so we only went down once a day. The dog also had trouble because of how hot the sand was. Just plan on swimming somewhere else if it's hot :)

Awesome views, very secluded and more space than I could imagine

It is a really nice site with some good shade and a decent view. The only drawback is the site isn't quite private. There's a bit of traffic driving through the circle, and a lot of people seem to think the site is a public access to the river. Regardless, I would camp this site again.