Birch Lake Campground

This was a lovely and well kept campground. Our site was in the South Loop (#29) with lake access about 15 ft away - perfect for canoeing and day trips on the water. There was generous space between campsites with lots of tree coverage for privacy. Just like every other campground in northern MN in mid/late Spring, it was extremely buggy with mosquitos and gnats. Bug head nets, bug spray, and screen shelters recommended! The site host was attentive and had firewood for sale for $8/bundle. We enjoyed a day trip to downtown Ely, which was about a 30 min drive. If headed into town, I definitely recommend checking out the Bass Lake Trailhead waterfall, Dorothy Molter Museum (with a cold root beer), and the International Wolf Center.

Very clean

This site is ideal for multi-vehicle trips. Level sites , and a nice open area for activities, and is on its own gravel loop in the campground, so no one walking/driving through. Vault toilet was clean, and there was running water from solar pump well, but it had a taste to it so bring your own drinking water. Birch Lake water is stained, so filtering is probably not an option for most either. No good spot on adjacent shoreline to park a boat due to huge boulder field, but can overnight a boat by the boat launch, which is on far end of campgrounds. A bit of a hike but we just drove down and back, there was plenty of parking by the launch, even on a Saturday. Will definitely be back.

Camp was clean, nice boat landing,restrooms very clean

Camped at Birch Lake several times over the years. Never a bad stay.

Beautiful site - waterfront on a clean lake.

Nice little cabin and campground.

We had a great site with access to the lake, which was really nice for putting in our kayaks. The campground was really quiet until our second day when new campers arrived at the site across from us and ran their generator for hours on end. There were mostly tent campers in our loop, so it sort of wrecked the ambiance. They did turn it off at dusk, thankfully. The vault toilet bathrooms were the cleanest I have ever seen at a campground. It’s a well-maintained campground, and we’d consider camping there again someday.

We stayed in the group site. It was very spacious and private - in a separate loop away from all other campers. The site has it's own handicap accessible bathroom. This is the cleanest outhouse I have ever been in! There is running water powered by solar panels so you even have clean water and do not have to pack a bunch with you. The site is on a hill side so you do have to take a path down to the lake. It is not too steep though.
The cons of this site are:
The fire ring is off to the far side of the sites and there is only one fire ring to use. A couple more fire rings would give more options depending on which spur you are set up in.
The lake access is blocked by big rocks - if you were to launch a boat, you would have no where to land on shore. We maneuvered a canoe around the rocks and had to climb over huge rocks to get to and from shore.
No swimming or fishing from the site's shore due to rocks and weeds. Some of the other sites looked like they had better access. The only swimming area is the boat access.
All in all, we really liked the group site and would recommend it for it's privacy and cleanliness.

The cabin was wonderful. The bathrooms were not cleaned for two days this was very disappointing since in all the many years over 30 years of camping here this was the first year the bathrooms were dirty