Keith J. Charters Traverse City State Park — Attraction in East Bay Township

Please enforce the quiet time / sound policy and other rules. I had to tell my neighbors to turn off their music well after 11:30pm the first night and then the second night thankfully the turned it off but not until after 11:30pm. I gave them an hour and a half grace period each time. Even after they turned off their music they were yelling / talking very loud until after 1am and kept really bright lights on outside of their RV all night (I can understand a porch light but 6 flood lights all night???). The biggest problem was that this large group (they were a softball team) was all around us and they continuously walked right through our campsite; I'm not talking about around the edge I'm talking about walking right through the campsite between our chairs and the fire. I understand little kids doing this but the adults were doing it too and the adults didn't say anything to their kids about this courtesy that's expected. Furthermore, I knew they understood this unspoken rule because whenever my wife or myself got close to their campsite they looked at me as though I was trespassing but clearly that went only one way. They also threw water balloons around us (never picking up the scraps afterwards). Finally, on Sunday they decided to pack up and leave at 6am which would normally be a relief but they started using power tools at 6am to put down their camper, were yelling, and making loud banging noises. I understand you have to be on the road early that's fine but please don't use an impact drill at 6am after keeping us awake until 1am. I would have said something but it would have been pointless at that time. Thus, although I love this campground; my last camping experience there Traverse City State Park will go down as the worst camping experience that I've ever had in Michigan. At other campgrounds the facility personnel will usually tell people to keep it down and do a perimeter walk through the campground at 10 or 1030pm; but this wasn't true here. I literally never saw a camp ranger walk through once the whole weekend. That's unacceptable. I was really disappointed and feel as though I'm not sure if I want to keep camping there after that experience especially after driving so far and paying...

What a horrible horrible experience this past weekend at the filthiest state park I have ever been at. We arrived shortly after noon on Friday, my wife my 3yr old daughter, 6yr old son along with a good friend, his wife and their 3yr old son. We had sites across the road from each other. Friday night we had all hit the sack at 930 with putting the kids to sleep and story time etc.... Saturday morning over a cup of coffee we had quite the laugh about all crashing so early. We gathered our beach gear and headed to the beach for a nice afternoon of swimming, building sand castles etc.. When we arrived back at the trailers the rangers stopped in to inform us that there had been several noise complaints in regards to our 2 sites. This caught us off guard especially when lights were out the night before at 930pm. We respectfully asked if there was some confusion or a mixup of sorts but were sure to try and keep our talking down, and our three kids who were playing, biking, having fun quieter. Saturday night myself and friend had sat at the fire until 1200 talking quietly about good times had and prior hunting trips.

Sunday morning 8am park ranger shows up and tells us we no longer have a site and we have 1hr to packup. We now have 3 crying kids who are unsure of what is happening and why we are leaving, myself and friend are beyond confused as to why this is happening and the best part is the ranger who is evicting us states that he is also confused as to why he is kicking us out???

I will never spend another night at...

The Park's location is across the street from the beach, great! The restrictions of maximum 24 foot RV was broken by almost everyone except the tent people. THIS IS NOT ENFORCED!!! The extremely oversized motor homes and trailers made every road congested. Many motor homes were between 36-40 feet. The dump site is also awkwardly located, causing a traffic jam and pile-up to dump and fill. The ONLY trash containers are outside the park, which is a long trek or drive to dispose of daily trash. But the most aggravating experience with this park is the lack of a city light for everyone to enter and exit. The traffic on M 31 is hirendous!!! No matter what time if day it is impossible to cross over, heading in the opposite direction. It took us 22 minutes in to wrong direction to find a light to head on our way. The Michigan Recreation Pass is required to enter, but we saw people entering without one, again, a loosely enforced rule. The bathroom and shower by our site was CLOSED daily between 10am-12, this is the most popular time of the day, especially just before the 1:00 check out, although other restrooms are open. The sites are a puddle of mud after the rain, unless you have one of the very few concrete pads. The sites close to the road are extremely noisy, most hours of the day, to the point of needing the air conditioning on at night to block the noise. But, location, location, location, that's about it...