Harrisville State Park — Attraction in Harrisville Township

Harrisville State Park has a very nice public beach area with plenty of picnic tables and grills. There are clean bathrooms, though no place to really change into a swimsuit, like at Tawas Point. Highly recommend the public beach portion though, it is very nice. Now, for the campground. The campground itself really is nice. It is very wooded, beachfront sites, fire wood vending machine, modern bathrooms, nice paved trails. The campground itself we did not have much an issue with, it really was quite nice. It was our site location. We were on site 85, which is right next to a foot path to the bathroom. This was a HUGE mistake picking this site. I could not believe the amount of inconsiderate people who walked through our site. I do not mean walked on the path next to our site, I mean WALKED ACROSS OUR SITE!! I also could not believe parents were letting their children CONSTANTLY go back and forth on this path on their bikes spinning out and doing donuts in the gravel. The path is there for people to have easy access to the bathroom.... not to "play" on. I would think grown adults would have the decency to tell their kids to quit screwing around on it, AND on our site, but they didn't. The kids doing this were right on the site across from us, so yes their parents were around. Though I guess I should not have expected anything since their parents kept walking across our site as well. Do yourself a HUGE favor and DO NOT pick a site RIGHT on a foot path. You WILL regret it! This alone ruined our trip. It also did not help that loud mouth drunks came in the second night and were right behind us. I thought camping was a family activity to get you out of the city and into a quiet campground, evidently everyone does not feel this way. I understand these things were not the fault of the campground itself, however the "campground host" often drove around on their little moped and could/should be looking for people like this.... ESPECIALLY at night when people are trying to sleep!! Now, aside from all of that bad stuff I will cover some other things. The bathrooms were fairly clean, but two showers really doesn't seem like enough. There are two in the men's room and two in the ladies. The bathrooms at the Tawas campground were much cleaner and nicer and had more showers. I was up by 6:30am though so claiming a shower wasn't a problem for me. They offer a vending machine that dispenses bundles of wood. The price is $6.00 per bundle and it accepts credit cards...very cool! Also, there is a company that drives through offering wood for $25. These were large bundles... around 1/4 cord or so. The beach accessible from the campground was nice and clean, but very rocky in some spots. All in all this is a pretty nice campground. We will probably return, but it will be on a beachfront site, DEFINITELY not on a foot path. I like Tawas Point Campground a little better, however they have very few beachfront sites and the ones they do have are on the bay side. So if you're looking for a nice beachfront site Harrisville is probably the best bet. It looks like you definitely need to get your reservation in very early to...

First time camping here, we stayed here for the night after a wedding that was a half hour north. When we arrived we were promptly notified of a bee nest that the previous campers had noticed at the end of their stay. The staff told us that the campers were never bothered by them but they planned to go out and spray them tonight, but if we wanted we could move to a different site. We decided to stay at our booked site, they said we could change our mind once we got out there if we wanted. I'm so glad we didn't we loved our site! The bees were no problem, the staff did come out and spray the nest just like they said. The campground was amazing, everything was clean, the sites, the road, the bathroom and the beach. The campground was pretty full I'd say nearing capacity, with that said it was such a peaceful place to stay, quiet, people were friendly, the campground was family friendly, we saw multiple dogs being walked and children riding their bikes (politely).The fire-pit was perfect size and quality, great location on the site too. The site came with a picnic table, with what looked like a spot for handicap access to the table (no bench on a small portion of one end) which worked great for when I needed to stand and prepare our meals. The bathroom building was a 2 minute walk from our site (I timed it). They were very nice, and updated. Women had 2 normal sized stalls and 1 handicap stall, a large mirror with a shelf below it. The male bathroom had 2 urinals and one stall. At any facility with a lot of people there is usually a wait for bathrooms, especially right before bed or in the morning, we did wait in the morning for the bathroom but it was only a few minutes. There was also 6 family bathrooms each with a shower, sink, mirror, toilet and a table. There was also 4 rooms that were strictly showers. I personally saw the bathroom being cleaned at night and then again in the early morning. The bathroom building was located in front of the beach, giving perfect access to the showers after your swim. The sidewalk around the bathroom and down to the beach looked like it was cleaned through out the day. On the walk way to/from the beach there was a post to rinse off body and foot. The beach had some sand then small pebbles along it -nothing that hurt to step on- we went off to the right (when we got to the end of the path to the beach) the water was probably 3 feet deep then there was a sandbar. The water was very clean and clear! Just minutes from downtown Harrisville, maybe 5 minutes from the Family Dollar for any forgotten items! (Good prices!)

We wish we could have stayed even longer, even contemplated calling into work Monday, haha! We will...

What a disappointment! This used to be one of our favorite Michigan State Parks and after this stay, we probably won't ever return. Sure, the beach is as beautiful as ever and the brand new bath house is nice, but two major, unacceptable, changes have been made since our last visit. Firstly, the new bath house is the ONLY bath house for the entire campground. It is on the beach and the two other bath houses were eliminated upon its opening. My family booked our sites 6 months in advance, and at the time we did, we were only a couple hundred feet from a restroom according to the map. When we arrived, we found that we needed to walk nearly a quarter of a mile to the nearest and only restroom available. My father in law is handicap and I have a 3 year old son. Because of the walk, my father in law was in a ridiculous amount of pain throughout the duration of our stay and my three year old had to go potty outside twice because we couldn't make it to the bath house in time. Not to mention when we do make it over to the bath house, there are only 3 stalls total for the ladies and only 2 stalls and one urinal for the gentlemen. And I reiterate, that is all there is for the entire campground, over 200 sites. There are three vault toilets (outhouses) listed on the map, but during our stay, those were padlocked shut, not accessible. Yet another problem with the lack of restrooms is severe weather. When the weather got nasty during our stay, we had to get pretty far away from our site to seek shelter. Considering they do not have any co-ed areas within the bath house, our family was split up, which made everyone very anxious. Second to the bathroom situation, the only playground in the entire campground was eliminated to build this new bath house as well. Such a disappointment considering we selected this park specifically because we knew there was a nice playground here the last time we visited. All in all the park just isn't family friendly anymore. We are happy tent campers with no intentions on buying a camper with a full bathroom within it any time soon. That being said, I don't recommend this campground unless you do have a full bath within a camper that you plan to use... Unless of course you enjoy waiting 30+ minutes to shower or don't mind a short hike and long wait to get to...