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U.S. Forest Service · Hiawatha National Forest · MI

Bay View Campground

The agency doesn’t say how you get a siteIts record carries no access type, so treat it as a place to phone before you drive.
Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Closed for the seasonOut of the season the agency publishes
Season
May 23 – September 14Open May 23 through September 14
Drawn from the record · 620 ft · 47% tree cover · Lake Superior within reach · Bortle 3 sky
620 ftElevation
444 ftWater · Lake Superior
14.8 miW of Sault Ste. Marie, MI
47%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 150th darkest of 192 in MI
Open May 23 through September 14Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Camp along the shores of Lake Superior - "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the Shining Big-Sea-Waters" - the greatest single body of fresh water in the world. Miles of sandy beach and beautiful sunsets across Lake Superior are yours to enjoy at Bay View Campground. Twenty-five campsites are available with picnic tables and fire rings at each site. Experience Nature at Bay View Campground After a fun day of hiking, swimming, boating, biking, or fishing for trout or salmon, relax and take in all nature has to offer as the early explorers once did. In the evening, listen for the woeful cry of a loon or the towering red and white pine, oak, maple, and white birch trees as the wind rustles the leaves. View a map of available campsites, or make a reservation for Bay View Campground .

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, Beach, Coast
Source: Stated in the agency description

Phone before you drive

recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.

Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 16, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 4

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
Site Fee $22, walk in $20 - Federal Recreation Passes (Golden/America the Beautiful) are accepted.
The booking feerecreation.gov
We hold no recreation.gov booking record for this campground, so we can’t say whether a booking fee applies.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate46.45033, -84.77662

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Today52°Slight Chance Rain Showers then Mostly Sunny10% rain
Tonight47°Mostly Clear1% rain
Sunday57°Mostly Sunny
Sunday Night47°Mostly Clear

NWS forecast for Brimley, MI

Source: National Weather Service, APX forecast office · Oct 17, 2026

Typical weather

Typical May night 39°F, day 66°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical May night 39°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

90°32°0°

Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or moreOutside the published season

A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: RUDYARD 4N, MI (USC00207190), 14 miles away and 133 ft higher
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

who answers for it

Who answers for this land

Jack Bergman, official portrait

Bay View Campground is in Michigan’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Jack Bergman (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: The agency lists it out of season. The season it publishes is the bar below.
Season: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 0.18 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 192 rated federal campgrounds in Michigan · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Cell signal: the Forest Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise.
Nearest place of any size: Brimley, MI, 9 mi WNW (a census designated place). Straight line.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 9, 2026