Sand Lake Campground
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $40–$80Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 44All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 9 notices
In the agency’s own words
Sand Lake Campground is situated on the scenic shores of Sand Lake and provides a selection of sites shaded by a mixed hardwood forest. Just beyond the trees is a well-loved, sandy swimming beach. The campground is located 15 minutes from the Pine National Scenic River and several other lakes. The popular campground sits within the Huron-Manistee National Forests, far enough from town to let its natural splendor shine, but close enough for convenient access to gas and groceries. Keep reading
Recreation
Power boating, sailing, canoeing, hiking and swimming are some of the most common activities on the lake. Anglers delight in the waters well-stocked with bluegill, perch and smallmouth bass. A picnic area and boat ramp are available for use.
Facilities
The campground provides conveniences like coin showers, flush toilets and drinking water faucets. Visitors often rave about the nice, private bathrooms with vanities.
Natural Features
Sand Lake boasts about 50 acres of mostly shallow waters. The campground is nicely wooded; some sites are heavy shaded while others are much more open. Summertime temperatures are generally around 80 degrees. The Huron-Manistee National Forests encompass nearly a million acres of public protected land, including nearly 6,000 acres of wetlands that extend over the northern portion of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (801) 226-3564.
What the agency tells you
This is the Sand Lake near Irons, MI, on the Huron Manistee NF. It is not the Sand Lake near Nottowa.
Be sure to reserve a site that will accommodate your equipment. The site you reserve is your site. You may not move to another site.
Limit two vehicle per site; a fee will be charged for additional vehicles and have to be parked in the overflow area.
Everything else this campground posts · 6
Site capacities are: 2 vehicles, 2 camping units, only one can be wheeled (e.g., two tents or a camper and a tent) All tires need to fit on the spurs!
Don't move firewood: To limit the spread of invasive tree-killing pests, firewood from outside the area is not permitted. Some states have quarantines and may confiscate your firewood. Please help protect our forests from invasive species by obtaining your firewood at or near your camping destination and burning it on-site. Visit dontmovefirewood.org for more information.
Any accepted senior passes must be entered for the discount at the time of booking for single sites only.
Click here for more information on Huron-Manistee National Forests
Check in time is 2:00pm and Check out time is 11:00am It is imperative that you are clear from the site at 11:00am on your check out day so the host can come prepare the site for the next event. Please don't be the group that makes the incoming group have to wait.
Customer Service Contact 801-226-3564 or Help.Huron.Manistee@AmericanLL.com
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 44 · 3 tent-only, 1 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 40 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- 11
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets
- “…provides conveniences like coin showers, flush toilets and drinking water faucets. Visitors often rave…”
- Showers
- Coin Showers
- “Facilities The campground provides conveniences like coin showers, flush toilets and drinking water faucets.”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…like coin showers, flush toilets and drinking water faucets. Visitors often rave about the nice,…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Beach
- Boating
- Canoeing
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Sailing
- Swimming
- Night sky · 168th darkest of 192 in MI
- Bortle 3
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
Full? Watch it.
One email when a night opens, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We read recreation.gov once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time a site in your window is free for the nights you asked for.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 16
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rates for this season, $40–$80 a night, plus one $8 recreation.gov reservation fee for the booking. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night, booked once. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 5
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
44 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 44 mapped sitesAll 44 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 44 of the 44 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 01 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 95 ft | 985 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 02 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 78 ft | 896 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 03 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 78 ft | 959 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 04 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 88 ft | 872 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 05 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 104 ft | 897 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 06 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 87 ft | 871 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 07 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 124 ft | 769 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 08 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 87 ft | 793 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 09 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 100 ft | 699 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 10 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 100 ft | 642 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 11 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 125 ft | 532 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 12 | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 94 ft | 563 ftSand Lake | $40 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 13 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 94 ft | 629 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 14 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 93 ft | 612 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 15 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 93 ft | 556 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 16 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 133 ft | 429 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 17 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 97 ft | 285 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 18 | rv nonelectric | 40 ft | 97 ft | 377 ftSand Lake | $40 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 19 | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 97 ft | 374 ftSand Lake | $40 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 20 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 131 ft | 506 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 21 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 97 ft | 415 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 22 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 103 ft | 444 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 23 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 145 ft | 629 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 24 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 143 ft | 765 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 25 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 90 ft | 673 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 26 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 130 ft | 782 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 27 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 90 ft | 650 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 28 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 146 ft | 610 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 29 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 145 ft | 633 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 30 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 139 ft | 680 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 31 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 71 ft | 946 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 32/33 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | 71 ft | 1,013 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 34 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 97 ft | 1,233 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 35 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 83 ft | 1,312 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 36 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 58 ft | 1,390 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 37 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 58 ft | 1,413 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 38 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 66 ft | 1,406 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 39 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 68 ft | 1,363 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 40 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 91 ft | 1,242 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 41/42 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | 91 ft | 1,152 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 | |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 43 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 41 ft | 1,017 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 44 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 41 ft | 987 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | 45 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | yes | 54 ft | 940 ftSand Lake | $40–$80 |
| SAND LAKE CAMPGROUND | GR 1 | group tent only area nonelectric | 448 ft | 391 ftSand Lake | $105 |
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
25 of 44 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Peterson BridgeManistee National Forest · 7.1 miOld Grade CampgroundManistee National Forest · 8.4 mi
Upper Manistee River Backcountry CampsitesManistee National Forest · 8.7 miFrom Wellston, MI, take Seaman Road 3.9 miles south through Dublin. Just beyond the grocery store, turn right and stay on Seaman Road. Go 0.5 miles to Sand Lake Road (Forest Road 5728) and the campground sign. Turn right onto Sand Lake Road and go 0.6 miles to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Wellston, MI
Typical weather
Typical October night 36°F, day 57°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical February night 12°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more
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.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Sand Lake Campground is in Michigan’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, John Moolenaar (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →