Widewaters Campground
- Right now
- Closed for the seasonOut of the season the agency publishes
- A night
- $26From, per site
- Sites
- 32All of them booked ahead
- Season
- May 15 – September 15Open May 15 through September 15
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 13 notices
In the agency’s own words
Widewaters Campground is remotely located on Michigan's upper peninsula in the Hiawatha National Forest. It sits on a stretch of heavily forested land between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, near a series of smaller lakes and the Indian River, making it an ideal getaway for anglers and explorers alike. Keep reading
Recreation
This small, quiet campground is perfect for fishing, canoeing and kayaking. Anglers enjoy catching brook trout in the area. The 9-mile Bruno's Run Trail, which winds its way past a host of small lakes in the area, passes directly through the campground and is a popular trail for hiking and biking, as well as snowshoeing and cross-country skiing in the winter.
Facilities
The campground offers multiple well-spaced single-family sites, available for tent and RV camping. Sites vary from being heavily wooded and private, to open with little privacy. A few waterfront sites have access to the river. Some additional sites are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Each site is equipped with tables and campfire rings and some have access to grills. Accessible vault toilets and drinking water are provided. Boat ramps are available at the campground and also at Fish Lake.
Natural Features
Widewaters is in a beautiful forest of mature hardwoods, sandwiched between Irwin Lake and Indian River. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (906) 767-1111.
What the agency tells you
There are no electricity, water or sewer hook-ups at the campground
Off-road vehicles not permitted
Use only dead and downed firewood for campfires
Everything else this campground posts · 10
Two pets per site
No switching sites upon arrival
Please Note: One RV with tow vehicle per single site or one vehicle per tent site. Most sites can accommodate 1 extra vehicle that is not included with the reservation fee. Extra vehicle will be charged an $8 per night fee and collected at the campground if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On. Extra vehicles must fit on the parking spur at your site.
Reserved Sites will be held until checkout time (NOON) the day following your arrival date. Sites must be occupied by the checkout time of the second day to hold a reservation or the site will be forfeited and released to other guests.
Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.
Refunds: Refund requests made through www.recreation.gov will be charged a $10 processing fee. This fee is retained by the reservation service contractor along with the non-refundable reservation fee. All requests for the return of the non-refundable reservation fee and the cancellation fee will be declined by the campground concessionaire as they did not receive these fees (these are the fees retained by the reservation contractor, a different entity).
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.
Click here for more information on the Hiawatha National Forest Hiawatha
Hiawatha National Forest - West Day Use Fees: Day Use $8.00 Day Use Annual Pass $40.00
Check OUT is at 12:00 PM Check IN is at 2:00 PM
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 32
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 58 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…some have access to grills. Accessible vault toilets and drinking water are provided. Boat ramps are…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…to grills. Accessible vault toilets and drinking water are provided. Boat ramps are available at the…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River
- Biking
- Canoeing
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Kayaking
- Swimming
- Night sky · 92nd darkest of 192 in MI
- Bortle 2
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 · 13
What you actually pay
“Extra vehicle will be charged an $8 per night fee and collected at the campground if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $26 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 · 6
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
32 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 32 mapped sitesAll 32 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 32 of the 32 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 32 of the 32 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 02 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 95 ft | 153 ft | 424 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 03 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 95 ft | 236 ft | 362 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 04 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 104 ft | 151 ft | 325 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 05 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 78 ft | 285 ft | 178 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 06 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 78 ft | 241 ft | 125 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 09 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 96 ft | 249 ft | 52 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 10 | standard nonelectric | 43 ft | 79 ft | 306 ft | 105 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 11 | standard nonelectric | 28 ft | 79 ft | 231 ft | 136 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 12 | standard nonelectric | 33 ft | 90 ft | 311 ft | 209 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 13 | standard nonelectric | 43 ft | 90 ft | 253 ft | 261 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 14 | standard nonelectric | 33 ft | 86 ft | 332 ft | 335 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 15 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 86 ft | 261 ft | 357 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 16 | standard nonelectric | 58 ft | 94 ft | 295 ft | 450 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 17 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 93 ft | 384 ft | 551 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 18 | standard nonelectric | 58 ft | 78 ft | 455 ft | 609 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 19 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 70 ft | 529 ft | 630 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 20 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 70 ft | 550 ftIrwin Lake | 608 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 21 | standard nonelectric | 46 ft | 98 ft | 462 ftIrwin Lake | 520 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 22 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 94 ft | 460 ft | 426 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 23 | standard nonelectric | 28 ft | 94 ft | 397 ftIrwin Lake | 448 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 24 | standard nonelectric | 18 ft | 78 ft | 442 ftIrwin Lake | 350 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 25 | standard nonelectric | 43 ft | 77 ft | 364 ftIrwin Lake | 373 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 26 | standard nonelectric | 28 ft | 77 ft | 420 ftIrwin Lake | 278 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 27 | standard nonelectric | 43 ft | 77 ft | 344 ftIrwin Lake | 324 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 28 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 74 ft | 423 ftIrwin Lake | 209 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 29 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 74 ft | 352 ftIrwin Lake | 267 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 30 | standard nonelectric | 58 ft | 109 ft | 354 ftIrwin Lake | 207 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 31 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 53 ft | 306 ftIrwin Lake | 216 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 32 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 53 ft | 291 ftIrwin Lake | 235 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 33 | standard nonelectric | 28 ft | 126 ft | 382 ftIrwin Lake | 275 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 34 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 91 ft | 380 ft | 381 ft | $26 |
| WIDEWATERS CAMPGROUND | 35 | standard nonelectric | 58 ft | 91 ft | 334 ft | 461 ft | $26 |
25 of 32 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions
Where it is
McKeever CabinHiawatha National Forest · 1.4 mi
Pete's Lake CampgroundHiawatha National Forest · 1.6 mi
Council Lake CampsitesHiawatha National Forest · 1.8 mi
Ewing Point CampsiteHiawatha National Forest · 1.9 mi
Cookson Lake CampsitesHiawatha National Forest · 3.6 mi
Island LakeHiawatha National Forest · 3.7 miFrom Munising, Michigan, go east on Michigan Highway 28 for about 3 miles. Turn south on Forest Highway 13 at Wetmore and continue for 12 miles. Turn west onto Forest Road 2262 and follow for about a mile to the campground entrance.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Munising, MI
Typical weather
Typical May night 39°F, day 59°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical May night 39°F. Bring the bag rated for it.
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.
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Widewaters 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 →