Hoffmaster State Park

Site 160

Hoffmaster State Park, it's extremely popular.  We got in there for the first time in September 2013 and loved it.

For our trip to Hoffmaster in August 2014, we planned our trip with friends 5.5 months in advance.  There was only one group of 3 campsites together left when I looked.  We snatched them up as quickly as we could.

The campsites are dirt and grass cover, tons of tree cover.  The sites are usually quite big, but there are some smaller sites.  The lack of an asphalt pad allowed our 3 sites to have the campers in a U shape.  By manipulating the smaller campers, the pop-ups, the kids had 3 sites worth of space to run and play.  After bedtime, the adults were right there and no one felt uncomfortable not being able to see their camper and kids while we chatted around the fire.

After dinner the first night, we headed to the beach.  Kids played in the sand and in the water.  We watched a spectacular Lake Michigan sunset.  It was the stuff the Pure Michigan ads are made of.

Our 2nd day, we and another family headed over the Michigan's Adventure for the day.  You'd think that I'd know better than to go to an amusement park on a Saturday in August since I worked at Cedar Point (owned by the same parent company) for 3 summers in my late teenage years.  However, the big crowds headed back toward the water park by mid afternoon and we had minimal waits for the amusement park rides.

The other family that didn't go to Michigan's Adventure spent more time on the beach, went to the Hoffmaster Nature Center, climbed a sand dune.

A word to the wise, if you want to head to the Nature Center, which is quite nice, don't do what we did last year.  We thought, "Oh, it's only 1/4 mile up the road, let's ride our bikes!"  Yeah, the ROAD to the nature center is 1/4 mile away from the campground.  I'm not sure how far the nature center is into the park on that road, but it's all uphill and felt like forever as an adult, my kids were great and hung in there with the uphill biking for a long time, but... yeah, don't do that.

The playground is quite large and serves the whole campground, my kids enjoy it.

Also, last year, we camped near the Campground Host site.  I've interacted with a lot of campground hosts over the years.  These hosts were extremely friendly, their programming was better than any other host, they were very knowledgeable.  I was so impressed with them, I wrote to the head of the campground to say how great I thought they were.  While this trip didn't bring much interaction with the hosts, I saw them keeping traffic flowing at the waste water station on Sunday morning, helping people with put their garbage in the dumpsters, having friendly conversations.  The head of the campground does a phenomenal job getting campground hosts.

I know Hoffmaster has a Halloween camping weekend.  I saw on the campground map that there is a vintage camper weekend in June, which sounds neat.

If you can plan ahead enough during high camping season, it's worth the trip.  If you can't plan ahead, it's pretty easy to get in during September and early May.

Follow me on Facebook!