Illinois Beach State Park Campground

Greg Staskowski

Perfect fall conditions and a great way to avoid hotels. 25 a night.

tenshii26

Pretty good choice for slightly less than an hour away. Clean park. Lots of spots available (out of season) Have electric hook up at all campsites iirc. Decent bathrooms, hot showers. You don't have to worry about checking in if you show up after hours. Just make camp and do it in the morning. Lake Michigan is walking distance. Can fish there or in a pond. Not much in the way of hiking as one of the trails ended in water (probably too much rain) but the views were nice. Definitely coming back. Btw no amenities off season. You can buy really dry firewood at Piggly Wiggly right outside of the park. As well as any food etc. Friendly and helpful staff. There is also some sort of small nature visitor center you can go into.

Y Wu

None of the women's bathrooms have hand soap. I don't mean the pit toilets, I mean the full service bathrooms with plumbing and flush toilets. I've never seen a public bathroom without soap before. The process for getting camp sites off season is extremely tedious. They don't allow reservations during off season so you have to walk into the camp office 8-10am or 5-7pm, they can only process one person's reservation at a time, and their computer system takes about 10 minutes per person. We were forming lines out the door in freezing windy 40 degree weather. Some people gave up waiting and decided they'd rather pitch tents and pay in the morning. (The rangers do allow this option) The campsites themselves are all clean and well-maintained with electric outlets (all) and water pumps (some locations). Part of the beachfront bike path is covered in sand and not bikeable at all. The dead river trail is flooded and unpassable at one point. A shame since the park area is so beautiful, just needs better maintenance and clear signage.

Karl Truty

Beautiful place. Peaceful. Well managed. Reasonable cost.

Sandeep Tharayil (Sans)

Nice beach side camping option. Restrooms were clean in the morning. Traffic makes it worse. May be more frequent cleaning in weekends helps. The 100s row of campsites had ant pits all over. We had to go and buy ant kill sprays before setting up tents. There is not much privacy and no flat land available for setting up tent. The beach near to campsite has big boulders laid out and so cannot be used for playing. Found more RVs than tents. The beach where we can play and swim don’t have bath or changing room.