Review of Monument Campground, Michigan

We really liked this USFS Monument Campground! It is in the Huron-Manistee National Forest in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It’s nearest town is Oscoda, MI and also about 14 miles north of Tawas both which are along the shores of Lake Huron.

The campground is easily accessed via Interstate 75 and then heading east.

There are first come, first served sites on the outside of the campground loop. While reservable sites through Recreation.gov are available on the inside of the loop. The campground is directly adjacent (as well as connected by a short pathway) to the Lumberman’s Monument Park operated also by the US Forest Service. More on that later.

-ALL sites are DRY SITES.

-Potable water spigot are dotted along the road loop.

-There are clean well spaced vault toilets along the loop.

-There is NO DUMP STATION!

The campground offers huge spacing in between sites which offers a ton of room to stretch out and have privacy too. Most of the sites are quite large. The loop road is paved and EACH SITE IS PAVED and from the looks most if not all nearly level! Each site has a picnic table, fire ring, traditional style double lantern post, and standing grill for BBQ. There was a camp hosting in the first site on left when we were there who was very pleasant and helpful.

Luise had originally booked Site 19 based on reviews and photos. However, when we arrived we found that site 17 (a FCFS site) was way longer, more private and way easier for us to back into. Site 19 would have just fit our 32 ft trailer on the paved part but would have been tough to fit our truck due to foliage on sides, narrowness of paved area and camp host’s truck parked broadside opposite our site 19 would have made backing in and turning a tad tough.

We spoke to him about switching to site 17 as it was perfect in our opinion.

He noted that we had to go see the ranger at the Lumbermans Monument park to handle that switch. He stated he would “hold” that site 17 for us in the interim- and he did by putting one of the official reserved cards on the post. So we proceeded to the ranger station (also big gift shop) to do the switch. Not as easy as it sounds.

Just be aware….Reserved site fees go into one NPS pocketbook and FCFS fees go into another. SO, we had to go back to the campground, fill our the self pay FCFS envelope at the entry, deposit our check (BTW- be sure to read our blog post about the safest and best way to use self pay kiosks! Link here).

AFTER doing that we proceeded to now finally go around the loop and back into our “new” site 17. Once we had our Starlink set up Luise had to make a call to Recreation.gov and explain what had transpired to ‘request’ a refund of our previously paid online 3 night stay at site 19. The Ranger and the rec.gov operator did say the request would be reviewed but a full refund was not guaranteed. We took our chances since with using our America the Beautiful Senior Lifetime pass we were only paying $7.50 per night. Rack rate with no discounts in the campground is the posted $15 per night. It’s a deal, the campground is really nice if you like peace and quiet and a more remote location, nice paved level sites and lots of room between sites. We honestly could have seen ourselves staying here a week just to relax and decompress a bit.

IMPORTANT NOTE!

There is NO DUMP STATION AT THIS CAMPGROUND!

We were only staying actually 2 nights and we had located a dump station at the County Fairgrounds in our next camping town of Alpena, MI. Cost to dump there and potable water fill was $10. A deal too! We normally can go 5 days without dumping so this stay at Monument (coming from a full hookup site prior to here) was not an issue for us. In fact, once in Alpena we had an additional Harvest Host stay at Austin Brothers Brewery (terrific HH!) as we headed even further north in the UP for 3 more nights – so we actually dumped our tanks after that dry camping stay.

The Lumberman’s Monument Park is connected by a short path from the campground. The park itself also has good, dedicated signed parking for RVs in case you are just driving through and want to stop for a visit, lunch break etc. There are good outside display telling about the vast lumbering industry that was key in the UP (hey, that rhymes!)

And so even if you visit when the ranger station (basically just a big gift shop) there is plenty to see between glass case artifacts, the huge bronze Monument itself or take the long, steep staircase down to the Aus Sable river from the Monument park.

We found the surveyors mark installed in the 70s interesting too.

We ate lunch at the Rt 23 BBQ restaurant (you can tell it was built as a Pizza Hut!) And it was good. We split one of their 3 meat/2 side plates and it was plenty! The Mac n cheese was full of flavor for a change and creamy! The BBQ done just right.

While staying her we visited both the towns of Oscoda and Tawas. Oscoda was a let down, fiarly depressed shore town, vacant buildings, strip mall style, nothing quaint or even kitchy. They do have a nice city park along the lake but thats about all we saw that was enticing. However we really liked Tawas!

Tawas is much more active and vibrant with a short main street district of shops and cafes that runs perpendicular to the shore road. They also have a few city parks with beaches along the lake shore. But the big draw for us was TAWAS POINT LIGHT HOUSE STATE PARK. Such a nice park and they also operate a big campground right inside the park (yes you can pay to use their sump station BUT you will need a state park pass on your windshield first to get in! We knew we were going to be visiting and camping in MI state parks so we bought ours here. $42 for out of state residents and not prorated- it runds Jan to Dec so ours expires at the end of Dec 2026. Still cheaper than paying $12 or $14 per day!

The lighthouse portion of the park was super! You can go inside the lightkeeprrs house and also climb the tower. After decades of erosion and sand build up the historic lighthouse now sites nearly a mile inland from the point so a more modern automated lightbeacon now is at the point edge for navigation purposes.

One more stop in Tawas included the local Hospital ER! Luise had been having increase hip pain from her fall in Lake George and we needed it checked out. The staff was great. Xrays showed nothing cracks or worse so they fixed her up with some RX and in less than 2 hours we were back to camp.

From our stay at Monument CG we headed north on RT 23 which sirts the western shore of Lake Huron up to Alpena…but that’s a story for another day because we made more stops along the way!