Orchard Beach State Park

What a nice campground!
Let’s start with the beginning of our stay. We arrived on a Sunday afternoon after it had rained. The camp was without power so the ranger told us to just go to the site we had reserved. We pull up and realize the site is really muddy. Understandable because of the rain. We decide to go check out the campground. We come back to the site and as we are deciding where to put the tent the ranger comes by to give us our reservation paper. He comments on the muddy site and the fact we are tenting. He asks if we would rather switch sites to one that is higher groung with less mud. He then proceeds to give us the park map with the sites highlighted that are available for the time we would be there. He says go pick out a different one. We got to hand pick our own site!
The campground itself is right on Lake Michigan. Beautiful views with gorgeous sunsets. There are many benches along the coast to watch the water. As for the beach, there are stairs down to it and it isn’t very big. Might be a deal breaker for some. We didn’t mind. The bathrooms and showers were adequate. They cleaned them everyday. The showers had good water pressure and the water was nice and warm. And there were no bugs in them.
Lots of hiking trails and it is not far from town. Maybe a couple miles. Orchard Beach is towards the top of the list of the state parks we have camped at.

Beautiful beach and view of Lake Michigan. Campsites aren’t real level for campers and a little close to each other. Showers are disgusting.

I camped with my wife and two kids in a pop-​up camper. We stayed in site 85 which is a full hookup. The lot was huge (I am not sure that is typical of a MI state park site??? This is our 1^st time at a state campground) There is some road noise from Lakeshore Rd at this site.
The sunsets are an event at this campground. You can check out the scenery from up on the bluff or down on the beach. The beach area is smallish but seemed adequate for the number of campers. I had a good time exploring along the shoreline. Be prepared for those steps.
The bathrooms and showers were better than average with little to no humidity build-​up. The folks at the ranger station were friendly and helpful.

I really can’t improve upon Kaylee M’s review. She pretty much nails it. The only reason I gave this 4 stars and not 5 is because the daily bathroom/​shower cleaning needs to happen earlier. I’m an early riser so I always had lots of bugs to deal with in these areas. The lights are left on all night so this attracts the bugs so in the morning the sinks have lots of bugs as well as the showers. If they could get to these around 6 or 7 AM rather than 9 AM that would help a lot.
Friendly staff and that always makes up for other shortcomings.

This is for the campground only.
Located minutes from quaint downtown Manistee, this state park camp ground is small and quaint as well. I didn’t make a reservation, but I had no problem securing a site the same day I wanted to camp. The grounds themselves are well-​kept, with electric hook-​ups and showers/​modern plumbing. The people at this ground mostly kept to themselves, and it was very, very quiet at night. The bathrooms were tiny and not the cleanest… in the morning, one of the bathrooms were proof to someone’s wine love affair and didn’t get cleaned up til around ten am. Since the bathroom was so small, it made that experience unpleasant to say the least. The staff here were nice and were helpful when they were pointing out a public beach down the road. The campgrounds are located up the dunes and cliffs from the Lake Michigan beach and has beach access. There is a little bluff where you can look down to the beach and watch the lovely Lake Michigan sunset. Overall, these campgrounds are a-​ok for a night. I probably wouldn’t camp here more than one night or I might even check out other campgrounds in the area first if I was in the Manistee area again.