The Au Sable: 102 Sites on Fifty-Five Miles of River

Introduction

The Au Sable runs east across the northern Lower Peninsula from Grayling to Lake Huron at Oscoda, and it is the most famous trout river in the state. For the purposes of this project it splits neatly in two: the upper river around Grayling, which is state forest, and the lower river through Alcona and Iosco counties, which is national forest and contains the best thing found anywhere in either of these two dives.

2.1 The upper river — Au Sable River State Forest Campground and Canoe Camp

7 miles east of Grayling via North Down River Road and Headquarters Road.

• 8 sites for tent and small trailer
• 5 additional paddle-in / walk-in group sites near the river — the canoe camp
• First come, first served. No reservations.
• Vault toilets; potable water from a hand-pump well; no electricity
• $20 for most sites; 15-day maximum stay

⭐ Eight sites is small, and small is the point. This is a trout-fishing campground on the most fished river in Michigan, seven miles from town, and it does not take bookings. Arrive on a Thursday.

⚠ Grayling in the middle of the season is not solitude. The upper Au Sable is world-famous water — the “Holy Water” reach is here — and famous water is busy water. The compensation is that it fishes as well as its reputation.

2.2 🔴 The lower river — the find of the dive

A series of 102 individually designated single-family campsites are located on a 55-mile stretch of the Au Sable River shoreline and bluffs within Alcona and Iosco Counties, from 4001 Bridge to Oscoda.

⭐⭐ THIS IS THE ANSWER TO THE ENTIRE BRIEF, AND IT IS ON FEDERAL LAND.

Read it against the rule that has shackled every other volume in these two dives. The Huron-Manistee prohibits dispersed camping within 200 feet of water — but that prohibition is on dispersed camping. These 102 sites are designated, which is the exception. So the Forest Service has, on this one river, done the thing that is impossible everywhere else in its jurisdiction: put a hundred legal campsites directly on the shoreline and the bluffs above it.

The sections, each a cluster of sites:

Table 1 — The sections, each a cluster of sites

Section	Character
Alcona Pond	impoundment — lake fishing
Au Sable Semi-Primitive Non-Motorized Area	🔴 walk-in; the truck stays out
Loud Pond	impoundment
Five Channels Pond	impoundment
Cooke Pond	impoundment
Foote Pond	impoundment
Lower Au Sable	river, down to Oscoda

⭐ The “Ponds” are the dam impoundments on the lower river, which means this one stretch offers river fishing and lake fishing from the same set of campsites — walleye and pike water in the ponds, trout and steelhead in the river between them. For a brief that asked for “a river or lake,” this is both.

🔴 They are genuinely primitive, and the site list is explicit about it: no drinking water, no toilets, no trash removal. Campers are expected to bring plenty of water, portable toilets, and garbage bags.

⚠ That is a harder standard than any state forest campground in this dive, and it is the trade for the location. A portable toilet is not optional kit here — it is named in the site’s own conditions.

Maps showing the location of each of the 102 sites are published on recreation.gov. ⭐ Pull them before the trip. With a hundred sites spread over fifty-five miles, the difference between a good weekend and a bad one is entirely which numbers you drove to, and that is not something to work out on arrival.

⚠ One section is non-motorized. The Au Sable Semi-Primitive Non-Motorized Area sites are walk-in. Do not pick a site number off the map without checking which section it sits in.

2.3 What the Au Sable is for

Upper river, around Grayling: classic trout fishing, a small state forest campground with a well and a toilet, and the Manistee headwaters an hour west (vol 3) — the two rivers rise close enough together to do both on one trip.

Lower river, Alcona and Iosco: the 102 sites, the impoundments, and a genuinely remote fifty-five miles. This is the one to take when the brief is “on the water, off the beaten path” and nothing else will do.

🔴 And the whole corridor sits in Camp Grayling country at its western end — roughly 147,000 acres across Crawford, Kalkaska and Otsego. Range Control, 989-344-6156, before committing to anything west of Grayling.

⭐ Cross-reference: Pere Cheney and Deward are both inside an hour of the upper Au Sable. See Ghost Towns and Ruins, vol 4 — one trip can carry a steelhead river and two ghost towns without a wasted mile.