Bay City State Recreation Area

Nice little recreation area to stumble upon. A little bit of a walk from the lot to the beach, but well worth it for a quiet beach. Plenty of trails to walk/​bike/​jog on. The issue is the water quality: You walk in two feet and cannot see the bottom because of pollution from the nearby Saginaw River. This beach is supposedly the worst after rain storms due to agricultural runoff traveling down the river. I normally don’t worry about not seeing the bottom, but parts of the beach have logs sticking up out of the water so you really do not know what lies beneath the brown water.

I’m rating this off the beach and nothing else.
First off, it cost us $ 9 to get into the park. The walk to the beach was pleasant enough, but it’s a bit of a walk from the lot. Once to the beach, I can’t explain how disappointing that it was. They allow dogs elsewhere at this park, but not on the beach, for whatever reason that may be. The beach was covered in debris from high tide (sticks, shells, dead fish, etc) in the afternoon. Not only was it uncomfortable to walk on bare foot, it was dirty from people just leaving garbage (including a used tampon).
This was my second time to this beach, was giving it the benefit of the doubt, and it will be my last.

Stayed at the Bay City State Park campground for a weekend. I was quite impressed! In the past 5 years I’ve noticed State Parks have gotten a lot nicer (possibly due to the recreation passports). This campground was well kept! The bathrooms were clean, the showers were clean (with a lot of hot water). The campsites were also large compared to other campgrounds. Even the fire pits were nice (cement with metal interior). The campground is large but thankfully there are two bathrooms. So even if you are all the way in the back you really don’t have to walk too far to get a bathroom. The sites were clean too. Often when you go to public campgrounds there is still garbage left over from precious campers. Didn’t see one piece of litter! They also provided family movies Friday and Saturday at a campsite. Projected on a white sheet. Pretty neat idea!
My only complaint is the size of the roads through the camp. The roads are very narrow and with both cars and people sharing the road it’s difficult to drive through especially if there are a lot of people walking around. One minor complaint-​the site numbers are on the side of the road. It would be easier if they were on posts. Some of the numbers on the ground were faded.
I’ll be back to camp here that’s for sure.