Presque Isle State Park - 2021

This was our first trip to Presque Isle State Park in Erie Pennsylvania.

We visited the park during the third week of August with the intent of not having to fight summer crowds while still enjoying summer weather. Given that this was our first visit to the park we didn’t have a reference for the crowd sizes, however, we were extremely pleased with the size of the park, the abundance of parking right on the many beaches. It was not crowded at all, and we never had any issues with convenient parking. The Park is an arch and has beaches that face both East and West, so sunrise and sunset photographic opportunities do exist. The Park opens at 5:00 am offering fantastic sunrise opportunities. We did venture out early one morning to capture a sunrise. If you’ve done any photography, you know that there’s always a risk that nature will not always reveal her glory. While we didn’t experience a wonderful sunrise, we did get some great video and still photographs and had the beach all to ourselves. It was a wonderfully relaxing and enjoyable morning. Time was a bit short on this trip, so we were not able to venture out for a sunset.  

We were extremely excited to see Lake Erie and it did not disappoint. The lake is beautiful and while its size makes one feel like you’re standing on the beach looking out at an ocean, there are no ocean size waves only small lake size ripples. The Great Lakes also do not experience tides as the oceans do and all the Great Lakes are fresh water. 

There is no camping within the park, however, there is a campground very near the entrance to the park. We did drive by it, and it was extremely tight with RVs almost on top of each other. We prefer to avoid these types of campgrounds, so we stayed at Sparrow Pond Family Campground just south of Erie. Sparrow Pond is an expensive campground but is extremely well maintained and was not crowded when we were there. We had a spectacular site right on the pond with a lot of space and no neighbors close by. It was very comfortable and extremely quiet. We do recommend it to those who enjoy glamping.

Check out the video on YouTube