Grand Marais Rec Park fills as state parks stay shuttered

The Grand Marais Recreation Park is usually a busy place in summer.-- this month even more than ever. The reason is the government shutdown that has closed all of Minnesota’s state parks. According to Rec park manager Dave Tersteeg, it’s turning into a banner summer.

“We are busy!  The Grand Marais campground is municipal, it’s city owned. We’re wide open, we have been all weekend and we’ve been full ever since the first. Every other call, state park people with a reservation in a week from now, they need to hedge their bet, they need to book with us. Generally we can get them in for a couple days, but those who need a week or two, is what’s hard to fit. Our weekends are full, we’ve got the Art Fair coming up this weekend and as we look toward the end of the month, too, it’s a very busy month. We’re as busy as we can be.”

Tersteeg said it’s good to be busy, but state park campers are having a hard time cancelling their reservations.

“Busy is good. It’s a great problem to have. I just hate saying ‘no’ to all the folks calling that need that week or two in July to get away, and it’s really frustrating for them. They can’t cancel their park reservation apparently. We get folks calling, and with my cancellation policy they say ‘great.’ I say, ‘you know what, you want to come here anyway, so just cancel with the state parks.’ ‘Oh, I would if I could get someone on the phone.”

Even though the Rec Park is jammed there’s always room for tent camping.

“I always like to say we always have room, especially for tenters, and that’s a lot of the displaced state park folks, tenters. We’re somewhat known as an RV park – we’ve 200 or so RV sites, but we do have 60 or so tent sites that we generally have available.”

Campground story is attached. The full interview with Tersteeg on the current Park Board meeting is attached.