Festival Camping
Here's the short scoop on camping for the Hiawatha Festival:
For Hiawatha Festival weekend camping, from noon Friday, July 18, 2008; to noon, Monday, July 21, 2008, you will need a Festival weekend camping tag that you can order with your tickets at $10 per tag. You will need a tag for everything you set up at your site, including screened eating tents. Those tags are good for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night of the Festival, until noon the Monday after.
For Thursday night, July 17, 2008 all the regular, numbered Tourist Park campsites will be assigned to those who win them in the Park's pre-Festival camping lottery. More about that in a minute.
That Thursday-night camping lottery
The pre-Festival, Thursday-night-camping lottery form is now available on the Parks and Rec section of the City of Marquette website. If the link in this paragraph won't get you there, please go to www.mqtcty.org, select Departments from the main menu, then Parks and Recreation. The link to the form is in the right column of the Parks and Rec page. We're sorry the City had a bit of a delay making this available. We appreciate your patience. Please remember that, to be in the lottery for a pre-Festival camp site, your application has to be postmarked on, not by, May 1.
Please remember that all Tourist Park employees are summer temps, and our event is pretty complicated. An inexperienced staff member may tell you that you need to call Hiawatha for Thursday, pre-Festival camping, but that's not correct.
For the long scoop on Festival camping, read on. And let us apologize in advance for how complicated this will seem. The Marquette Tourist Park is a lovely venue and has been a good home for us since 1984, but meeting the requirements of Marquette City and Marquette County - plus our own needs - makes it a bit complicated to administer the camping.
OK. Take a deep breath. Here we go:
The Tourist Park has 110 regular sites, including full hookups, electric and water only, electric-only and no hookups. You can see the assortment on the Parks and Recreation part of the City's website
For the three nights that Hiawatha rents the park - the Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights of the Festival - we're allowed to put 1,000 camping units in the Park.
Each unit (tent, camper, RV, etc.) must have a $10 Festival camping tag, which is good for those three nights. Those are purchased from Hiawatha with Festival ticket orders.
For all other nights of the season, you make a regular reservation with the Tourist Park.
HOWEVER, for the Thursday night before our Festival, the holders of the basic 110 Park sites are selected by a lottery conducted by the Park staff. Even if you had a site on the nights before that Thursday, you would have to "win" the site in the lottery to keep it that night. Your reservation is still with the Marquette Tourist Park, and that's who you pay. But you have to win your site in the lottery.
Because everyone who wins a site in the Thursday-night lottery intends to stay on it throughout the Festival, the only way to assure yourself of a hook-up site during the Festival is to enter the Thursday-night lottery and be fortunate enough to get the site you want. More on the lottery itself in a minute.
In spite of that, every year people who do not win full or partial hook-up sites in the Thursday lottery bring RVs and campers to the Festival anyway.
Once the Park opens for our Festival at noon on Friday, everyone who did not win a spot for Thursday night enters the Park in order of their arrival and finds a site amidst the Thursday-nighters on a first-come, first-served basis.
Not winning a Thursday site does not mean you can't bring a camper, but it does mean you won't be able to hook it up, and you will not be on an official, numbered Park campsite. There is some sharing of electrical capacity among Festival-goers, but we can't promise that.
The deadline to enter the Thursday-night lottery is May 1 (postmark) or the closest business day of the Festival year. In the past, the City has posted a printable registration form for the Thursday-night lottery on the Tourist Park web page. We'll put a link here as soon as the form is available. The Park staff conduct the drawing and notify all applicants of the outcome. People who receive a site confirmation from the Park staff should also receive a Festival ticket order form as part of that mailing. Site winners can use that form to order Festival tickets and Hiawatha-weekend camping tags. Please do not use that form if you have ordered tickets by some other means. Thank you!
Again - not winning a Thursday site doesn't mean you can't come and camp for the Festival, but it does mean you won't be able to camp with hookups.
Whether you win a Thursday site or not, if you camp during the Festival weekend, you will need a Festival camping tag. Because we are limited to 1,000 of those, we generally run out before the end of ticket sales, and tags for the more camper/RV-friendly areas of the Park are the ones that go the fastest. Camping tags for the Festival weekend are issued by area (A through E). You'll find more information on camping, as well as a map of the Festival's camping areas, in the Festival-ticket information. A Festival-camping area map also appears below.
We realize this sounds fearsome, and it can be a hassle, but lots of people get through it and come and enjoy the Festival with or without a Thursday spot, so we hope this doesn't discourage you from joining us.
There are also other nice campgrounds within 30 minutes of the Tourist Park, so you might have options there, too. Those include
Perkins Park in Big Bay
The Gitche Gumme RV Park near Harvey
Country Village Campground in Ishpeming
If this makes your head hurt and you want to talk to a live person about it, the Hiawatha office is open every Tuesday and Wednesday from noon to 6 p.m. (Eastern), 906-226-8575. We check our messages throughout the week.
