Au Sable River Campground is a scenic, rustic campground that sits on the beautiful Au Sable River surrounded by tall pines and hardwoods. Located in Crawford County, 7 miles east of Grayling.

This campground is managed by Hartwick Pines State Park.

The Au Sable National Scenic River is a 23-mile portion of the Au Sable River that stretches from Mio to Alcona Pond. President Ronald Reagan signed the law establishing the segment of the river as a National Scenic River on October 4, 1984.  By receiving this designation, this free-flowing segment from below Mio Pond to the upper end of Alcona Pond received national recognition for its outstanding and remarkable scenic, recreational, biological, and historical values and a national commitment to its protection.  People have enjoyed the scenic beauty of the Au Sable for hundreds of years.

In pre-European settlement times, Native Americans used the river as a travel route.  After the European settlement of the area, the Au Sable River was a major throughway for floating white pine to sawmills or waiting for barges at ports on Lake Huron. During those years many of the logs and fallen trees that littered the river were carried downstream with the harvested white pine. In recent years efforts have been made to replace logs in the river to help reduce erosion and maintain the world-class trout fishing river as an aquatic habitat.

The Au Sable State Forest is a state forest in the north-central Lower Peninsula of Michigan. It is operated by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources,

The Au Sable State Forest is a byproduct of the lumbering boom in Michigan during the late 19th century. Many parcels of old growth timber were stripped of their largest trees. After forest fires had consumed the resulting detritus, the land had no economic value. Typically, it was sold to subsistence farmers or was reverted to the state in lieu of unpaid property taxes.

Today, the Au Sable State Forest is a valuable asset to the state of Michigan. Much of it surrounds the fast-growing communities of Houghton Lake, Higgins Lake and Lake St. Helen adjacent to Interstate 75. In addition, much of the forest is used for wildlife game management and the fostering of rare and endangered species, such as the Kirtland's warbler. Much of the area sits on the "Grayling outwash plain", a unique habitat.