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2025

Spots in Dakotas, Missouri, Corn Belt

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  • Roaring River Campground
  • Roaring River State Park, MO
  • Fifth spring in a row! Also a fishery. This may be the fishiest yet! Quite large, there is a lodge with a nice restaurant up the hill. There is wifi strong enough I could use it from my van ... but it only worked for the last 6 hours of my two days there. There was live bluegrass music in the Lodge on Friday night!

  • Extended Stay America Hotel
  • private business Kansas City Mo
  • $60 is pretty cheap for the suburbs of a big city, and this was a pretty cheap hotel. Wifi was crappy, tv was crappy, my doorkey was crappy. But the bed was fine and it served its purpose.

  • Lambert's Cafe
  • private business Sikeston MO
  • Cafe conjures up an image of a modest little restaurant. This place is HUGE! A multiple tour bus handling, multi-roomed dining hall and entertainment complex. I was kinda put off by the style, but the servers were nice, the food was good and plentiful, and it was fun! As part of their hillbilly hospitality thing one is welcome to sleep in the parking lot! For all my snobbishness about it, it was actually very pleasant. Everything about my night and morning in Sykesville was very nice.

  • Pony Creek Campground
  • Mills County Park, Mills County IA
  • A quiet little spot. Five miles of gravel road, then take a right into a little hollow at the back end of which are some county buildings and a loop with 12 campsites. The Visitors Center is quite nice. Nice balcony to hang out on last night, and pretty interesting inside the next morning.

  • Alley Spring Campground
  • Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Eminence MO
  • Another very nice, well maintained campground built around another gorgeous freshwater spring. The one has Alley Mill, a grist mill driven by the outflow of Alley Spring - now a park info center. The mill is a short walk from the campground. If you hunt around for it there is swimming access to the river (swinning in the spring outflow, that's a no no in all these parks).

  • Falls City Campground
  • Falls City City Park, Falls City NE
  • Very pleasant city park with a pond, shade trees, trails.

  • Van Meter State Park
  • Missouri State Parks, Marshall MO
  • Really pleasant little park south of the Missouri, on a plain that used to be a Missouri Indian settlement. Deluxe shower building, well-maintained nature trails, nice picnic area, what's not to like?

  • Farm Island Campground
  • South Dakota State Parks, Pierre SD
  • Nice place. Expensive, but nice. Only about 4 miles from the sports bar where I spent the afternoon. Both Dakotas do this trick where the campsite is $22, but non-residents must also pay the $6 entrance fee. I don't like it. The Swimming Beach is really nice. A huge area to swim in, shallow to enough to stand up 50' out.

  • Elk Point Park Campground
  • City Park, Elk Point SD
  • A large grassy lot between the city park playgrounds and I-29. All sites have hookups, but it's only $10. High school football practice is happening 300 yards away. Also, Lewis and Clark camped here! ... or somewhere rear here since the river has changed course many times since 1804.

  • Bennett Spring Campground
  • Missouri State Parks, Lebanon MO
  • Fourth spring in a row! This one has a fishery. It's very spread out. Long drive up the hill to pick a site, drive back and check in, then later drive back to fish or walk or just see the sites. Swimming not allowed in the park, but just outside and across the bridge is river access where you can swim. Despite the reliance on driving, a very nice place. People were catching lots of fish!

  • Crab Orchard Campground
  • Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, Marion IL
  • real nice find! Crab Orchard is a pretty big place, with four campgrounds. The other campgrounds have full hookups for the big boys and cost more. But E Loop is the oldest and has become the bastard stepchild in the corner. Electric only inside the loop, no hookups outside. Its bathroom is kinda gross, but hey, $5 for overnight and a shower ain't bad.

  • Silver Mines Campground
  • Mark Twain National Forest, Fredericktown MO
  • Signage is very poor ==> hard to find. I ended up going to the river level loop with hookups and the camp host who directed me up the hill to the non-hookup sites on the bluffs. Nice big sites. There's a trail down to the swimming hole by the old dam. Very cool!

  • Round Spring Campground
  • Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Eminence MO
  • These federal parks along the Current River are national treasures. I had a great time here tonight.

  • Harmonie Campground
  • Indiana State Parks, New Harmony IN
  • Way overpriced and has stupid rules. The park borders the Wabash River, but the campground itself is miles from the river. There is a public swimming pool that is an additional charge on top of the camping fee.

  • Leach Park
  • city park, Spencer IA
  • very user-friendly, downtown right across the bridge, and next to a rec complex with bike paths, tennis courts, swimming pool, etc.

  • Cottonwood Lake
  • city park, Merriman NE
  • Very low tech, just pull the van up to a picnic table and hang out

  • Pikes Peak Campground
  • Iowa State Park, McGregor IA
  • Beautiful location high on the bluffs above the mighty Mississippi. Nice set of trails with awesome vistas on the river bluffs

  • Lake of the Ozarks Campground
  • Missouri State Parks, Osage Beach MO
  • There is NO check-in procedure here, only check-out. Odd. Just pick a site, do your thing, and there's only one way out, so pay at the station when you leave.

  • Sheridan Lake Campground
  • Black Hills National Forest, Hill City SD
  • I am in Thumper Loop! A lovely, very well maintained large campground. The area is thick grass, but a wide area is mowed around each campsite. Very pleasant place to be out of the madness of Black Hills traffic.

  • Badlands Interior Motel and Campground
  • private business Interior SD
  • Cedar Pass CG in Badlands NP was full on Friday night, so here I am. It is in the town of Interior, at the edge of the Badlands, so the name makes more sense than you would think at first. Six rows of sites, the hook-ups for the big boys are on the inside and the tent sites are on the edges. Some sites have picnic tables, some don't. I decided I'd rather be on the edge with an unimpeded view of the Badlands than in a couple of rows with a table. The shower was nice and very welcome. Things are well-worn but well maintained also. Nice place, and a godsend when the Park is full.

  • Sulphur Lake Campground
  • private business Williamstown, OH
  • non-descript but sort of pretty, nice manager, overpriced