Willow Beach
Reviewed Mar. 31, 2021

Nice spot along the river

This is a small and quiet campground during the week -- the day-use area next door may make the whole park busier on weekends 

We were in Site F4 and it was a good spot for being not too far from the bathroom building but far enough away that it wasn't lit up at night by the building's obnoxiously bright outside lights. (The first few sites on that end get a lot of light pollution from the bathroom.) 

All of the sites here are paved with asphalt or concrete and relatively level although a couple have a slope to them that may impact you more depending on the length of your rig. There is plenty of room here for rigs of all sizes. 

The river is peaceful since it's more of a branch of the Arkansas River now than the main navigable area. The locals seem to love this spot for fishing -- that's not our thing so we can't confirm that. There is a boat ramp in the day-use area. 

Note that the entire campground is a good hike to the dumpster and dump station, so keep that in mind for access to those. There is 20-, 30- and 50-amp service available in what appear to be newer, lighted power pedestals. There also is water on site and each one has a fire pit with cooking grate and a grill, as well as a stone picnic table. A few of the sites have pavilions over the tables, but most do not. 

The bathroom building was constructed in 2019 and is well laid out. There are four individual units with toilet, sink, shower and baby changing station inside. The only real complaint we had was maintenance on the bathrooms. They are not always maintained well by the volunteer staff and we frequently found some of units were without toilet paper and none of them had any soap. 

The whole park is pretty loosely run from what we could tell, which is nice if it's quiet. If you had any issues with neighbors or day-use folks causing an issue, we're not sure how you would have it addressed. There is a camp host, but they are parked up by the gate, which locked from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Again, we weren't here on the weekend, so this review is for weekday camping only, but we found it quite peaceful. Also, some reviews have mentioned a lot of bugs, but we didn't find any that were bothersome, perhaps because we were here when it was still a bit chilly. 

The river is a nice view and you can see it from almost every campsite. We'd recommend a site on the river side if you can get one though. 

Phone service was decent for Verizon and T-Mobile with reasonable speeds even though the signal jumped around 2-3 bars most of the time. 

One bonus: if you like watching Air Force planes, you might catch the C-130 pilots training overhead as they come and go from the Little Rock AFB.

SiteF4
Month of VisitMarch
  • A walk around site F4
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  • Review photo of Willow Beach by Ari A., March 31, 2021
  • Review photo of Willow Beach by Ari A., March 31, 2021