Best Tent Camping near Elkader, IA

This was a great surprise in a pretty little town. The campground is across the river from Elkader, up on a rise. The campground is next to the city pool and history museum, which has great exhibits and a few historic train cars to explore. The campground has hookups for RVs primarily, with a few tent sites in a grassy area next to the road. However, you can easily just get a site with hookups to be further away from the road (the sites in the middle seem to have better hammock trees, too). None of the sites have any privacy, but all have picnic tables and fire rings. The shower house is like a bunker house- seriously, it is the tornado shelter for the park and campground! It’s super clean and large, with separate toilets, showers, and changing rooms. FREE firewood!! They even provide a couple of wheelbarrows for you to haul firewood to your site. In town there is an access point for kayakers who want to play in the river at the rapids, as well as access for fishing. There is a GREAT bakery on the main corner in town- this is THE place to buy your hamburger buns (one of their biggest sellers). There is a nice cornerstone bridge crossing the river that you can walk across to view the spillway.

Free firewood, free wifi, water and electric at each campsite. Found a nice shady site for tent camping.

Very nice, clean campground with a lot of amenities. Tent camping on the river was neat, but tents were very close together due to the small sites

Quiet park with beautiful campground. Great for tent camping. Had no luck fishing the stream but a friend with me caught a couple.

A weird little campground. It’s just smack in the middle of a small town. Electric hookups for those with campers, water and public restroom and shower house. $8 for tent camping. Gas station close by

Great private campground. Lots of trailer sites but the gem is the tent sites down by the river. Very clean and the office was so friendly. Every Friday they do a themed dinner and play a movie.

I keep coming back to this park. The tent camping sites are quiet, well shaded and good access to the fishing stream. Running water Bathrooms closed due to covid but the vault toilets are fine. Hiking trails are absolutely gorgeous, 3 playgrounds for the kids. Little nature center was nice. Staff there were great. Highly highly recommend Bailey’s Ford!

Miller River is a good urban campground, as it is tucked away from the city but still within 5 minutes of downtown. Its location on the river is very nice, and the tent sites are set apart from the RV area, which I appreciated. Upon check-in, the workers were friendly and helpful. The bathrooms are clean and fine. And it is inexpensive, at about$15 a night for a tent site. Now to the negatives. Unfortunately, most of what we found negative is out of the control of the campground itself; it's simply the location. Ambient noise includes auto traffic of speeding cars coming over the nearby highway bridge, and loud semi-trucks that are air-braking as they come into town. Also, multiple trains rumbled by the campground across the river, many blowing their horns repeatedly as they passed at all hours of the night. Finally, and somewhat hilariously, there is a greyhound dog racetrack within a few hundred feet of the tent sites. It's mostly unnoticeable until you hear the dogs. When we stayed there the dogs were let out early in the morning, around 7 am, into a big open fenced area. They all barked and whined and yelped together, a giant pack of hounds disturbing our sleep after a night of the aforementioned noise. Overall, this campground could be a good choice if noise does not bother you much, or if you have good earplugs. Avoid it probably if you are sensitive to noise or a light sleeper.

Fontana is a small campground which fills up relatively fast. The park boasts animal displays and a nature center, fishing, trails and a playground all within the park, It's a quiet park with primitive and electrical hookups. Though I recommend better for campers since many tent sites are under pine trees.

I was looking around for a place and being the weekend after the 4th of July, I knew there wouldn't be many options. This place is literally a hidden gem and should get more focus!!! The owner had a spot for my family and me!!! When he found out that I was only tent camping, he even lowered the price!!! He didn't have to do that at all and it wasn't expected. Grassy locations everywhere. Wonderful water and electric hookups!!! A little piece of heaven here. JJ is an AMAZING host!!!

37 full-hookup sites, some tent sites, all right on edge of town. Adjacent to Kitty Creek, joins Maquoketa River. Some concrete pads, most are gravel, fairly level. Pretty tight layout, average of only 30-40' between sites. New fire rings, picnic tables in good condition. Bakery and other facilities are closed due to COVID. Previous campers at our site left lots of trash on ground...always disappointing. Electrical and water were good. Sewer connections a bit high.

The tent site that we were at was very specious for my dog to run freely with his long leash. A lot of shade and space for everyone. We stayed right by the bathrooms. Showers have a push button so water pressure and temperature was not very great. The river was a great view and campground was big to walk around. Plenty of people coming through but a quiet neighborhood. Other than the train passing right by us, we enjoyed our time there.

The RV/pull behind spots here fill up VERY fast. This was no big deal for us since we went for a long tent camping weekend, there are plenty of sites if you are ok without all the hookups. The park has the river on one end and cold water springs all around the other side. There are restrooms which are well taken care of but no showers at the time as they were 'covid closed'. There are multiple playgrounds with grills and shelter, and tons of easy hiking for families with kids. We played in the springs when we stayed, relaxed and just walked the park. We had no neighbors at our tent spot.

This campground has a lot of fun activities from April 15 thru Oct 15. They have permanent sites and rentals. There is tent sites and rental campers also. Sewer, water and electric. Some weekly activities include canoeing, tubing down the Turkey River, swimming, fishing and paddle boats in the Lake, a splash pad for kids and occasionally a dumping tank for free, also miniture golf. There. Is a store and bar on the grounds as wellas a pavilion for use any time where they also have children's movies every Saturday night during season. New bathrooms with shower's and rentals for canoes and tubes for the River. Very family friendly and affordable.