Best Dog-Friendly Camping near El Dorado Lake

On our road-trip to Utah, we dreaded having to camp in Kansas, until a friend recommended this spot. This stunning little lake is a free site with plenty of fire rings right next to a road. PERFECT car camping. And even has a clean little bathroom. Stunning views of rolling hills and cattle. Places to fish. A little trail that leads up a small hill. Stunning stunning stunning views of wildflowers and rolling hills. Great sunrise and sunset views! Phenomenal place to stop if you’re driving through Kansas. A bit of a detour from I-70, but totally worth it.

We stayed in mid-October and while chilly, we had an amazing time. We chose the Quarry Bay Area, which is located on the far side of the dam from the rest of the park. It's about a 5-6 minute drive back to the main park area which is were you'll need to pay fees, but in our opinion, very much worth the drive for the seclusion. The spaces on this side of the park are very spread out and create a lot of privacy. 6 of the sites in this area (401-406) have 'mushroom' shelters that provided a nice area to prep food and escape a brief rain shower. Our location (site 405) also provided direct access to the Cat Claw trail head, was near the end of a dead-end road, and had great views of the lake framed in by a very well kept grassy area and mature trees. Cell service on Verizon was consistent, allowing basic web browsing and social media, but loading video was spotty at best. T-mobile service was a step down from Verizon and varied between 1 bar and no-service based on where you sat at the site. Not a big deal for us as we were there largely to disconnect, but if you need to entertain kids, make sure you download content before leaving home! We had a wonderful time and look forward to returning again!

You'd think the Big Oak Campground in El Dorado State Park would be amazing. It's shaded with huge trees, nice sized sites some of which are very spread out, a quick walk to the swim beach and a quick drive to put your boat in the water. Unfortunately these pluses are far outweighed by the negatives. First the bathrooms were horrible. I realize they are older restrooms but they smelled awful, they were never obviously cleaned, the showers were not even a tiny bit private, the door to the restroom was broken and had to be propped open with a tree branch. Just over the bridge at the swim beach they were worse and some of the doors in the women’s room were missing. Yuck! Secondly basic campground rules were not enforced at all. The site across from us easily had 30 people camping and were up until 4am with loud music and a bright light on. I’m not kidding, my daughter was up around 3 to use the restroom and we walked by twice. The family in the site next to us had at least 4 cars and 2 tents set up outside the site on the walking path in addition to their two tents in their own site. The dog free swim beach had dogs on it. We camp with our dogs, one of which loves to swim and even I don’t want dogs on a public beach. Our camping weekend was negatively affected by poor camping etiquette and a sever lack of basic rule enforcement. We won’t be back to El Dorado State Park Big Oak campsite any time soon. Cross Timbers and Fall River are much better!