Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Kentwood, LA

This park typifies “RV Resort” with multiple swimming pools(with swim up bars), café, lazy river, pool cabanas, putt putt golf, pickelball/basketball courts, a fitness center, game room, club house, amphitheater(with live entertainment), playground, off-leash dog park, gift shop, water craft rental, golf cart rental, and a water-based obstacle course(think Ninja Warrior type course). Be aware, some of these amenities have costs associated with them. For example, a cabana by the pool costs $85/day and water attractions are $25/day! We stayed the month of March and the park was about half full during the week with seasonal campers but filled to capacity over the weekends. 

All sites are 30/50 amp, full hook-up, with wifi and cable. There are pull-thru and back-in sites. Sites, roads, and patios are paved and level and come with a picnic table and fire pit. There are two and three-rig “buddy sites” which are great for camping with friends. Roads are wide and sites are angled for easy in and out. Each site has a picnic table and fire pit. There are two site types - “standard” and“premium” with the difference being the length of the patio and a $10/night higher price tag. Weekly, monthly, and seasonal rates are available and heavily discounted and there are discounts for Good Sam, senior citizen, and military. Our monthly rate reduced the nightly cost from $60 to $22. 

Reunion Lake has very easy and quick access to I-12 between Baton Rouge and Covington. New Orleans is about an hour’s drive away but the smaller towns of Ponchatoula and Hammond are ten minutes away. There is a Sonic and Exxon just outside the gate with walking distance and a grocery store is about three miles away. 

Although this is a nice park with lots of amenities this was not really a good fit for us and is crazy with kids on the weekends. We were a little miffed that we were assigned a campsite that management knew did not have working cable. As I was fiddling with the cable(for a couple of hours) other campers came by to tell us that cable had not worked in that site for a long time and management knew that. We were glad the manager agreed to move(and upgrade us to a premium site) but it two days after we checked in and were all set up. Our fire pit(and many others in the park) had trash in it. We never saw anyone clean out fire pits the entire month we were there. The weekend campers near us turned out to be pretty obnoxious with loud karaoke and radios playing all day even when they were not outside. On their behalf, they did turn the music down by quiet hours but it was so loud during the day that we didn’t want to sit outside. There were pieces of trash scattered throughout the park that never got picked up even as we watched staff drive by them every day. Small children were left unsupervised in the lazy river and did not abide by the parks rule to remain in tubes. Children were unsupervised on the basketball/pickleball courts and used the golf putter to hit rocks in the horseshoe pits. One bathhouse we went in was in need of some serious cleaning. 

This park has a lot of great amenities if that is what you are looking for. It fills up with weekend campers with lots of kids and barking dogs on weekends so there is not much peace and quiet. While it was a decent place to stay during the week, it got pretty crazy on the weekends.

This is my first stay at Paradise Ranch. I had pretty high expectations based upon their website and feedback from friends. Note: Apple Maps and RV Life GPS will route you to the old park entrance which is closed. The new entrance is about 200 yards further east along Hwy 48. The sign at the entrance is off the road and you could miss it if you dont pay attention.

Checking in, the lady gave me poor directions to my site. It was unclear where to turn after entering the gate and she routed me where Id have to back-in to my pull-through site.

A very hard rain storm came through as we were setting up. Had to go in the RV and wait out the rain. Afterwards, I noticed a number of the campsites and roads were flooded with a few inches of water. Some of my neighbors RVs were surrounded by water for a little while until it could drain away. Fortunately, my site did not flood.

The entrance road is concrete, but all of the roads within the park are gravel or dirt. Some sites have concrete pads, especially near the Lagoon. We stayed in pull-through campsite #P85 which was not shady and not very level. It was a gravel site with grass on either side. There was enough parking for my 34 ft TT and truck. Neighbors are close. The site included: picnic table on grass and fire bowl. Utilities: 20/30/50A electric in the middle. Water in the middle, good pressure. Sewer towards the front with 4 screw-on fitting. I know they area I camped in is newly expanded and only opened up a few months ago. Im sure it will improve over time.

Bass Lake (onsite) is beautiful. The BL campsites are shady. I would probably stay along the lake if I came here again. There is an area near the lake where you can see (and pet) the red stag deer. There are also some hogs wandering around the lake that you can pet.

The Lagoon area has a lot of shade, except for the pool, of course. The pool is large and also incudes a kiddy pool. We were disappointed to find the zip line that is mentioned on their website was not there. There was a good live band on the stage Saturday night. They also had a number of activities for the kids throughout the day. We enjoyed the water gun wars. Some of the camp staff also participate. If you stay in a Lagoon campsite, Id recommend one on the west side as they are a few feet higher in elevation than those on the east side. There was standing water around the sites on the east side after the heavy rain.

AT&T had 4 bars of LTE and Verizon 1 bar of LTE service. AT&T Speedtest: 298 Mbps down, 28 Mbps up. No WiFi.

Stayed 3 nights in July. Would probably stay here again, especially if a group of friends wanted to go. But, there are nicer RV parks closer to my home. (Paradise Ranch is about 107 miles from home.)