Best Tent Camping near Excelsior Springs, MO

Camp host was friendly. Very few primitive sites so we tent camped on an electric site. Clean facilities.

We camped in one of the walk-in tent sites and loved it! Plenty of space between us and neighbors, nice and quiet. Plenty of shade, nice hiking trails, and the shower house / amenities were nice.

Watkins Mill SP is located near Excelsior Springs, MO. It’s a bigger state park and it’s heavily shaded. Lots of campsites and hiking! The lake is “ok” but left little to be desired. The lake is often closed to swimming due to e-coli due to the large goose population. It’s also smallish for kayaking but doable. Nice park for camping and quiet!

We stayed in primitive site #3 - fairly close to neighbors, but with some berms/hills between it still felt relatively private. Site didn’t have a ton of level tent sites, but was otherwise in good shape.

Fall foliage was gorgeous this past weekend, and we thoroughly enjoyed the woolen mill tour at the adjacent state historic site.

Shower and restroom facilities seemed adequate, though more dated than other similar state parks in the area. Serviceable but not immaculately clean.

Easy to reserve online, but the camp registration office was closed when we rolled in right after 5. The tent campsites are just a small patch of turf, but they do have tables and a nice fire pit. It was a little noisy as everyone was on top of each other and we did get a little bit of sewage smell at our site. Pool and mini golf are awesome!

There are mixed RV and tent camping sites, including primitive and walk in sites. You can get water and electric at most sites. Each campground has an iron fire ring with a grill attached.

There are nice hiking trails. Trails are well marked. There three levels to choose from based on distance.

There is also a small lake to fish or swim in. The lake for it's size, had some nice fish.

The community shower and bathroom houses are not air conditioned. The floors are slab cement, but the park staff clean them daily.

Overall, I think that campgrounds are decent.

Campground is great overall, with a walkable trail just past the showers, clean restrooms and easy to access sites. There are only 3 basic tent sites, making it hard to nab. #4 had a decent amount of privacy, however most other electric sites do not. As an electric site, there was not a lot of ground space for tents, we settled on gravel with reflectix to buffer the ground. Check in was easy, and in walking distance. Site was pretty noisy, even after hours, a few kids running around with speakers on blast definitely were less than optimal.

Let's Share COVID and a campfire song. When we booked a tent site in the KOA we didn't expect much but assumed it would work for the night while driving across the USA.  Upon arrival we were a little put off by being stuck with several other tents in a field and noticed we were expected to share our fire ring with the tent next door... this was not ok with us and we left promptly and snagged a nice spot in the nearby Blue Springs Recreation Area. Traveling during summer 2020 has been interesting and to expect strangers to share a fire ring and be crammed very close during a pandemic is not only careless but not fun. UGH

This campground is a pretty standard state park campground. All of the usual amenities; showers, laundry and electric sites if you want them.

The tent sites all consist of a fire grate with a swing away grill, paved parking spot and a predetermined tent spot covered in mulch.

The majority of the sites are next door to each other and right of the road. However, there are 4 walk in sites that get you away from the majority of the campground noise.

The main issues are the usual; noisy neighbors, extremely noisy and inconsiderate rv campers and an Interstate less than a mile away.

If you're looking for solitude, this does not provide it, but if you just want to sleep in a tent and have a campfire this will probably be fine for you.

We booked a site along with a couple of family members and the website for this park is ancient. Couldn't get anything booked online because the website wouldn't cooperate, save yourself time and just call the campground once you've looked at the map and chosen where in general you want to camp at. 

Tent sites are okay sized, and many are close to the water. Not a lot of trees for shade, so bring a shelter for some relief from the sun. 

The camp store sells wood and everyone was extremely friendly. There's a swimming beach nearby that you will have to drive to but it is included in the stay! No alcohol is allowed at the beach.

My husband and I tent camped overnight at Wallace State Park. Woodsy tent camping sites were spacious and private. Large camping pads are lined with wood chips and are comfortable enough to sleep on without an air mattress. Covered picnic tables have an extra shelf for storage convenience. Even after setting up the tent and camping chairs there was still enough room for lawn games or for little ones to run around.

Wildlife was abundant in the evening. We saw many deer, frogs and squirrels. At dark, nature sounds were unbelievable with songs of bullfrogs, owls, and flying creatures of all sorts. Be sure to bring bug repellant.

Campground 1 had clean vault toilets, but the bath house near Campground 2 was even better. Showers were clean and in their own stalls with locking doors, shelves and ample hooks. The water got nice and hot and the shower heads were even and held good pressure. This bath house was seriously the best one we have ever visited and we have used dozens.

For entertainment, there was a bustling playground, winding nature trails, horseshoes, lake swimming, and fishing. There was also a well kept laundry house with a dishwashing sink attached. Campground hosts and park rangers were friendly and busy keeping the park in great shape. Overall, this is a really nice place to camp!

Gear Review: Lighthouse 250 Lantern and USB Power Hub We decided to try out our GoalZero lantern instead of our usual larger lantern. The lantern is compact enough to fit in a small bag with other electronics and is very light in weight. This saved us a little extra room which is a bonus since we take all of our camping trips in a tiny little Prius C. The Lighthouse 250 would be a good contender for bringing along on a backpacking trip, but you would want to pad it with some kind of protection as it seems that some parts might not hold up to a lot of banging around.

We used the lantern 2 nights in a row without charging it and the battery life indicator still had over 1/4 of its power left. On this same charge, wee tested the phone charger by hooking up an iPhone 4 to charge for 10 minutes with the light on full turbo. The 10 minute charge boosted the phone's battery 12%. The hand crank charger was a little awkward, but would be sufficient in a pinch. Had we needed more power, we could have easily plugged the attached USB cord into our car charger. We don't usually pony up for electric sites, so on extended excursions, the Nomad 7 Solar Panel is a gadget we would consider purchasing.

The directional lighting feature of the lantern came in handy for having dimmer light closer to sleeping times and brighter light for reading/boardgames in the tent. In the end, we will definitely bring the Lighthouse 250 lantern with us on future trips, and will leave our bulky older lantern at home.

Getting to the state park off I 29 and through the countryside was easy as the route had Weston Bend SP signage. We followed the SP signs to the campground(CG) where the gate was not manned so we headed to get water, but someone was sitting in the dump station waiting for another person to arrive so we went around this one-loop CG to see if there was a convenient spigot. There are spigots but with a larger rig, you will block the road, and/or you will be on a hill. We went back around and the person moved so we could get water. After that, we headed to pull through site 28 with electric(50/30/20 AMP) only. The site is long but has a 1/4 moon turn so we had to pull back around to get better positioned on the pad so we could disconnect our 39’ 5th wheel and F450 for our 3-night stay. There were tree branches overhead that we could not avoid. RVers next to us in site 30 had just arrived as well and were having trouble getting their travel trailer unhitched and leveled due to the pad’s slight incline and unlevel asphalt. They got their trailer positioned so they could get somewhat level. We got a solid two bars on both Verizon and T-Mobile. Due to our proximity to Kansas City, we got a lot of OTA channels. A satellite connection would be iffy in most sites here due to the number of mature trees. The trees in a lot of sites would also scrape the top of larger rigs. There’s a variety of sites with most being good for regular trailers versus tall rigs, and tent sites. They have a nice shower house with 1 washer and 1 dryer both for$1.50. There are also vaulted toilets here and there. There’s a 1.7-acre fenced dog park that includes one large area for large dogs and two other areas with one dedicated to smaller dogs. The dog area is at the front park entrance away from the campground and it would be a long walk to get there, so we drove up. There are a lot of hiking trails here plus an old tobacco barn that’s worth a look.

On the way back east after spending 2+ weeks on the road, we desperately needed a place to set up our tent and lay down for the night before continuing on. We found this little gem and it wasn’t very far off the “main” road. Basically in the middle of nowhere we found this spot and were able to easily set up our tent, then leave in the morning without seeing another person or being bothered by anything. No facilities, except a small bathroom that was closed, but it was exactly what we needed.