Best Glamping near Kingsville, MO

We camped the last weekend in September picking a late reservation where kayaks were available for our first tent test run were our main goals, which the site met. Kayaking was wildly available, due to the small lake and difficult launch, we can see why, but still very enjoyable. Site was very sizable for our tent, as most are suitable for campers. Lots of even ground, with decent distance. Facilities could do with some updates, but there were a number of bathrooms on site, spaced so no site seemed far, including the vault toilet and a lot of people masking up while going into bathrooms as well, which was appreciated. Current host was super nice and helpful to first timers. The tiny market has a number of random items, including a collapsible fork which was the only thing we hadn't overpacked, and wasn't overpriced. Fire pits on our site were adjustable, making grilling food easier to control.

Campsite Review

This is quite a large campground, meaning it can easily cater to tents, car campers, and RV heroes. Each site had electrical hook-ups, and there was a common combination shower & laundry area. My campsite, like all, came with a picnic table and a fire pit. I definitely recommend ear plugs if you are a light sleeper since the bugs were very loud all night. This is one of a few campgrounds within the State Park and I chose it since it offered lakeside views – which were very pleasant. There was also boat ramp access. I had a nice bike ride from the campgrounds to a nearby campsite area near Racoon Ridge on some well paved roads, capped off with some different lakeside views. There was a few places to fill up drinkable water and use bathrooms.

Product Review

I won the Saris Feedom Superclamp 2-Bike bike rack from a contest held on The Dyrt's facebook page, so I decided after a few weeks and trips with the product to do a review.

So far the bike rack has been up to Jasper National Park from Boulder, CO with stops along the way in Grand Tetons, YellowStone, Glacier, Banff and Lake Louise National Parks as well as a roadtrip from Boulder to Toronto, ON through Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan. I've gone on various road conditions over the 5,000+ miles as well as in various driving conditions (city, highway, off roading, and country).

This bike rack is incredibly easy to use. It is what I call "micro adjustable" just because the bike is clamped to the rack with a bunch of slide-able wheel wells and tire arms adjustable at any position. It works with any bike type, and is super easy to install - no special tools needed. Your car just needs either a 1.25" or 2" hitch. Watch the video review here.

I also love that it comes with included, retractable bike locks to secure your crappy or expensive bikes to the rack, then another lock between the rack and your car's hitch. I can't fully open my trunk (although it looks like the new model EX2 solves this bit of trouble) when I have bikes on the back, which I would complain about if this didn't take any longer than 10 seconds to get the bike's off.

I was also impressed how well the rack held up when I went up Shadow Mountain with 2 on the rack to do some riding around the summit with the Grand Tetons as my backdrop. The bumpy road and constant rocking could've bent the frame, but it held up beautifully.

Shout out to Saris for putting some good material around the wheel clamps to keep any harsh contact points against my bike. My bikes are cheap, but someone with anything they care about will appreciate the care they took to keep their bike protected.

I'll do an update on this review after a few more weeks with the rack for my overall impressions, and so far so good!

ROAD TRIP!

And so the road trip to Canada with my dog Sirius begins! I hit the road a little late from Colorado, so I knew as I was driving that when I finally made it to Missouri I was going to be rolling into the campsite in dark. Luckily, most of the drive east once you leave the Rocky Mountains is flat and uneventful so anything I would have seen in the daytime wasn’t much better than blackness. There’s some vast prairie landscape along highway 70, so it’s not the worst scenery to have, but I’ve driven from Colorado to Chicago a few time and I was trying to avoid another one of those endless farm field drives you can find along highway 80. Oh well, more of the same I guess.

When I was researching places roughly 9 hours from home, Harry S Truman State Park looked like a fun place to check out near the Ozarks if you’re on the road and passing through. There are lakes plenty large enough for any water activities you’re creative enough to think up, and the many campgrounds found scattered in the parkland offer a great balance of seclusion and variety. I picked Long Shoal since it was near the water and promised some nice lakefront views. I was going to have to wait until the morning to find out if that promise was one the park could deliver on though, as I didn’t arrive into camp until close to 2am. I parked, popped up the rooftop tent, popped in my ear plugs, and hit the sack. The next morning I awoke to a large lake and a kayaker enjoying their morning paddle. My morning was spent cycling the 4 miles just past the welcome center, where I enjoyed some more lakeside views from Racoon Ridge. It certainly was convenient to have a paved road the entire ride lined with dense forest trees. I wish I saw some deer along the way, but I can’t always get so lucky. The heat was quite strong, so it was a nice coincidence that the ride was shaded and hugged the water’s edge. I took in the lake views, but I didn’t have long to enjoy the scenery, as I had another 8 plus hours in the car that day, since I wanted to get to Kentucky and spend my real play time of the trip checking out the Land Between the Lakes Recreation area.

We stayed for a week in Crappie Cove. We have relatives in the area and have always heard folks rave about weekends at Hillsdale lake. We are spending 3 months this summer in our RV traveling the country and this was one of the stops along our way.

Pros:

• spacious site
• lots of trees/shade
• Mostly quiet location
• great playground for kids (though not shaded)
• each site had a table and fire pit
• far enough away from the city to see stars at night. :)
• Lots of different camping loops - from primitive to full hookups.

Cons:

• NEVER saw the camp host.
• not sure the showers/toilets were cleaned in the 7 days we were there. There were always puddles everywhere in the bathroom, so much that the heat made them smell very bad. One toilet would never seem to hold water. Most of the time it was empty/clogged.
• many many cars on some sites
• standing pond of water covered in moss/algae and caused lots of bugs/mosquitoes to be around
• Shower curtains had black mold all over them

This campground has great potential and we found some other bathrooms that were actually decent on another loop, so walked there daily instead of the one in our loop.

No one at the front booth when we checked in (middle of the afternoon on a Sunday) but we had already paid, so we just proceeded to our site, which was already marked with our name and dates. We went in and out of the park every day with no issue. On the 7th day of our stay, my husband is stopped and asked where his parking permit is. No one came by our site after we checked in. No one ever asked in 7 days, not even the camp host who should monitor that stuff. We had ONE vehicle on our site and everywhere we have ever camped, one vehicle is included in your camping fee. We were told we had to pay an additional fee per day for the vehicle we used to pull our camper to the site. AFTER we had been parking there a week already and it was the day we were leaving. None of the other cars in our loop had permits in their windows or windshields.

We have stayed at many state parks across the country and this is one of the worst, in my opinion. Camp hosts were non-existent until the last minute and then they were rude. Facilities are not well maintained (on the Crappie Cove loop).