Best Tent Camping near Maryville, MO

Just car tent camped here with my fiancé and dog over the weekend. We had many camp sites to choose from because it’s back to school time in NE (timing, timing, timing)! Basic tent sights are first come, $15 a night. The park offered firewood ($6) and ice for sale. Lots of hiking trails with different levels of difficulty and elevation. Most drive up camp sites have outhouses nearby. We sometimes drove up to the group tent sites where they have clean bathrooms, running water and showers (need quarters for shower). We had a great time and enjoyed being surrounded by all the lovely trees. Staff were friendly and the park was clean. Only bummer is the steps to the “cave” is still closed.

My husband and I tent camped one night at this park. We arrived around 8 pm and even though the office was getting ready to close, the woman behind the counter was very kind and helpful. She helped us with finding our spot and with getting firewood. Our basic tent site was lakeside and had a fire pit and picnic table. The site was so well maintained it was hard to find small sticks for kindling.

The grounds have private bathrooms with toilets and showers. There are two nice playgrounds and a swimming pool. Most campers were enjoying fishing in the small lake. Kayaks were available to rent for a small fee. Kids enjoyed riding bikes around the flat roads.

This is a great spot off I-29 to set up camp and have a rest. It's also a good spot to take young kids fishing.

You can camp in one of several little inlets and nooks. It's a Fish & Game preserve with camping and fishing spots all around the lake. Many with picnic tables and most with vault toilets. It's on my top 10 list of best primitive/dispersed camping locations. Only con is the vault toilet at the inlet I camped in. It was unusable with fetus nearly to the top. I think some unscrupulous person put trash in it then other used it probably without knowing. Very bad etiquette! Be sure to bring your own camping toilet and/or check the vault toilet before setting up. I didn't see very many RVs but several vans, trucks, and cars were there. The wildlife is predominantly water fowl.

Stayed one night on Sept 4. Camped at site 35 in the non-equestrian campground; non-electric fee $15. Parked van on the grass at this site. Like nearly all of the sites in this campground, this site was close to the campground road. Overall, I felt that the campsites were all bunched together - offering no privacy and spacing between sites. The shower house was closed during our visit. Water was also turned off at the wayer pumps in the campground. There was one single vault toilet available for all of the campers; it was reasonably clean. Wayne, the campground host, was nice & helpful. There is a self-serve firewood station in the campground; cost is either $5 or $10, depending on the amount of wood you purchase. The campsites have a picnic table & metal fire ring. I wasn't too pleased with this campground, but I was very happy with the nearby hiking trails within the park. It's a pretty state park with hills & lush forest. The day use areas looked great. I recommend those traveling along I-29 to stop at this park - not necessarily for the camping, but for the hiking. Had some T-Mobile 4G service.

We stayed here so that we would be within walking distance of Brownville. It took a while to figure out how to make a reservation (you call the River Inn Resort). When I made the reservation, I was told there is no electricity, which is fine since we have solar. However, we were not told there are no tables, or fire rings... there pretty much isn't anything other than land. The land that is there is pretty rough as well. There were very large burs of some sort throughout the grassy areas, which made it difficult for our dog to go anywhere during our trip. There were also an unbelievable amount of gnats, but that is probably due to the proximity to the river. The people at the River Inn Resort, where you check in, were friendly and helpful. However, we would not stay here again.