Best Dog-Friendly Camping near New Madrid, MO

Worth the trip up from US 60 if you’re driving E/W, standard MSP rates and setup. There’s a campground on the lake and and a campground up on the ridge. We’ve stayed on the ridge twice, and on a weeknight or any night in the off season, you can nearly have the place to yourself. On a Monday in July, I counted 2 other campers in the ridge campground.

Close to several trails, and obviously the lake, for my Bootheel and Bootheel adjacent friends, this is a great spot close at hand.

For folks from away, look, from April to September, you’re gonna want electric so you can run AC (or at least a fan), Missouri humidity is not a joke.

We camped here for 2 nights on the weekend. The state park has 2 campgrounds. We stayed at the main one at the lake and near the visitor center. The campsites were extremely close together. Each of them had electricity and water. There were a few primitive sites at the end of our loop. The campground has 2 bathhouses with showers. You also have a little check in building. The staff was very nice and provided excellent knowledge about the area. They also rent out boats and sell some merchandise and ice. The boat ramp is right next to it. The lake is very beautiful. We saw pelicans, bald eagles, and herons. The campground is on a main road so you will hear traffic. If you don't want to cook, there are restaurants very close by. The area is very well maintained. There is even a little nature trail starting at the campground. The other short trails are within brief driving distance. The sunset from area near the boat ramp was spectacular. For our taste it was just way too crowded. We drove over to the other campground and it was much more quiet and less packed with RVs and tents. The disadvantage is that the driving distance to the lake and the town is much longer. If you are into fishing and bird watching, it is the place to be.

This campground had a lot of families, a simple but age appropriate playground (ages 5-12), and many spots with views of the lake. The bath house nearest our site (88) was not in commission, and judging from the webs and nature overtaking it I would say it hd been closed for a long time. The land is low so if there is heavy rain it will be soggy in many places. The site we had was spaced nicely from others but close to the main road. Lots of campers with dogs. Only one hiking trail on-site. We did choose one night to go to the resort restaurant (a fish house) next door to the campground (a quick walk even with small children).

We tried to get into an Arkansas park but they were full so we headed into Bootheel where we’ve stayed before. We called about 2 hours out and the only sites left were 30 AMP with water. GPS takes you to the campground right off I-55, but there are directions on their website that are better as far as which exit to take. Upon arrival, there are envelopes in a brown box with the available site numbers on the envelopes. We walked around to look at each site and decided on site 12. You complete the required information on the envelope, include your payment and drop it off in the drop box. The park prefers a cash payment but you can leave credit card information on the payment envelope. They do offer a Good Sam Discount. Site 12 was an easy pull through with 30 amp and water only. Parking was easy. Once set up, we found out we were blowing the breaker with only 1 aircon running, and it killed that side of the post. We plugged into site 11 on the shared post with the same results but this time we only blew the post breaker. We got a hold of the owner and she got the maintenance guy to us really quick. Come to find out, it was our 30 AMP surge protector that was the problem. Hats off to park management for a quick response. The last row has the 50 AMP FHU sites. The first three rows in the park are 30 AMP with a mix of FHUs and water & electric. We got 2 bars on AT&T and Verizon. The last time we stayed here last January they stated they were getting new park WiFi and this time the WiFi worked much better. There’s no cable but we got quite a few OTA channels. There was plenty of area to walk our dogs along the adjacent cotton fields. They also had a very nice laundry facility that was decently priced. There is quite a bit of road noise from I-55. We dumped on the way out at their dump station that only has a dump and no water for a cleaning hose. As we are based near St. Louis, MO area and traveling to northern Mississippi once a year for RV maintenance, this no frills campground makes a perfect overnighter.

If if you want to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and not be around a whole lot of other campers with kids, this is the campground for you. We stayed in the Air Park campsite number 4. There are two circles in this campsite with no frills except Water and Electric. The area is very flat and the bathhouse is within walking distance. The lake is absolutely gorgeous and Grey's bait shop offers boat rentals for $80 a day. There is a picnic table and fire pit at each campsite. Located 4 hours west of Nashville is in the upper corner on the Kentucky line in West Tennessee.