Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Big Springs, NE

We can’t say enough great things about Oregon Trail RV Park! While traveling through the area with our dogs, we had planned to stay at Lake McConaughy, but the campgrounds there weren’t as dog-friendly as advertised during the off-season. Thankfully, Luke, the owner of Oregon Trail RV Park, stepped in at the last minute and gave us a place to stay. This park was exactly what we needed—easy to find, impeccably maintained, and truly welcoming to both us and our pets. The RV spaces were clean and spacious, with plenty of room for our dogs to enjoy themselves. Luke’s friendly and accommodating attitude made the experience stress-free, which is priceless when you’re on the road. If you’re in the Lake McConaughy area and looking for a quiet, pet-friendly RV park with excellent service, look no further. Oregon Trail RV Park is a gem, and we’ll definitely be back!

Well maintained grounds, restrooms and showers are clean and easy to access. Unfortunately there are trees but none are mature enough to provide adequate shading. Gas and convenience , shopping, and food located close by. Cabela's Sydney store is across the parking lot with plenty of things to browse for. Easy on and off I-80 access for RVs, vans, and tent campers with a nice playground for the kids and running room for your pets. Easy access horse Corral 🐎 for the equestrian motivated individuals. Overall when the trees mature to provide shade this will be a 10 for passing through and short stay campers. There aren't any sewage hookups but it does have a black and Grey water dump. Electrical rv hookups are in each spot and there's plenty of green grace to go around.

It’s a wildlife refuge so it’s a little different to stay than say North Sterling Reservoir. For now anyways...

This is the perfect place to go to stay close to our home and not a long road home. You are able to schedule time with friends and head down and save your camping spot a day or two in advance.

Pets and fires are allowed. Just keep them on a chain and put them out!

They recently restricted up by the water camping which is awesome for parties that have lots of kids! They aren’t running into traffic unknowingly!

There is practically no beach but if you know that going into it, it’s fine!! You pick your passions!!

We stayed at the Little Thunder campground for 1 night while passing through Nebraska. Wow! The views were wonderful. We had to pay $8 for an entry fee into the park. Camping fees were paid at the campground using an envelope and a drop box. They offered full hookup sites 1-8 for $37/night and sites 9-42 are $32/night w/ electricity. We chose site 25 It has a nice sandy trail that leads you right to the beach.🏖 We arrived at 4:00pm on a Friday evening in September and there were plenty of sites to choose from. We seen a few campers & tents ⛺ boondocking on the beach, we wanted to go out there but after boondocking in Colorado for 5 days we wanted to enjoy the electricity hookup for the night. The cons to this site is there were tiny cockle burrs on the ground EVERYWHERE! Our poor dogs were injured immediately after arriving before we realized these cockle burrs were on the ground by then we had tracked them inside the camper, vehicle on our shoes..My family got them stuck in their hands and feet ouch! I wasn't a happy camper while getting those burrs out of the dogs paws and out of the camper and clothes. There are no signs stating dogs weren't allowed on the beach so we carried them down there where they were safe to walk around. I am not sure if these burrs are all over the campground because I did not leave our site other than the path to beach which didn't have these burrs. The wind had picked up out of nowhere and the clouds rolled in then sand was blowing hard everywhere so we retreated to our camper for the night. Be prepared there is alot of white sand here.

This was a great overnight stopover. Very nicely maintained campground. The bathrooms were very clean, nicely designed with a modern look. Tiny off leash K9 park for dogs. Snug campground surrounded by corn fields. The hum of the highway can be heard but isn’t bad at all. We would definitely stay here again. Hosts were very kind. We didn’t love that we were placed super close to others, nor did we live that the one tent campers were right next to us facing our sitting area when there were so many open spaces with better privacy with same site-types, and we arrived late enough in the day that choice offerings to others would not have mattered…but, KOA does charge an upcharge for site selection so perhaps the snug assignments are by design? First KOA experience. Overall we were pleased.

Heads up - 4WD or AWD vehicles necessary. I had my first opportunity to drive my car onto a beach, and it was the coolest experience. What's also a cool experience? Car camping on a beach! Although the campground shows on a specific part of the map, our experience would be similar to anyone camping along the beach of huge Lake McConaughy. The way it works here is there's a main entrance to the State Recreation Area, then you choose between a few designated campgrounds. One would simply access the beach from different points along the road, probably at each designated campground. We found access to this gem by the Little Thunder campground, via a 4WD beach access road. Campfires, fire ban permitted, are allowed. You'll want to bring your own wood, but there's kindling. Visibility here for star gazing is supreme. For the lake's size, there's accommodation for a lot. That said, there can be a lot of people on a a nice weather weekend. That's not as much a privacy concern since it's easy to give each campsite plenty of space, but at night if there's people with their boats out on the water partying or chatting, the sound will carry so bring some ear plugs for the night. Great place for regular beach stuff. I also saw a lot of water sports being enjoyed, from paddle boarding to water skiing. A cool thing one family did was they had used the main entrance to the state park area to load their boat into the water and had driven the boat and anchored it close by their beach side campsite. Well done Nebraska.

We were absolutely desperate to find a spot late last night so we figured we could trust a KOA to stop at in Nebraska. We’ve stayed at numerous other KOAs where they were conveniently/inconveniently next to the highway. Usually happy that it’s a close drive to get back on the highway but if you’re in a tent at this one it sounds like you’re about to get hit by a truck every 30 seconds. We pulled in around 11:30PM after driving for 11 hours and set up our tent and woke up before 5 to absolutely insane traffic going by. Also if we had realized it was going to be $45 for the site we would have found a hotel for another $20. Waste of money...should have risked just pulling over and sleeping on the side of the road somewhere. But at least the bathrooms and showers were VERY clean