Martin Bay - Lake McConaughy SRA

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. 

Awesome Beach Camping 

We stopped there on a Wednesday as a one night stop while traveling so the campground was pretty empty. It was fun camping on the beach and the views of the lake were gorgeous! Highly recommend 4WD and airing down your tires if you are going to drive out onto the beach.