Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Yorktown Heights, NY

Camp Gateway in Brooklyn New York is one of my favorite places to visit. I went to college in New York, and loved to get out of the busy city and go camping and be outdoors. Camp Gateway was always a place that I loved to go. It is pretty close to town-which is crazy because you feel like you are miles away. Camp Gateway does offer a lot of different activities for everyone. One thing I love to do is go kayaking and stand up paddle boarding. My girlfriends and I tried to do this once a month to get away from the city and school. Because you are so close to the city, you can plan outdoor activities as well as some activities in the city. My friends and I stayed 1 night in the campground, and the next day went to a recital show that took us 10 minutes to get to. You can also walk, hike or ride your bike along multiple paths- I have done the Fort Tilden trail (I just walked, but there were multiple people that passed us on their bikes). Within the campground they do have some fire pits- which my friends and I always use because we love cooking smores and hot dogs for dinner. A little further away from the campground, about 10-15 miles there is a place where you can do horseback riding, see the Statue of Liberty (which is gorgeous!), and there is a little beach area. This beach area is where I do my kayaking and stand up paddle boarding. Again, its not very far away...you can either drive there, walk or ride your bike. The road is paved, which is nice. I stayed here also with my parents, and I know my dad went golfing one day (I didn't go, but he said it was awesome)- and again that was only a 10 minute drive from our camping spot. This campground like I said, does offer quite a bit. Sometimes it doesn't really feel like you are "camping" because things are pretty close by, but it definitely is worth going to and trying.

We tried this campground without knowing what was safe and where to stay for visit New York City. It is located in Brooklyn and is little removed from everything. The sites are at Floyd Bennett Field which is an old airfield. The atmosphere here is eerily cool at the same time. You basically park and camp on the asphalt by the old hangars. No hookups at all but they do have a camp store and bath house. If you are tent camping, there are some grassy sites.

The campground is located right on Jamaica Bay so there were people fishing all the time from the seawall. At night, you could hear cars doing burnouts right next to us. To get to all the action in the city, we had to take a bus and then the subway. The travel was a headache but better than trying to drive in to New York City in our RV. One way to improve here would be to have some security at night as well as access to clean water and dump station. They remained locked most of the time for some reason.

The best part of this place was the free tour of Hangar B by some guys doing restoration of old planes (HARP). They had some great stories and gave us history of the planes on display.

Recently, we camped here for a week. We don’t ever post negative reviews like this. The last day, we experienced a violent attack by a very large and aggressive Pit Bull. The Pit Bull did not have a collar or a leash and was accidently let out of the RV to roam free and unsupervised. It immediately ran to our site(4 sites away) and attacked our dog that was tied at the time. The incident was unprovoked. While trying to save our dog, my wife and I were also attacked. The wounds were serious enough to require emergency transport to a hospital for treatment including stitches. All we could think of was what might have happened if our granddaughter had been playing with our dog. 

To put it mildly, their existing pet policy is grossly lacking. They never checked what breed of dog or ask to see documentation of shots when we were registering. Yogi Bear Jellystone Park needs to better manage their pet policy to address aggressive dog breeds and ensure the safety of campers. We camped there for seven days and saw multiple sites have more than one large dog, which in many places we’ve camped at would have been banned due to breed type or size. We have RV’ed extensively across the US and have never seen such careless enforcement of a pet policy regarding aggressive dog breeds. Seriously, think about avoiding this park if you have pets or small children.

Some things you should be aware of before booking: The office, playground, dog park, pool, laundry are located at the top of the hill. Camping spots are downhill, a good distance from the office and amenities. Trash is located off site in a pullout on the road you drive in on. There are 2 showers for women and 2 for men. Both are old and not well maintained or in our experience clean, either. In general the camping spots are not well maintained, weedy, un-level and picnic tables are weathered and warped. This resort campground is composed of mainly residents, the rules (we observed) apply to the overnight campers, not the residents. Children of the residents run free all day and past curfew in the evenings unsupervised. The setting is quiet, the views from the upper level are lovely. With some updating of bath facilities, cleaning and leveling of campsites, uniform enforcement of rules, Pleasant Acres could become a resort destination.