Pawnee Lake State Recreation Area / Lakeview Campground

Was on a cross country road trip. Site was clean and very open for me to play frisbee with the dog. Fire pits with grilling add ons seemed new. Lake was clean. Got in an swam with the dog in the morning. Everything seemed well taken care of. Would definitely stay again.

It was a very difficult place to find a camp. First you have to go to the office. Information at the entrance would be good idea. Lots of fish hooks and trash. Set up camp anyway while I cleaned. Then big horse flys covered my dog. I packed up and left

Doesn’t look like the northern campground at Pawnee Lake comes up in a search on this app, very specific to note my review is for the Lake View area that is on the north side of the lake. Pops up in google maps no problem.

This tends to be a quieter area, easy to head out later in the evening and still usually plenty of tent camping spots. I love this area because I camp close to the water, and can watch the sun come up over the water and trees. There’s an easy little put in for my kayak over here. Too bad that after May, the water is too overtaken with algae to hit the water.

That is so important to note at this lake - if you are camping with an animal/dog you may want to reconsider. Again, the algae here is very bad more months in the summer than good. Even once the warnings are taken down, it’s still thick with green algae and it’s harmful to animals. If you planned to swim I would caution you to re-evaluate.

Generally you’ll always be able to find an open spot here, so for a little more mellow atmosphere compared to the bigger Branched Oak lake just north, this is a great smaller alternative that is just outside Lincoln.

Also plenty of spots for Day recreation too - multiple swimming beaches and picnic spots. There’s only one spot that has a short walk form your car to the picnic area and it’s less than a minute, so you don’t have to haul stuff around.