Tall Grass Prairie National Park/Emporia,KS

[flamingo139]

Looking to camp with our TT for two or three days near Tall Grass Praier NP near Emporia, Kansas. Can anyone reccomend an RV park there?

[wr1032]

Last spring we stayed at a nice COE park at Burlington, has upper and lower rv sites, lower has shade trees.
http://campgrounds.outsideonline.com/l/6062/Dam-Site-Group-COE

[flamingo139]

Thanks tatest. We did stay one night in Cottonwood Springs. It is cheap ($16) with electric, water and dump station. First come, first serve, we were the only guests. Open, no shade, only 6 hookups, adjacent to town ball fields and pool.

[tatest]

Yes, small cities in rural Kansas often have low cost RV parks, used in season by traveling agricultural workers. Harvesting wheat even now in this part of Kansas.

I've never found a good list of these, likeTexas publishes, but I use them when I find them, usually low cost, clean, policed. I use the park at Coffeyville often.

If there's a city RV park in Cottonwood Springs, would definitely give that a try. Even if hosting a harvesting crew, there may be room for one more.

[TexasShadow]

several years ago, we spent the night at Strong City, KS, a little bitty town just south of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. We did not tour the visitor center, but it looked pretty interesting.
We stayed at a city campground at the junction of 177 and 50. it wasn't fancy, but
it was nice and quiet and mostly unoccupied at the time. I don't recall the fee, but it had to be very inexpensive or I would remember it. 🙂

well, I google earthed strong city to look and there's a little town called cottonwood springs just below it that has a park set up just like strong city. so it could have been cottonwood springs.

[tatest]

To visit that National Preserve, I would camp at El Dorado State Park, El Dorado Lake, about 50 miles SW of Strong City. That's assuming I did not have relatives in Wichita or Emporia to stay with, and did not want to do it as a day trip from home.

I recommend El Dorado because I am more familiar with that park, than the parks and campgrounds on Melvern Lake, about 30 east of the preserve. Eisenhower State Park is on Melvern Lake, but I don't know the park.

I wont recommend Emporia RV Park only because of its location along the highway, but you might find that kind of noise OK for an overnight stop or short stay. I sometimes stop that close to the traffic when I have to, but really prefer to be in a campground on a lake or stream where there might be trees and shade.

You might consider 50 miles to be some distance, but here we are accustomed to a 50 - 80 mile drive, each way, to go to dinner at a particular restaurant or to have an evening at the theater. It is a wide open spaces perspective. It would be like driving to Utica for the day, but the roads in Kansas are good and traffic moves well.