Tall Grass Prairie National Park/Emporia,KS

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

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.

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.

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.

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.