MO City Park Binder City Campground At Binder State Park

It is not all that often that we find campgrounds worth writing home about, despite having stayed in about 250 of them in the past year. But this one is hard to beat. It is owned by Jefferson City, MO, but is located within the boundaries of Binder State Park (about 8 miles west of the State Capital). The reason we are here is for a planned visit to the State Archives and to visit a local Irish pub, and this happens to be one of the closer campgrounds from the point where we left the Katy Trail before heading south. But I suspect most people could find something of interest to them in the area.

We find that in general, the cheaper the campground, the fewer the amenities. And in most places it is hard to find many campgrounds with power for less than $20 per night.

It is a fairly small campground (I think 16 sites). But for $18 per night we get power and shared water. You need to bring your own hose splitter, and some of the hydrants aren't exactly conveniently located, but most are convenient enough if all you want to do is top off your fresh water tank. A few of the hydrants can be reached by our relatively short hose (but not the one on the site we've chosen).

The shower house/bathrooms are fairly new and AIR CONDITIONED. If you've every experienced the heat and humidity here in the summer, you can appreciate how nice that is! On the down side, they have push button showers, with no ability to modulate the temperature. And the toilet paper dispensers have those damn bars that keep the toilet rolls from spinning freely. But at least you are staying cool while the toilet dispenser whips you into a seething rage. ;-)

All of the sites have level concrete pads, so no need to set out the leveling jacks (unless you prefer to disengage the trailer suspension). Every site as a COVERED picnic table and a fire ring. I believe the power pedestals have 15 amp, 30 amp and 50 amp connectors. Most sites are well shaded, and have some degree of privacy from your neighbors, but with so few campsites, it is not like there are swarms of people milling about.

If you happen to be passing anywhere near by, this place is worth considering stopping at.

 

Nice. Thanks for the tip. Definitely within our range.

The blurb on AllStays has this mildly cryptic note: "pet friendly extra rules." Any notion what that means?

 

No clue on that. We had our dog with us, and there were just the usual rules of keeping her on leash and picking up after her. In fact, there were very few rules for this campground. It didn't mention whether it was OK to wash our rig, so we asked the camp host and he said it was OK. To clean the van and camper at a car wash any where near as well as we did there would have cost us $15, so it was almost like getting a free night's stay.