Lake Murphysboro State Park

Make no mistake, this place is absolutely gorgeous, so replete with natural awe that I’m forced to overlook the one, major downside and go ahead and grant the almighty full Cassiopeia.

A bald eagle watched over our afternoon for hours. Three herons and an egret took turns fishing and scaring away a flock of three dozen geese that just couldn’t find the peace and quiet they’d hoped for during their layover. Owls hooted lullabies and a woodpecker made for an early alarm clock. Fish jumped and bees buzzed and the pastel arrangement the sky made of itself was rivaled only by its reflection in this large, natural lake.

You can barely blame the size of the horseflies that greeted us, large enough to almost scare us away to try out the trailer camping area. But, setting up camp in the tent campground, the monster biters left us alone after their initial greeting. And though it was muggy and hot still a week into September, despite local foliage beginning its march into Fall, few bugs bothered us at all.

Still, there were downsides, as perhaps any a camping excursion requires. Minimal was the lathering of bird poop coating the picnic table beyond use. Worse was the rotting fruit, several full and rotting melons filling the fire pit to a point that, had we any desire to roast s’mores or tell spooky stories, they’d likely be of how we got sick all over the campsite from their gaseous goopy presence.

The absolute worst, however, was the multiple bag loads of garbage that could have been picked up. 45 minutes after putting our van in park, I was still digging water bottle caps and cigarette butts out of the grass. Beer cans, plastic jugs, endless cellophane and entire oily rags strewn about everywhere, despite there literally being two trash cans immediately across the street.

At $10 / night, the natural elements of this park are ever so worth it…but if we wouldn’t have paid, I would have barely been making minimum wage doing the park staff’s job. Then again, we never actually saw a single park ranger or worker at all…though the geese were polite enough to keep their own version of litter off the banks of the river and out of our campsite.

We stayed for a long weekend. It is an older campground but very pretty area. It is electric only but they have a decent dump station and easy water access. Very kid friendly and nice hiking trails. Also a very pretty lake.
I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because our site was definitely in need of some rock. Also the shower houses are old but plenty of hot water.

We stayed here for a few nights for the 2017 total eclipse, as this park was right in the center of the path. There are two entrances to the park... be sure to use the west one, labeled "Lake Access Road". There's no campground office, so we just checked in with the friendly camp host at the first site; no maps or other info are provided. The campground and roads are heavily wooded (very little sun) but we had no issues with branches hitting the motorhome. Sites are electric only, with some 50A and some 30A. Our site had 50A electric and worked great even though the park was 100% full and it was 90+ degrees out. The back-in sites along the lake are mostly for shorter rigs, though a few will fit bigger rigs. The pull-throughs in the center (like ours, site 32) were longer. Our 37' motorhome and tow car just fit, and our site was level. A 45' motorhome would fit if you parked your tow car in the overflow parking lot. There are two water spigots in the campground, but the one we were sent to by the camp host on our way in required about 50' of hose to reach. We filled our tank and then moved on to our site. The other spigot is right at the campground exit, so would have required doing another loop. There are no sewer connections, but the dump station on the way out was decent, though on a steep uphill slope. There are two pairs of vault toilets in the campground. There are showers a mile away at the park concession area, but we took a look and decided to take navy showers in the RV instead, since the showers were old, not very clean, and had no temperature control (push button and go). The park is dog friendly and the campground area is pretty good for dog walks, and our dog went for a short swim in the lake. Lots of fishing going on too. Verizon and AT&T both worked well. We'd stay here again for a few days if we need to return to the area.