Osage Cove Campground

The ticks are HORRIBLE in the campsites! The swimming beaches are still closed. The person at the Corp office was not knowledgeable about the swimming areas If they was opened or closed. Sent us all over the area just find that are no swimming areas open on Kaw Lake! There are not enough water facets for the number of campsites. If you have Verizon cell service, you are out of luck!

We stayed for one night late in March. I guess it was still considered off season because a whole giant beautiful section of the park was closed, which was annoying since the one open loop was so crowded. Granted, it was a weekend, but for how busy it was, the other loop really should have been available. Only a couple sites were left, neither of which were very level. It’s obviously a very popular, family friendly park. There were lots of kids running around. Lots of dogs. Also lots of adults partying loudly late into the night. I hate to sound like a grinch but I also hate when quiet hours aren’t respected. The bathrooms weren’t very clean. By morning there were two birds stuck inside the women’s, flying around wildly enough that I was scared to go in. The park was really pretty so I’d consider staying again for that reason, but I’d probably go on Monday or Tuesday next time.

This campground is showing it’s age, but we really enjoyed our early season stay here. We stayed here the first week of April 2019 and during the week there was only one other family camping in the entire huge campground.

The camp hosts, Army Corps volunteers and gate attendants were all tremendous people and we enjoyed visiting with them on our walks around the facility.

We were in site #80 which is perched about 20 feet above the lake, but it was an easy walk down to the shoreline for fishing. The site itself was not very level and required two full sets of the lego block levelers to get our 25’ rig all squared up. And we chose site 80 after a quick drive around because it looked the most level of the sites on the water. Which leads me to my comments on the age of the facility. The campground could use some professional-strength love and money from the Corps. The volunteers have been providing great upkeep, but they need some heavy equipment to come in and do some earthwork to level many of the campsites. The latrine and shower facilities could also use some updating as the porcelain fixtures, walls and floors are showing decades of wear.

But HEY! You are camping after all, so that’s why I gave this place 5 stars. The camping, fishing, hiking, wildlife viewing and relaxation opportunities are why you go camping, and this place satisfies all of those requirements admirably.

Cell coverage was between 7 and 5 Mbps down and about 3 Mbps up for both ATT and Verizon. While not blazing fast, it was adequate to check some emails.

Note that there are water spigots spread throughout the campground and are not dedicated to any specific site. And maybe this is tied to the age of the facility, but they all seemed to be positioned on the wrong side of where you would want them to be in order to fill your tank. Since there was almost no one else in the campground, we just went the wrong way down a one way street so we could use one of the spigots, but that may not be practical when the place is more crowded. I’d recommend making sure you have at lease 50’ of hose to ensure you can fill up. The camp host said people will bring 100’ of Hose and splitters so they can ‘hook up’ to spigots from their sites. Also note that there is a spigot at the dump station, but it is non potable water.

Supposedly built in the '60's, narrow roads in, sites have a managable slope, sun shelters, great views of Lake Kaw. All sites in this group (by the water) were well spaced. We were there two days after Easter and only three campers in our loop. 30 amp elec.,water near some sites, dump station and a boat launch nearby.

COE campgounds one of America's great bargains for we geezers. Sill a great bargain for all others.