The water in Big Bone Creek smells like sulfur before you see the seep, and the bison are already in the field when you reach the boardwalk. You watch them from the Bison Trace, close enough that people drop their voices, while the spring still bubbles in the streambed, the same lick that pulled mammoths and mastodons into the mud. Behind the visitor center, a diorama pit holds the mammoth and mastodon bones this mud preserved. The lick is a Lewis and Clark Heritage Trail site for that Ice Age story, and a trail marker stands on the same ground as the spring.
The campground is next to that field, and you book the site before you book the van. Book through Kentucky State Parks on ReserveAmerica, where a fall-color rate applies on October weekends, as of September 2026. You come in on KY-338, Beaver Road. Summer humidity in this valley is thick, and nights stay sticky.
The Ark Encounter at Williamstown
You see the 510-foot timber hull from KY-36 before you see a parking lot, 51 feet high with three decks on a Grant County hillside. The public entrance is I-75 exit 154, and some map apps mis-route, so that exit is the one to type.
There is no campground on the property. Lodging on the unique-stays page is hotels and short-term rentals, so the van stays at Big Bone Lick and you day-trip the ark. A parking pass gets you onto the shuttle to the Welcome Center.
The Roebling Bridge and a Cincinnati day
You walk the Roebling Suspension Bridge on a wooden plank deck, Cincinnati's skyline framed in the wire cables. The bridge opened in 1867, and Kentucky bought it in 1953. Roebling Point is the Covington neighborhood at the Kentucky end of that walk, and a Reds or Bengals night is when those streets fill for the game.
You come back to the Kentucky parks to sleep, and the van stays at the campground during the game. The Ohio side of the trip, including where a van actually sits in Cincinnati, lives on the Cincinnati campervan page.
General Butler State Resort Park at Carrollton
From the hill at General Butler State Resort Park you look down on the point where the Ohio and Kentucky Rivers meet, lodge above Butler Lake and campground loops on the same slope. Saturday nights land here when people want the confluence and a resort loop, and weekends fill with rigs looking over the water. The campground has 109 sites with utility hookups, and ReserveAmerica keeps those loops open all year. If you need more sleeping space than a campervan gives you, Kentucky RV rentals cover the same parks.
Kincaid Lake State Park is the quieter lake night when Butler's loops are full. The lake is 183 acres, wooded, with 84 RV sites plus primitive spots tucked into the tree line along the shore. Red River Gorge and the Daniel Boone National Forest are the next range south, and that trip lives on the Kentucky campervan hub.