Bottomland hardwood holds the humidity close to the ground. On the Chickasaw Bluffs the Mississippi stays mostly a sound and a gap in the trees until an overlook finally gives you the river. You sleep with that forest over the van, on an improved loop in the same woods as the walks. Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park keeps the campground on that forest floor.
Walks follow the hardwood down off the bluff, where the air gets heavier and the river feels closer. You climb back to the loop in the same woods you sleep in. Poplar Tree Lake is the boat water at that loop, a still surface in the trees.
Summer in that bottomland is sticky, and mosquitoes come with the trees, so the van night is closed windows and a fan. The main campground runs water and electric on its RV sites, with sewer on several of them and a dump station for the rest. As of September 2026, One Way Road past the campground is closed because of erosion.
A Memphis trip that wants woods before the city sleeps here first. You wake in hardwood, walk or boat, and go into town when you are ready for Beale Street. The other first night is inside the city.
T.O. Fuller State Park
Inside Memphis the campground is a shaded hardwood loop at T.O. Fuller State Park, and the park's own trails run from that loop to the Chucalissa mound site. You walk from the vans to the archaeological site without getting back on a highway.
Sites have water and electric hookups, some of them long enough for a big rig, and the stay limit is two weeks. If you need more sleeping space than a van, look at RV rentals in Memphis.
Beale Street and Graceland
Beale Street is neon on an entertainment strip you park and walk. You come into town for that strip, leave the van, and spend the evening on foot. Graceland is the gates, a separate parked day you do in daylight.
Graceland also keeps an RV park with full hookups next to that visit. It is an overnight option attached to the gates.
You do not sleep on Beale Street. Walk the strip or the gates, then go back to a pad at Meeman-Shelby, T.O. Fuller, or the Graceland RV park.
Shelby Farms Park is trails, the Greenline, and boat rentals, a green day in town. There is no camping.
At dusk the Big River Crossing deck lights up over the Mississippi, with the Memphis skyline behind it. Pedestrians and cyclists share that deck, a river crossing you walk from the Memphis bank toward Arkansas.
Reelfoot Lake State Park belongs to the rest of Tennessee. If you keep going south, Mississippi is the handoff, with Tupelo just over the line, and east it is Nashville.
