Open water spreads past the awning at Lake Red Rock, and below the dam white pelicans loaf on a sandbar in the river. The Army Corps of Engineers counts it as Iowa's largest lake, more than 13,000 acres of water about 45 miles southeast of Des Moines, and the lakeside sites face straight out across it. Families come here to stay put, setting the rig up once and letting the week happen around it.
The Volksweg, a paved bike trail, traces the shoreline, so the kids can ride out after breakfast and be back at the site by lunch. Evenings drift down to the dam, where the pelicans and gulls work the river as the light goes. Pella, the Dutch town near Wallashuck, is the day off the water, and in spring Tulip Time is reason enough to make the drive.
Whitebreast, Wallashuck and North Overlook
Three Corps campgrounds are the ones families book first at Red Rock. Wallashuck is the pick when Pella is on the list, North Overlook has a shower house and its own access to the Volksweg, and Whitebreast fills just as fast on summer weekends.
Those weekends go early at all three, and sites reserve through Recreation.gov, so lock the site before you pick the rig. A trailer suits a week that doesn't move, and some owners in the Des Moines listings will tow one out to your reserved site and set it up, so nobody in the family has to tow. That's arranged listing by listing, never a standard part of the rental, and the campground's own rules still apply to whatever arrives.
Shoulder-season weekdays are the quiet version of the same trip, with open water and empty loops. When the big three are full, the same booking portal also lists Howell Station, Ivans and Fifield around the lake.
Des Moines has other overnights too. Saylorville Lake and the sandstone canyon road at Ledges State Park are written up on the Des Moines campervan page, which is also the better fit if the Red Rock site you land is short or the trip is just two of you.
Iowa State Fair camping in a rig
Every August the fairgrounds campground becomes a town of its own, motorhomes and fifth wheels lined up under century-old trees across 160 acres, a short walk from the Fair's buildings. The Fair counts more than 2,300 sites with full hookups and 734 partial ones, and the families who hold permanent spots keep them, with a waitlist that runs up to twenty years.
Only those permanent registered sites can be reserved for Fair time, which puts a rented rig in the first-come line starting the Sunday before the Fair. As of October 2026, the Fair's camping rules say those rigs will likely end up in overflow without utilities, where generators are allowed. That makes a motorhome with its own generator, a full fresh tank and empty holding tanks the right rig for Fair week.
That Sunday is a show in itself. Hundreds of rigs stage at gate 2 at 6 a.m. for the 8 a.m. release, and the open ground fills one rig after another.
Outside the Fair, the same campground makes an easy first night in town before the lake, with water and electric hookups from mid-April to late July and again from late August to mid-October. The smaller-vehicle version of Fair week is on the Des Moines campervan page.