On Clay County Fair nights in Spencer, the grandstand roar rolls across the grounds to the rows of parked rigs, and the midway lights keep turning long after the kids are in their bunks. Mornings start at the livestock barns, with corn-dog smoke already drifting from the gate. The fair opens the second weekend of September and runs through the following Sunday, and this corner of northwest Iowa plans its September around it.
A motorhome earns its keep in the middle of a fair day. When the youngest needs a nap and everyone needs a break from the crowd, you have your own shade and your own fridge to go back to. It's there again at night when the grandstand lets out and the whole fairground is walking home at once.
Fair week is also when rigs and pads get scarce together. Families headed to the fair are shopping for the same motorhomes and the same sites anywhere near Spencer. Book the place the rig will sleep first, and set the rental dates around it.
The Clay County Fairgrounds campground off-season
Outside fair week, the same grounds on the north side of town, off Highways 71 and 18, turn into a quiet in-town campground. It runs April through October on about 15 acres with room for upward of 800 camping units, split into sites with utilities and sewer, utilities only, or none at all (Clay County Fair, as of October 2026). There are no reservations. You pull in, pick the tier you need, and pay by phone or at the Administration Office in the Events Center. Because it needs no booking, it's an easy first night for a week that ends up at the lakes.
Marble Beach and Gull Point on the Iowa Great Lakes
North of Spencer the prairie breaks into the Iowa Great Lakes. For a family, the trip up there is a parked week at one of two state park campgrounds with the power on, and the lake is where the days go.
Marble Beach State Recreation Area runs along the Spirit Lake shore, and it's the busy one. Iowa DNR calls it the largest campground in the Iowa Great Lakes and one of the most popular in the state. Its paved loops hold full-hookup sites with 50 amp electric and water, 50 amp electric-only sites and non-electric sites, with a dump station in the park and an additional North Campground on 240th Avenue.
Gull Point State Park sits on West Okoboji and is the shadier of the two, with paved roads under old trees and a lodge the Civilian Conservation Corps built in the 1930s. Sites there have electrical hookups, and the park has a dump station. The rig runs on shore power all week, and you empty the tanks on the way out.
Both campgrounds are 100 percent reservable and require a reservation through the Iowa State Parks online system (Iowa DNR, as of October 2026). Lock the lake site before the rig. Arnolds Park and the rest of Okoboji by day are covered on the Iowa campervan page, and that page also suits a lake trip that's just the two of you in something smaller. For Iowa's Corps lakes and the State Fair in a rig, see the Iowa RV page.