A lakefront pad in Grove looks straight out over the long sheet of Grand Lake, blue going to copper as the sun drops and the last boats head back to shore. Boaters here hang on to a site the entire season, and a family in a motorhome gets the short version of that habit, a week parked on the shore with the air running and the lake right there. The loop works up the shoreline from the dam over a few state park nights, then the unpacking stops for good.
Grand Lake state parks from Pensacola Dam to Grove
The first night belongs to the Cherokee Area, below Pensacola Dam, where the spillway churns white against the concrete and the lake stretches out glassy above it. Its Grand Cherokee campground has full hookups with 50-amp service, an easy place to level the rig and get everyone settled before the lake days start. If you're leaving Tulsa late, Grand Cherokee or Honey Creek also works as the very first stop.
From the dam the loop heads up to Twin Bridges near the top of the lake, where the sites have water, electric and pull-throughs, with a dump station behind the office. The next night drops back down to Honey Creek on the Grove side, open all year with pull-throughs, water and 30 and 50-amp electric and its own dump station. Both are water-and-electric nights, so empty the tanks on the way out of each and the resort week starts clean.
The rest of the week is a lakefront RV resort in Grove. Days go to the water, evenings go to the grill and the sunset, and nobody breaks camp until it's time to head home. Sites come with full hookups at 20, 30 and 50 amps, in pull-through and back-in layouts, so the air conditioning carries everyone through a July afternoon.
Lock the lake sites before choosing the rig. The sites you get, and whether they're pull-throughs or back-ins, decide how much motorhome makes sense for the week. A couple traveling light, with Bernice State Park as their Grand Lake night, will find that trip on the Tulsa campervan page.
Tenkiller State Park and its clear water near Vian
Tenkiller's water is clear enough that divers go down to a sunken airplane fuselage and a school bus on the bottom, with visibility out to 28 feet on a good day. Up top it's a quieter lake week than Grand, especially in spring and fall, with the rig parked at Tenkiller State Park near Vian and the afternoons spent at the swim beach.
Shady Grove and Fox Squirrel are the campgrounds with full hookups at 30 and 50 amps, and the park keeps two dump stations. Reservations are required and made online, so the Shady Grove or Fox Squirrel site gets booked before the motorhome does.
Float trips on the Illinois River at Tahlequah, the waterfall at Natural Falls State Park, Keystone Lake west of town and Osage Hills State Park are written up on Tulsa's campervan page. The Oklahoma RV page lays out the rest of the state's lake country by region.
Expo Square RV Park at State Fair time
When the Tulsa State Fair is on, the midway lights come up over the fairgrounds in east Tulsa every evening, and Expo Square RV Park puts the rig right on the grounds. Every site has sewer, water and 50 or 30-amp electric, with the RV entrance at Gate 5 on 15th Street.
Fair month is when the park's sites and the motorhomes in the Tulsa listings get claimed by the same families, so the site and the rig compete for the same dates and both go early. The rest of the year the park makes an easy first night for a rig collected in Tulsa, a chance to run the slides and test the hookups before heading out to the lakes.
