Lake Ogallala East Campground — Hotel in Ogallala

We stayed at the East Campground. Check in is at a place on the west side of the lake which is a pain. We got in after hours and there is no gate or booth here. We tracked down the camp host who tried to explain how to get to the check in place but we had better luck just asking a neighbor when we set up. The vast majority of places we stay have our name on a reservation tag at our site but not here. When we pulled in there was someone else in our spot we had already paid for so we had to straighten that out. Also there is a day use fee of $12 for out of state residents that was not mentioned when we reserved the site. Our spot was an electric plus site which looked on the website like it has water. It does not have water. In the middle of every 12 or so spots is a spigot that no hose is going to reach. Thankfully not that many people were here so we just backed up in the common area grass and filled our tank. There is no dump station in the east campground! Its way too far to even use a portable tank to go over to the west side campground. Since there was no dump station we decided to use the shower house. It was just ok clean but outside smelled awful due to the pit toilets and the showers were token operated. We stayed two nights and the wind never stopped blowing hard like 15-20 mph constantly. The old guy at the check in booth, who was one of two positive experiences we had said the weather all spring has been like this. The other positive is the view from the lakeside spots, very beautiful little section of the lake. Overall this is an outdated campground in need of renovations better signage and...

What you don’t know before you get there: 1) if you drive to the campground to check in, you’ll discover check-in is at the visitor center in a totally different location 2) if you read the site description which shows “Water hookup: Yes”, you’ll discover there is no hookup at your site and you’ll have to fill your storage tank at a spigot by the bathroom 3) if you assume the campground has a dump station as 99% of all campgrounds do, you’ll be wrong. You have to go to a totally different campground to dump your tanks 4) if you thought you got a pretty good deal on your campsite, think again. If you’re from out of state, expect to pay an extra $14 PER DAY for the State Park entrance fee 5) if you thought you could enjoy your view of the water outside or relax on their sandy beach, you’ll pay for it later with black fly and other insect bites. 6) We had a 50 amp site, but our breakers kept tripping , which didn’t happen in any of the other 20 campgrounds we stayed at on our trip. Perfect example of appearances can...

Awful experience. Its below a dam. When the lake spillway is in use (we were there Sept), smells like a latrine. However, no smell until after we'd paid. Pretty site on lake, but HORRIBLE fly problem. Also didn't notice this in time. By horrible, I mean in our closed camper we sent concentrated effort for the better part of the afternoon killing them. Somehow they were managing to get in?? although hadn't had this issue anywhere else on a 3 month trip. We are clean people, and this was truly nasty. If not getting in, they must have all arrived within the 5-10 min the doors were open when we arrived. Literally killed 200 or so. Yuck. Asked host if flys were this bad everywhere in park. Yes.

Couldn't go outside, and it was hot day.

If these problems didn't exist, it would be able attractive park with big shade trees and...