Casino Queen RV Park

We've debated staying at the Casino Queen RV Park many times, and we've always decided against this campground. The Casino Queen is in East St Louis. East St Louis frequently tops most dangerous city lists. But, it is also just across the river from downtown St Louis. We had the cleaver idea of staying at Casino Queen, getting a great campground view of the fireworks, and spend the weekend in St Louis, How did this adventure play out?

The campground was nicer than we expected. To be honest, we had extremely low expectations! It is located in the back of the overflow parking lot of the Casino and is fenced off from the rest of the property with a gate. We stayed on the north half of the campground and found these sites to be snug, as are the roads between the sites. The campground was only one third full, but we could have imagined a situation where even pulling a small rig like the Cricket would have been challenging. On the south side, the sites and roads were far better equipped to handle a larger rig. 

The campground had a nice playground, a fine bathhouse, and paved roads. It wasn't really staffed, but was very frequently patrolled by Security, whom also doubled as a shuttle to the casino, hotel, campground, and public transportation. Importantly, we felt safe staying here. We felt safe letting the kids ride scooters all around the campground. 

And the fireworks? From just off our site, we had a great few of the Arch. But just outside the campground was a large hill. We took our chairs up the hill to watch an unobstructed view of the St Louis fireworks display. Although the show was slightly less impressive in comparison to being under the Arch, this was none-the-less a great way to see the fireworks,

There were minor challenges that we didn't like, but also were not surprised by them. The campground wasn't quiet. Our site was next to the shuttle stop, and sometime after 2am, a shuttle let out a large chatty group that had been out having fun for a long time, At 3:47am, the garbage collectors arrived to empty the dumpsters, which were also not too far from us. Bottom line - we would visit the campground again, but would maybe stay further from the bathhouse as this was ground zero for the action i.e. noise in the middle of the night, This is a good option for seeing fireworks during Fair St Louis. Just be alert if you venture into East St Louis.

We got an early start to the day and visited the Tower Grove Farmers Market, We loved this market and enjoyed a coffee, a kombucha, and a chocolate. After bento boxes for lunch at Midtown Sushi, we headed into Forest Park. We intended to visit the zoo but got too late of a start and no parking was available. We decided to go for a ride in the park. We grabbed the scooters and a rental bike, and enjoyed exploring the park for the afternoon.