ThePewterPalace Our Love Affair with Avions

This FAM camp is on the property of the Red River Army Depot located in New Boston, TX.  We stayed here for 6 nights at the end of March 2025.  We will keep this as one on our TOP 5 FAM CAMPS to date!

Unique to this FAM camp is that it does not take advance reservations. It is FCFS, and our suggestion is that you phone them the day before or morning of your arrival to ensure space will be available for you.

There is no specific check-in or check out times. There also is NO restrictions on how long you can stay and you can just wing it day by day if you want and update your length of stay at the Country Store campground office and pay for your nights.  We originally planned to only stay 2 nights, but we scored such a beautiful site (#34). we went back to the office the next morning and paid for 5 more nights. Rates are $2 per night, but with our NPS Lifetime Senior Pass Luise has that saved is $5 per night!

Our site #34 had a 25x44ft cement pad, nearly level. FHU (50/30/20) and we essentially had the lake on three sides of us with our nearest neighbor about 100 ft away. The lake has some excellent fishing.

The camp store office rents pontoon boats, row boats, canoes, and kayaks. They even have fishing gear to lend and sell fishing permits for 1 day to a full season.

Staff was super friendly. The store carries bare essentials only. The main campground area where the CG has beautifully maintained cabins for rent as well as lovely log styled meeting buildings for weddings, receptions, lectures, etc. Staff tells us this section of the campground gets really busy in summer with families looking to cool off at the lake beaches.

The campground is over 8 miles deep into the Army property. It sits at the end of the Elliot Lake Reservoir, where there is a berm dam spillway that also connects over to a picnic area and Gravel Beach. Reminder this is a military base, so proper credentials to come on base are required. See our blog post on requirements here.

There are 4 main loops/roads to the campground. We recommend the first road on the left as you come to the campground area. These are sites for 30 to 38. Our site #34 sat at the base of the dead end road, so it had very little to no thru traffic. It was very quiet, laid back. Other RVs in our loop were clearly being used by workers for the Depot itself or retired military.

NOTE: While the lake looks nice st the beaches for swimming or floating we did see an alligator our first night there. It came into the small cove off the rear of our trailer and started coming up on shore. We could see it clearly but could not get a photo quick enough before it saw us and quickly went back in the water.

There is a sign on the campground road that does alert to alligators…they were not kidding. This sign kinda deflated Luise’s idea to inflate our floats!

At the entrance to the Depot is a collection of decommissioned military vehicles which of course, Kevin had to check out!

It should be noted that this campground is only 14 miles west of Texarkana, TX, which is a large retail regional hub for shopping, services, and entertainment. It is easy to access directly off Interstate 30, which is a very decent highway with some very nice rest areas.

Crossing from west to east, the AR Welcome Center is very nice, easy RV parking…and when we stopped, they were handing out free fresh brewed cups of coffee! There is a nice Arkansas sign for a photo op right in front of the building, too!

The town of New Boston is about 15 minutes from the base main gate. It is a small somewhat depressed area. It does have a Walmart, Brookshire grocery store, some chain retail and a few thrift shops. Other than being just off I-30 there really is not much to come here for other than R n R.

We truly loved this campground  and it felt so liberating to not have fixed check out times or fixed need for reservations. That made the entire stay feel so much more relaxed.

Happy Travels! For more reviews on FAM camps we have stayed at click this link and scroll towards bottom.