2016 - Petit Jean State Park and William Bankhead National Forest

We haven't gone camping nearly enough this year.

In March, we went to Mississippi River State Park.  Loved it.

In June, we camped at Petit Jean State Park for several days.  I am writing this from memory because I forgot to blog about it.

Petit Jean was a pretty nice park, but not our favorite.  It has two campgrounds suitable for RV camping.  One has water and electric hookups and is nicely shaded, and the other has full hookups but many of the camp sites are not shaded.  There are trails to hike (we are not hikers) and boats to rent for fishing/kayaking (we don't do much fishing and neither of us have ever even sat in a kayak).  Aside from those activities, there isn't much else to do in the immediate area.  We took our 11-year-old grandson with us, and he was bored out of his mind much of the time.

The park is on top of Petit Jean mountain.  The road to the park is so steep that our truck almost over-heated pulling the camper up the mountain.  Not far outside the park is a car museum, which our grandson enjoyed for about 15 minutes (though it is a really nice museum).  We were stumped for things to do.  On day 2 of our trip, we drove down to the closest town to buy our grandson a bicycle so that he would have something to do.  Toward the end of the trip, we drove to Mountain View, Arkansas for the day.  We toured Blanchard Springs Caverns, but the highlight of the day for our grandson was a stop (two stops, actually) at a go-kart track, where kids and adults can drive a go-kart around a bend-y track for 10 minutes for $5.  Our grandson loved it, and begged to go back for one more race before we left town.

Yesterday, we came home from a 5-day camping trip to the William Bankhead National Forest near Double Springs, Alabama.  We loved the campgrounds in this park.  There are two campgrounds with about 50 full-hookup sites.  The sites are spacious, level (for the most park), and nicely shaded.  There are a number of pull-through sites.  The campsites on the Yellowhammer Loop are reservable; the sites on the Firefly Loop are first-come, first-served.  Bath-houses were clean and convenient.

We drove all over the area sight-seeing.  There is a HUGE lake (Smith Lake - 20,000+ acres) in the park, with plenty of water access and boat rentals.  We spent the biggest part of one day just driving around looking at the lake.  Not far from the park is a little town called Houston.  Alabama's oldest jail, a tiny log building, is in Houston.  We ate lunch in Houston at a little place called Chef Troy's Talk of the Town.  The food was very good.

On day 2 of our trip, we drove down to Ashville, Alabama (about 2 hours away) so that I could do some genealogy research.  We drove through Cullman, Alabama on our way to Ashville and saw signs for the Ave Maria Grotto.  We did not stop to investigate this place, and later when we picked up some brochures for Cullman and saw pictures of the Grotto, we wished we had stopped there.

In the tiny town of Double Springs, there was a yarn store - Fine Yarns on Main - which I spotted on the first day.  The store wasn't open until Thursday afternoon, so I had to wait to visit it.  It is a very cool store, and the owner is very nice and very instructive.  Check it out if you knit or crochet or needle felt.

I was not ready to come home when our reservations were up on Friday, but we had to get back to the grind.  It rained on us a good bit of the way home, and so we were very glad to top the last hill and see our little house waiting for us.

Mississippi River State Park Camping Trip March 2016

We un-winterized the camper, laid in some provisions, and packed ourselves off to Marianna, Arkansas for a four-day camping trip to the Mississippi River State Park. 

http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/mississippiriver/

Folks, I gotta tell you, this is one of the coolest campgrounds we've ever visited. It is located on Bear Creek Lake (the fishing is pretty good there, I'm told), about 5 miles outside of Marianna, Arkansas.  The campsites are situated on fingers of land that jut out into the lake.  

If asked for one tip about camping in this park, I'd say, "Make your reservations early."  There are only 14 RV sites, so the campground fills up fast.  All of the sites have full hook-ups - water, electricity, and sewer.  There are two or three pull-through sites.  All of the campsites looked level, with plenty of room to park a long camper and a vehicle or two.  All of them are right on the water, and there are little docks and park benches scattered around.  The campsites are nicely spaced apart, so you're not stuffed up in someone's back door.  We stayed in campsite 14.  It is surrounded by water on three sides.  It had a nice picnic table, a clean grill, and a good-sized fire ring.  We could walk 10 or 12 feet from our camper door and wet a fishhook in the lake.   Site 14 is probably pretty shady when the trees fully leaf-out.  Next time, we're going to try for campsite 4, which looked especially roomy and cool and is semi-secluded.  Campsites 12 and 13 would be great "buddy" sites.  

There are also a number of really cool tent-camping sites on the other side of the lake, all of which are also near the water.  (The RV sites also have tent spots.)

The visitor center at the park has cool books, fishing gear, gifts, and typical park souveniers.  You can buy drinks and light snacks there, but don't expect to find bread, milk, etc.  They'll sell you a 3-day fishing license for $16.  The park rangers put on campfire circles and programs about local wildlife.  While we were there, one of the rangers led a "full moon kayak tour" of the lake from 7 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.  (We did not participate in that, as the weather had turned colder than a well-digger's hind end, but The Husband says he will do it if we're ever there when it's warm.)

We arrived in the middle of the day on Thursday, March 17.  It was pretty easy to back our 30-foot rig into the campsite, and it didn't need much leveling.  After setting up, we drove back up to the visitor center (a few miles up the road), where we officially registered (we'd made reservations a month earlier when we went over to scout out the place) and bought fishing licenses and bait (they have minnows, worms, jigs, and stinky stuff in jars).  We baited our hooks and went to fishin' the minute we got back to the camp.  The fish were biting slow.  I snagged 4 little bream as the afternoon wore on.  (Kinda hurt The Husband's feelings, because he didn't catch any.  I told him the fish were smart and knew which hook the *real* fisher-person had baited.)  Come dark, the park got quiet as the fishermen went home.  The weather was nice and warm, and we sat outside for a while, listening to the cooing of doves.

Speaking of birds, keep an eye on the geese.  They will hiss at you if you get up close and personal with them.  Also, there's a woodpecker there who drills on the top of a metal light pole; apparently, he just digs the sound.   Bbbbrrrrrrrt.  Bbbbbrrrrrrrrrt.

Friday morning, we got up, cooked breakfast, and went back to fishing.  That day, The Husband caught all the fish, and I didn't catch any.  Fickle old fish.  I gave up, went back to the camper (all of 12 feet away), and dragged out my craft stuff.  It was wonderful to play with my toys outside in the warm sunshine.  As the afternoon wore on, the wind picked up and my supplies started blowing off the table, so I mixed up a nice gin & tonic (shhhhhh, don't tell!) and relaxed with a book while The Husband continued to battle the fish.  By suppertime, the wind was really cold, whipping straight out of the north.  Our cell phone weather maps showed a cloud coming.  Thinking we'd better get the supper cooked before the rain hit, we lit the grill at 5 p.m., but it would hardly stay hot enough to cook our food!  We put on jackets and pulled our hoods up and put our hands in our pockets and hunched our backs to the wind while the meat cooked.  As soon as it was edible, we snatched it off the grill and hurried inside for the night.  We never got much rain, but the wind was fierce, and it broad-sided the camper so hard that it rocked all night.  We were glad that the campsite was ringed with big trees so that if we got blown over, at least we wouldn't go in the lake!

I got up at 7 o'clock Saturday morning, plugged in the coffee pot, and peered out the window.  The sky was over-cast, and the wind was still whipping so hard that the lake was white-capping.  I could see the boat ramp across the lake and was surprised to see dozens of boats in the water, just lined up along the bank near the ramp.  A few boats began to troll the inlets near the campsites.   I could not believe that so many people would want to fish in this weather and worried that there had been some kind of emergency until I realized that there were no emergency vehicles - no police cars, no ambulance.  At a few minutes until 8, all the boats lined up, and at 8 sharp, they all TOOK OFF like rockets in all directions.  Fishing tournament!   You couldn't have paid me to stand up in a boat on that lake, like the fishermen were doing, as cold and windy as it was!   We ate our breakfast and got the heck outta there for a while with a trip to the nearest get-it-all store, 25 miles away in West Helena.  It warmed up a tad and the wind died down a little after lunch.  We fished a little more, trying out the new rods and reels we'd bought in West Helena, but we didn't catch a thing.  We didn't even attempt to light the grill that night.

It was still cold and windy Sunday morning as we battened down the camper for the trip home.  Even though there is not much to do in the area, I could have stayed there for days and days if the weather had been warmer.  As it was, I was glad to start home, and glad that  home was just 2 hours away.