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.