Lake Dardanelle State Park

September 28th 2018 Lake Dardanelle State Park
We promised Brayden and Hannah a weekend camping trip and decided to take the short trip to Lake Dardanelle State Park.  Our one previous camping trip to Lake Dardanelle State Park that was our first trip in the new Heartland Pioneer back in 2015. This time we were unable to get one of the of the full service AAA sites, but picked site #33 after driving through the park and registering with my phone. One of the benefits of having a state park in your hometown. The B sites had water with electric connections. They were all closely spaced, but nicely shaded.  The weekend marked the first cool nights of fall weather and we were all excited to get out to the park. 

Mr. squirrel was not happy that we had setup camp directly under a sawtooth oak on a pill of his acorns.  He sat on the landscape timbers and ate acorns anyway.

Jessica and Juan brought the kids to the park after they got home from school Friday afternoon.  We had burgers on the grill. Burgers always taste better when grilled at the campground.

Brayden and I took a little bike ride around the park at sunset. We had to stop at the playground, but later got a good photo of the sunset over Lake Dardanelle.

Evening means a campfire and of course s'mores.

We got up a little late on Saturday morning.  There was a bass tournament in progress, but we didn't have much luck fishing from the rocks.

 

Caught a few fish on Sunday morning with Brayden. Obviously ANO Unit 2 is down for an outage. I much prefer this view from outside the plant vs. working 6 twelves inside.

Gamaliel Campground, Norfork Lake

August 21, 2018 Gamaliel Campground on Norfork Lake
Anticipating unseasonably cooler weather Donna and I were ready for an impromptu camping trip. I was wanting to visit northeast Arkansas to see Mammoth Springs and Hardy where my granddad had a cabin when I was little. We didn’t find any campgrounds that appealed to us near Mammoth Springs or Hardy so we decided to go to Norfork Lake near Mountain Home. We had never been to Norfork and were unsure where to stay so we made no reservations intending to find a walk up campsite. Sites at Gamaliel were not only available, but there were so few campers that arriving on a Tuesday a park attendant would not be available to register us until Thursday. We drove around the park and settled on site #18 which was only one of a few with a lake view.

Biker Church on Hwy 101 at Gamaliel, AR

Deer Along Campground Road

Wednesday morning we took a road trip up through Missouri to Mammoth Springs State Park. We toured the fish hatchery at the park which surprisingly raises sturgeon that is sent out of state (No trout). 

The spring is the 10th largest in the US. It’s outflow was dammed and powered a small hydroelectric plant that remains as a museum today. The spring forms the entire headwater of the Spring River flowing an average of nearly 10 million cubic feet of water per hour.

Dam Video Part 1

Dam Video Part 2

 

After our walk through the park we had lunch at Fred’s Fish House in the Mammoth Springs historic district (Click here for Anthony Bourdain Visits Fred's Fish House video). Enjoyed some really good catfish, hush puppies and coleslaw. 

After lunch we headed south to Hardy. We drove around the Hardy Downtown Historic District and the Hardy city RV Park. The RV Park was mostly open space without paved parking, but was on the bank of the Spring River. I made an attempt to find the location of our old camp. I walked several of the abandoned roads off of Pontiac drive. I found the creek where we got our water but the roads had been abandoned with new Cherokee Village roads. Many great days were spent in this area playing in the creek and hunting in the woods. The old place must be gone now.
Thursday we drove south to the Norfork dam and the National Fish Hatchery. I walked down to boardwalk along Dry Creek which is fed by the outflow from the fish hatchery. The creek was loaded with trout. Dry Creek area was catch and release fishing only with barbless hooks. A really pretty setting.

Boardwalk along Dry Creek adjacent to the fish hatchery

Fish Hatchery outfall into Dry Creek

Trout Fry in  ‘Eyed Ova’ stage

 

It was overcast for most of the day Thursday and after we got back to the campground the rain started. After a nap under the trailer awing listening to the rain it got too cool for shorts and a T-shirt so I had to retreat to the trailer. The August heat was back on Friday when we returned to Russellville. Timing is everything!

Lake Fort Smith State Park

July 9th, 2018, Donna and I took grand-kids (Brayden and Hannah) to Lake Fort Smith State Park for four nights. We wanted to get in a summer trip with them and needed somewhere with a swimming pool. We had visited Lake Fort Smith several times by ourselves in the fall when the pool was closed. But with kids in the Arkansas July heat this was the place to go. We reserved campsite #18 which turned out to be a handicap accessible site. This meant that majority of the site was concrete with a raised fire pit. We like sites on the lower loop including the adjacent #19 and #20 being the last sites on the lower loop. Lake Fort Smith is a small park with only 30 campsites so getting exactly the site you want can be difficult.

The swimming pool was never to terribly crowed. It was a nice size pool with a separate kiddy-pool and a splash pad.  

Brayden enjoyed the splash pad with the random dumping buckets. 

 

The only bad part about the pool was having to leave. 

Brayden  procuring fire wood from abandoned camp site

Used my mister and a fan to help cool down in the afternoon

Being on the end of the lower loop the kids could safely ride around the curve to the upper loop and were never out of site. When I say "safely" I mean traffic safety. Brayden is always in top gear riding with reckless abandon.  I did at least get him to wear his helmet.

Hannah on the other hand spent some time in the trailer reading and provided a summary of her favorites sayings from our camping book.

We saw deer everyday from our campsite and on drives in the park.

Brayden and I got up one morning early before the heat and did some fishing down on the lake.  

Wednesday I got some hammock time, but before I was there long the afternoon rain started and I had to move under the awning. Life is hard!

Brayden demonstrates how to dump rain water from the canopy.

I was amazed at how fast the maintenance crew got to the adjacent campsite after it was vacated. They blew off any debris (leaves and sticks) then groomed the gravel at the site with a rake like a zen garden. You want get that at the federal parks.

Brayden and I took a bike ride one afternoon. The pictures below were take from the overlook behind the visitor center.  The overlook gives a great view of the day use area and marina down at the lake.

 

We had a raccoon show up several nights. Our last night he walked up to us and appeared to be begging for handouts. 

This trip makes about 3558 miles we have logged within Arkansas since we first got our trailer in 2015.This may be our last camping trip for a little while until the summer heat breaks. With temperatures in the mid-90's and high humidity the camper's AC unit had trouble keeping up until evening.