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.
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| Brayden procuring fire wood from abandoned camp site |
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| 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!
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| 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.
