Lake Fort Smith State Park

June 13, 2022

It's hard to believe that this is our 50th camping trip in our trailer. We purchased our Heartland Pioneer in 2015 with expectations of getting some good use out of it. Turns out that we have. We've towed the trailer over 8000 miles behind the GMC and stayed in 20 campgrounds all within the state of Arkansas (Brady Mountain Recreation Area - Lake Ouachita, Cameron Bluff Campground, Cane Creek State Park, Carter Cove Park - Lake Nimrod, Dam Site Campground - Greers Ferry Lake, Devil's Den State Park, Gamaliel Campground - Norfork Lake, Lake Catherine State Park, Lake Dardanelle State Park, Lake Fort Smith State Park, Lake Ouachita State Park, Long Pool Recreation Area - Big Piney Creek, Old Highway 25 Campground - Greers Ferry Lake, Petit Jean State Park, Piney Bay Campground, Queen Wilhelmina State Park, Shiloh Campground - Greers Ferry Lake, Waveland Park Campground - Blue Mountain Lake and Withrow Springs State Park).

This trip returned us to Lake Fort Smith State Park which is one of our favorites campgrounds for a 4 day trip with Hannah and Brayden. Campsites have full hookups and are blown clean with the gravel freshly manicured by maintenance crews before we arrived. We stayed in site #13 which had good shade for much of the day. Notice in the pictures our first attempt at air conditioning the tent. I don't think the grandkids would have enjoyed the tent camping very much without it. It worked pretty well with the exception of some condensation on the outside of the tent.

Manicured Campsite Pad

The weather was particularly hot with extreme heat warnings so we went to the swimming pool every day.

The park has no shortage of wildlife. Deer were around the campgrounds everywhere. Brayden even spotted a deer across the street from our campsite.

Racoons were out each night. Our neighbor brought a nice big garbage can that the garbage bandits got into every night. The neighbors finally learned a lesson one night when racoons drug their garbage can off the terrace wall.  

Zebra Butterfly

Road Turtle

Cardinal at our Trailer Window

The visitors center is just a short bike ride away over a few hills. From the back side of the visitors center is an overlook above the day use and boat launch area.

On Thursday morning before the heat set in to intensely I went on a solo hike out the north end of the campground past the waterfall and for a short distance down the Ozark Highlands Tail and portion of the Shepherd Springs Loop.

The lake is not visible from the campgrounds (at least not with leaves on the trees) so I took a few pictures from above the campsite. From this perspective you can see the earth dam that was once the end of Lake Shepard Springs, but now is enveloped by the new Lake Fort Smith.

This was a really hot trip! We drove several evening out for dinner to avoid cooking in the trailer and because we just like eating out.