Lake Catherine State Park

March 23, 2020

Our plans for 2020 Spring Break was to spend it with all our grandchildren at Old Highway 25 Campground on Greers Ferry. We had made reservations months in advance for our favorite area at Old Highway 25. Unfortunately the Coronavirus had made its way to Arkansas. We received a cancellation notification on March 19th stating that Old Highway 25 (and all Corp of Engineers Parks in Arkansas) would be closed through May 15th due to Coronavirus. As soon as I received the notification I searched Arkansas State Parks for a vacancy as they remained open. I found a AAA site was available at Lake Catherine State Park for Monday through Thursday so I reserved it. With full hookups we would be able to be fully self contained with no need to use park facilities. Unfortunately, this meant that we would not be seeing the girls from Heber Springs. We did take Brayden and Hannah who had been staying with us the previous week and didn't present any additional risk of virus spread in our small circle of contacts.

We paid by credit card online and occupied our campsite practicing social distancing. For the three nights we were at Lake Catherine we had no direct contact with park employees or park rangers. We had pre-planned the trip with the only stop being gas on the return drive on Thursday. For everything else we were completely self contained (food, baths and restrooms). We cannot say as much for other campers at the park. They were letting their young children run in-and-out of the restrooms unsupervised. I don't think everyone was getting the social distancing and contamination control message.

The first night we had hot dogs, chili and fixin's outside on the picnic table. Brayden is a hot dog eating machine. Just can't convince him that you don't put ketchup on hot dogs. 

Lake Catherine Campground Site #4

Rainy Tuesday Inside

Tuesday morning I took a bike ride around the park. Stopped at the visitors center and got a few pictures around the swim area and marina.

Cooking Dinner

We decided not to make traditional graham cracker and Hershey chocolate s'mores. We heard about making them on fudge stripe cookies. We found that the best way to make them was to first slide the cookie down the marshmallow stick then add and toast the marshmallow. When the marshmallow was done you just slip the cookie off with the marshmallow and no mess.

Brayden got a kick out of riding his bike after dark on the road in front of our campsite. I duct taped my LED flashlight to his handlebars and he was good to go.

Wednesday was a beautiful sunny day so we got out to hike the Falls Branch Trail. The Falls Branch Trail is a 2 mile loop we hiked the trail counter-clockwise following the red blazes. Hiking counter-clockwise starts uphill along a small creek then turns down to Falls Creek. There was quite a crowd of people gathered around the falls and we passed numerous groups along the trail. This was the only part of the trip where social distancing difficult. 

 

 

Evening at the campsite.

Brayden Cleans the Grill for Dinner

Pictures from a walk around the campground with Brayden.

Hannah took some pictures with my Nikon. She gets a lot of really good pictures of things around camp and captures some good ones of Brayden.

This is what night looks like in our mobile quarantine unit.

There is no direct way to drive to Lake Catherine from Russellville. Going over we took highway 9 from Morrilton (to avoid the curves and hills of highway 7) to highway 5 at Crows. Then attempted to take the Owensville Cutoff to highway 70, but missed the turn twice. So coming home we took highway 7 past Oaklawn Park through downtown Hot Springs to connect with highway 5. It was a little surreal driving past the race track and bath house row during spring break and see minimal people. 

Cameron Bluff Campground

October 25th, 2019 Cameron Bluff Campground, Mount Magazine State Park

Donna and I decided to return to Cameron Bluff Campground at Mount Magazine State Park for a fall foliage trip like we did two years earlier. Similarly, when we arrived at the top of the mountain we were again socked-in by the low cloud cover. We stopped at the Visitor Center when we arrived to register but were told that their internet was down. They said that we would have to go to our campsite, drop our trailer, then go to the lodge to register. So we poked through the fog to our campsite and setup. We had stopped at the New Blaine General Store on the way for beverages where we picked up some homemade tamales and verde salsa from a Mexican man in he parking lot. We decided to have our tasty tamales for dinner before going to register. After dinner I got in the truck to go to the lodge. I drove about 75' into the fog where I found myself unable to navigate the one lane road and had to backup to the trailer. Luckily I had left on the front courtesy light at the trailer so I had something to aim for when I got within a few feet of the trailer. We were in for the night! The picture below was taken from the Visitor Center while it was still daylight and before it really got foggy.

Homemade Tamale with Verde Salsa

Fog / Clouds Moving Outside The Camper Door

Saturday morning I went to register.  Behind the camper and on the road to the lodge I saw deer everywhere. Three different groups of 4 to 5 deer.

Later Saturday morning Lynda and John arrived to stay with us for the next three nights. We hung out at the trailer until the fog cleared. Later in the afternoon we drove to the Skycrest Restaurant bar for cocktails and to watch the Razorback football game against #1 Alabama. At least we enjoyed the cocktails and bar food.

Sunday morning John and I walked the trail from our campsite to Cameron Bluff Overlook Drive. We took a few good pictures of the fog settled in the valley toward Paris.

Sunday afternoon we all packed up for a tour of the mountain. We stopped at overlooks including the hang glider launch area and the visitor's center.

Sunday evening was for relaxing and a campfire in the damp night air. 

Monday's itinerary took us to Paris and Eiffel Tower Park.

Leaving Paris we headed back to the clouds at Cameron Bluff Campground.

Below is a compilation video I made of our return trip from Paris. 

(This is what I do when I have too much time on my hands.)

Campsite #9 was at the farthest end of the loop with neighbors on only one side. Cameron Bluff campsites are well spaced and private. Maybe it was the lack of a moon or the fog, but this seemed like the darkest campground I have visited. I left the bathhouse walking without a flashlight one night and got disorientated. I turned on my cell phone light and found myself standing in a vacant campsite driveway. Cell service (AT&T) was sketchy at best from the campground and texting seemed to work somewhat sporadically. Cell service was fine from overlook drive and the lodge. About a dozen over the air digital TV channels were available.