Category Archives: Parks

Camping, Hiking, Parks, Wildlife Preserve/Reserve

Salt Plains State Park ~Jet, OK

06/10/2020 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

We had a great three day weekend at the Salt Plains State Park and nearby Wildlife Refuge for our 16th wedding anniversary. We stayed at the Sandy Cove campground this time and it ended up being a great site.

The campground is right next to the swimming beach which worked out great with the 100 degree temps.

If you are going to visit, there were a LOT of ants and no soap in the bathrooms. Also, the bathrooms had those half doors that are basically useless so keep that in mind.

My kids basically wanted to just live at the beach. It has a nice sandy beach but is very shallow for a very long time (I never found any water above my waist), it also turns to mud as you get further out. The sandy beach and shallow water would be great for little ones though! We mostly stayed at the state park so we could go crystal digging at the nearby Salt Plains Wildlife Refuge! My kids loved it so much the last time we went that I knew it would be a hit. It is such a breathtaking place to visit in Oklahoma.

Definitely worth a visit, even if you don’t want to dig.

If you do want to go digging, you will need sun protection, a shovel, and a bucket. Also clothes you don’t mind getting salty and muddy would be good!

As with most trips we had a few fails.

Trying to hike in the mid-day crazy heat (my idea), oops.

The water tank started leaking in the rv so we could not use the water in there, thankfully we have plenty of kids that can haul water 😉

And I had brought beach towels so we could clean up the mess.

Even the hot temps were okay.

We just tried to go out and do things in the morning (except for my attempt at hiking) and evening.

The beach in the evening was so relaxing and beautiful. I still went out at night after kids went to bed to take a picture and listen to the quiet.

One night, I thought I was going to take picture of the sunset and ended up stumbling upon this guy.

He finally got annoyed that I kept taking his picture and slithered off into the woods.

It was fun to watch him weave all around the picnic tables though.One morning we got going early (well as early as you can with 5 kids) to hike at the wildlife refuge.

It was a beautiful hike.The kids loved all the bullfrogs they saw on the hike, they were huge! We have hiked here before but this morning hike was my favorite. The kids played tablets in the heat of the day.

It ended up being a great trip and we really enjoyed this campground location!

Have you been to the Salt Plains in Oklahoma?

Check out our video on youtube of our time in the Salt Plains!

Camping, Hiking, Parks, Wildlife Preserve/Reserve

We went camping for Christmas! ~Sequoyah State Park, OK

01/05/2020 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

We stayed at the Seminole Campground in Sequoyah State Park from the weekend before Christmas until Christmas Eve.

I tried to make the camper a bit more festive.

We were for in for a bit of surprise when we got there.

We were told that all trails were closed for the weekend for an open hunt.

I had already booked in advance and had no clue so it left me scrambling a bit to find things to do for two days.

Thankfully the nature center was open so we went there twice.

Since our main reason for staying at this park was to hike I was a bit disappointed and wished we had been told beforehand.

We filled our first full day with driving to the Sequoyah Bay State Park and driving to Muskogee to see Christmas lights.

Sequoyah Bay State Parks trail was very muddy and hard to find since the trail is not kept up well so we did not hike long.

The lights at Honor Heights Park were so pretty!

Great display!

I was excited to try to take some dramatic Christmas light pics with my kids…

Then I remembered who my kids are.

Pretty pics were not on their bucket list.

I really liked making instant oatmeal in the camper.

After eating, we made another trip to the nature center and traveled to the J.T. Nickle Wildlife Preserve.

What a beautiful place to visit.

They have a scenic drive as well as hiking.

We had a beautiful spot on the lake.

Monday the trails opened and we decided to make up for lost time.

Our plan was to do a giant loop around the park but that proved difficult with several parts closed due to winter and flooding.

We did finally figure out how to park so that we could hike back to our camper to eat lunch and then hike a different way back to our vehicle for around 8 miles total.

I was smiling pretty big because our girls came running when they saw we were about to get a pic alone…

We had a few flooded parts of the trail we had to work around but we did mostly a loop.

The next morning we tried waffles for the first time in the camper and it was a huge hit! We hiked the fossil trail for our last trail before heading home.

If is a great short trail if you have a fossil lover.

Do you camp for the holidays?

Animals, Hiking, Parks, Wildlife Preserve/Reserve

Turning 36

11/22/2019 Danielle Huddleston 2 Comments

I hesitate to put my age out there, not because I don’t want you to know but because I am often wrong…

I am pretty sure that I am 36 though, maybe.

And here is how I spent my first day.

First stop was Mt. Magazine on our way home from our campsite. If I had it to do again I would have skipped this because it ended up being a long detour but I loved being on that mist covered mountain. Beautiful.

We went on the trail to the highest point in Arkansas.

The whole hike was so beautiful. Made it! Next up was the Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge. This one was pretty close to our route home already but I was still not sure we should add even more to our trip especially with the weather turning cold and rainy.