Tag Archives: Arkansas

Camping, Hiking, Parks

Cove Lake Recreation Area -Paris, Arkansas

Leave a comment
We really enjoyed Cove Lake Recreation Area campground in western Arkansas! It was really close to Mount Magazine and had several trails at the campground also.
The sites do not have electric and there are vault toilets just fyi.
It does have a small swing set at the campground!
The only thing that caused more planning and work was the water was turned off at the campground for the winter which I thought might be the case so I did bring several gallons but ended up needing more.
We enjoyed the hike around cove lake. It was around 4 miles and had beautiful views of the lake and lots of pine trees. So pretty.
We hiked to top of Signal Hill the first night we were there because the sky was clear and I wanted to make sure we saw all the views right away just in case it was cloudy the rest of the time.
Two out of the three previous trips here had been cloudy and we could not see anything.

I was totally blown away on this trip and fell in love with this beautiful park.

I love this Eastern Benefield Trail that we took on the last day. Beautiful views!
Lots of steep cliffs though so you might not want to take really little ones on this one.
Sunrise rock
We drove over an hour to visit two other state parks one day while in the area.

Pretty sure the kids favorite was the Bear Cave Trail at Petit Jean State Park.

It has lots of rocks and is short, all things they like.

Next up we hiked to the Rock House Cave from the waterfall overlook. This was a long and totally unneeded hike since you can park really close to it. My girls insisted they wanted to hike. ha

They were less enthusiastic when they found out they had to hike back also and could not take the “short way” back. After a lot of steps going up and down we did make it back though.

We also did a trail at Mount Nebo but it was a lot of steps after a long morning of up and down hiking and the spring was kind of anti- climatic for so much work.

I have loved the hiking on a previous trip so I know we just chose the wrong hike at the wrong time.

We started out on the Rim Trail which is one that was a favorite on a previous trip. The kids heard it was longer and said they wanted to do the hike down to the spring.

But this was the trip down…

Ha!

Mount Magazine at sunset!

Animals, Hiking, Parks, Wildlife Preserve/Reserve

Turning 36

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.

But it ended up being stunning. So many birds! And the cloudy skies were so pretty for pictures. Can you believe this is in Oklahoma?

We did go for a walk on their walking path which was beautiful as always and freezing. We saw that one of my favorite bridges was broken.

Yikes

It was a pretty day.

What kinds of things do you like to do on your birthday?

Hiking

Beautiful hikes in the Ponca Area~Arkansas

1 Comment

My goal this trip was to do hikes that I thought would be fun for our kids.

First up was the Pedestal Rocks Trail.

It does have fun rock formations and beautiful views but it ended up being too long of a hike there and back before you got to those things.

At around 2.5 miles it was not bad at all but several of my kids got bored with the hike. Stick bugs everywhere. There are several places to go down and see the rocks closer up. Beautiful views.

This would be an amazing sunrise or sunset hike.


We planned to drive the scenic byway 7 after this up to Lost Valley Trail.

It is an amazing trail that I thought the kids would enjoy but when we got there it was crazy crowded and no pets were allowed on the hike so we decided to not go.

The kids and Nick went into the Elk Educational Center while we were in Ponca.

Boxley Valley is nearby and is a great place to look for Elk but you have a better chance of seeing them in the morning or evening and we were there mid day.

We always have something not work our quite as planned so I just tried to look at this as the fail for the trip and move on.

The next day we went to Alum Cove Natural Bridge.

This ended up being a fast payoff and the kids had a lot of fun.

The bridge is on a mile loop that has caves and lots of up and down so the kids were happier with this hike.If I had it to do again I would have tried to do the scenic drive near sunrise or sunset and would have definitely done the 1st hike near then.

I think the kids enjoyed our campground the most though!

It was just such a fun place to explore they would have been happy doing that most of the day!