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 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!