Tag Archives: State Forest

Camping, Hiking, Parks

Cove Lake Recreation Area -Paris, Arkansas

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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!

Camping, Hiking

Yellowwood State Forest ~Nashville, IN

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It all started with a look into my wedding album.

I saw that we hiked at Yellowwood State Forest on our honeymoon and decided I really wanted to hike it again.

I went to the office and tried to explain the trail I remembered to the ranger.

Apparently I don’t remember much from 14yrs ago…
She finally did make sense of my crazy memories and recommend a trail that she thought the kids would like as well. The Jackson Creek Trail
At first it seemed great but then the it started getting really narrow. Narrow means you are brushing up against folliage.

The whole time.

Which is a bad idea when chiggers and ticks are around. Little bit has the hardest time on these kinds of trails because she gets hit in the face from all the plants.

Finally Nick just gave her a ride.

I was pretty sure this was one of our fail hikes of the trip.

We were going to try to find a place to boondock in Hoosier National Forest but I panicked about not being able to find a place and we stayed here.

No hookups but it was only $13 a night!

One of these days I will actually go through with boondocking!

I like that I am one of those super organized camper/rvers.

Also movie on the tablet.

And I am so thankful my husband bought this Dewalt battery powered fan.

Because it was pretty hot.

This little fan was cute but did not do near as much to cool us off. I did like that zero hookups meant spending more time outside the rv.

It is so easy to just stay inside in the evenings, when it is hot and there are lots of bugs outside.

But no air means it is actually cooler outside…

This was a really pretty site.

It was also quiet which was nice since all of our windows were open all night.

I definitely felt a lot closer to camping with no hookups.

Well, camping lite.

Or camping jr.


We only stayed one night so we packed it all back up and headed farther south to Hemlock Cliffs and Hoosier National Forest the next morning. The other problem with a close trail.

Poison Ivy.

Have you ever tried to keep five kids from brushing up against poison ivy when it is all over the trail? Still, it is a beautiful forest.

We got home and I realized that we did hike on the same trail 14yr ago on our honeymoon!

I thought for sure it was not it while we were hiking but it was!

I really like to relive memories like that so I am glad we took the detour even if it seemed like a bad idea in the middle of the poison ivy!

We also (by we I mean me) forgot to secure the spray I use on the girls hair so the ENTIRE bottle (filled with conditioner and oil) spilled all over the floor of the rv.

Oops.

That is okay, everyone likes their RV to be a skating rink.

Right?