We recently had the chance to go back to Lake Dardanelle State Park to have another weekend camping trip. Our first trip which includes the great fish escape can be found here. But this time, we wanted to go back and spend more time around the campsite and also to take advantage of what else the park had to offer.
Before I share about our trip, I want to share a little about the park. The price of a campsite B with 30 amp/water is only $23.00 a night. There is also a campsite AA with 30 amp/water/sewer for $32.00 a night. This park is a great place to go fishing so don’t forget your fishing pole/boat. There are also some great interpretation programming the parks offers like: Creatures of the Night, The Stories of Lake Dardanelle, and a Lake Cruise. The visitor center/check in area is an amazing place to spend a little or a lot of time learning about the fish, wildlife, and the river in this area. Seriously even though we had been here before, we spent another hour and a half looking at all the displays and playing with the turtles. Of course we had to have a quick trip through the gift shop where we picked up a book called “Start Mushrooming: The Reliable Way to Forage” by Stan Tekiela as well as a patch and keychain. We try to get a patch and keychain from all our travels since Glitter collects keychains and the patches stay in a notebook. This allows us to remember our trips without a bunch of clutter.
We picked campsite B for our little vintage pop up. The campsite came with a picnic table, paved driveway, stationary grill and a fire pit. There were a couple of downsides of staying in site 55. All the sites in this loop where grouped close together. The bathhouse is located in another loop altogether. That was another drawback for us since our pop up doesn’t have a bathroom in it. The other major drawback for us was the night light on top of our campsite which shined brightly into the camper.
When we got back Saturday afternoon, we took a walk on the self guided trail which was right by our camp loop. It is a fairly simple trail with a complete time of about an hour. If you have have ever hiked with me or ask my hubby, the time is a shot in the dark. I end up stopping about three thousand times taking pictures of things I find interesting. So our hour walk turned into about two hours but it was well worth the fun. Here are a couple of the things I found interesting.
I will say even with thesee three drawbacks, we still made the best time for us. Saturday we did make the drive to Petit Jean State Park to spend a little bit of time with a couple of my friends and to grab lunch from Mather Lodge. The burgers are our favorite there. I love the Petit Jean Burger without the green chilies and add Petit Jean Peppered Bacon and my husband loves the Mather Lodge Burger. Just look at this yummy burger.
Supper that night was preplanned before we left town. So when we got to the camping town, we went shopping to pick up supplies. This allows us to save on ice and how heavy we pack our truck/camper. So supper was hamburger steak with a mushroom gravy and pan fried potatoes. Y’all camp food doesn’t have to be boring. I challenge you to make something different next time you cook on a campfire and share about it here.
Overall, our trip was a good one. Even though this park is not one of our favorites, we might go fish or hike the trails. On our park scale 1 camper for the worst and 10 campers for the best Lake Dardanelle is: 5 campers. Have you stayed there?
