Lake Fort Smith State Park

Last week we went camping for 4 days at a fairly new State Park in Arkansas.  Lake Fort Smith was a state park years ago and then it was dismantled due to the building of a new dam.  The state said that they would make a new park near the old location and it opened in May of this year.  We had a great time camping at the park, it was really pretty and has a nice mile loop road in the campground area that provides you with a great up and down hill work out and is very pretty.  One morning I was stretching my legs and walked to the bathhouse and was greeted by 5 deer near the bathhouse.  When I came back out the deer were still there and then proceeded to follow me a short way back to the campsite instead of fleeing!  That was unusual to say the least.  Here are some photo’s from our short trip.

Outside of visitors center:

Part of the inside of the visitor’s center:

Road to the campsites:

This part of the road shows a campsite and a bathhouse across the road:

We took a hike on the Ozark Highlands Trail which taps into the park.  This is part of an old homestead – the chimney is all in one piece and is in very good shape for as old as it most likely is, I would judge it being from the 1800′s:

A view of the lake from the trail which follows the lake very closely in places.

Another part of the trail:

Me on the trail looking at something, I don’t remember what:

Here is a link to the park if you are interested in visiting it:  http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/lakefortsmith/

Here are several links to information about the Ozark Highlands Trail:

http://www.trailkeeper.com/trails/view.aspx?id=253MDA2NEZ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_Highlands_Trail

http://www.hikearkansas.com/ohta.html

There are many access points to the trail from many parks and park areas.  If you want to walk part of the trail you can park a vehicle from one of your hiking buddies at one site and then drive to another park and start from there by parking another car there and just go back for it later.  We have done that in the past when we went backpacking on part of the trail  – in our younger days — that way you don’t have to turn around and back track on the trail that you have already seen.