Scheduling Adventure: Blue Mountain Lake

For Marla’s birthday in July, we went camped at Waveland Park on Blue Mountain Lake. The park website says the campground is near Havanna, Arkansas, but it really feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere! It’s a beautiful place to escape. You can swim in the lake and look up at Mount Magazine, the highest point in the state of Arkansas. If you’re looking to fish, not only is the lake a good place, but the dam spillway is just down the road, and we saw fish jumping as the water flowed there.

We did have quite the experience getting checked in at the campground. The check in station for Waveland Park was closed, so we had to check in at the gatehouse for the Outlet Area campground, which was right before our campground. There was nowhere to turn around at the gatehouse, so they told us to go down to the dump station area to try. When we got there, there was nowhere to turn around. We (ignorantly) thought we could keep driving into the river campground and loop back out. All campgrounds loop or have roads that loop, right? Nope. This was one road that dead ended. It was July 4, and the campground was full and packed with cars, campers, and people fishing. The road was tight, and we could barely drive through. Panic set in. We kept our cool as best as we could. We looked like amateurs, because, well, we were amateurs at this pulling-a-camper thing. Some nice people helped us maneuver and admitted this was an impossible park to turn around in. We finally got out and laughed about it…and kept laughing the rest of the trip when we remembered the pickle we had gotten ourselves into. To be fair, the gatehouse workers and the park ranger gave us ill advice that helped push us into the pickle.

Waveland Park has some beautiful camping spots and amazing scenery. Now that we are better prepared, we would go back!

The video of our trip is now on Youtube. Click the link in our profile to watch. You can see the other issues that popped up and how our amateur-ness (that’s a word, right) kept the trip exciting.

Have you ever been to Blue Mountain Lake?

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