Arkansas state parks

Ihave never been to the ocean, Disneyland or Orlando Studios. Before someone thinks, ‘Poor Haley,’ let me stop you. I may have never seen the corners of our great nation, but I have seen many thing in the state I live in.

I grew up on the lowend of middle class. We had all that we needed and a good chunk of what we wanted. That being said, we lived on a budget and my parents didn’t believe in blowing that out of the water on a vacation. Instead of going to one week-long beach vacation, we went to different state parks every other weekend for the price we would have spent on a one-time visit to the the beach.

The funny thing was, me and my brother (my baby brother hadn’t been born yet or he was young) never realized that we were ‘missing out’. We loved staying at the state parks.

We swam in the lakes and rivers, hiked every trail at least once, enjoyed great food (my parents are excellent cooks) and we took our bikes so we would ride until mom called us for dinner.

One of my family’s favorite haunts was Lake Catherine in Hot Springs. The part of the park that we always stayed in was a little cul-de-sac that split off the main road at the top of a steep hill where most of the regular campers would request to stay. My brother and I would take our time climbing to the top with our bikes and race each other to the bottom. Somehow we never wiped out, but we’d come back to our campsite covered in dirt, sweat and slept like rocks every night we were there.

There was always other children that we could play with and boredom was never a concern. We would swim, race and hike with these kids and became friends in the way only children can. We even had a couple that we would write letters to back and forth.

Those are some of the best times I have had to spend with my brother and would not trade those weekend vacations for the world.

These vacation instilled a love for the place I am from.

Mount Magazine, the tallest mountain in Arkansas, is beautiful with its changing colors of the fall. You feel like you’re king (or queen) of the world and you can see for miles.

You can dive into history in Hot Springs and learn about the bath houses and how the Mob used it as a place to vacation. If ghost stories are what you are after, there are ghost tours that are offered in several towns year around the state.

As a child, I was convinced that I would find my fortune in the ground at the Arkansas Crater of Diamonds State Park or become a spelunker because of my time in the caverns at Blanchard Springs Caverns.

I appreciate and find myself invested in the state that I am proud to call home. I don’t think that I would love the place I am from as much as I have if it was not for those family vacations.

Next time you consider taking your family on vacation, look at some of Arkansas’ state parks. You never know what kind of memories you will make.