RV Camping Trip #2: Petit Jean Mountain State Park Campground, Petit Jean, Arkansas

Our new header for the blog reflects our "broadened" lifestyle thanks to our new RV!

For our 2nd trip, Stacey mentioned going to Petit Jean Mountain State Park and hiking the Cedar Falls. I hadn't been there in many, many years, and NEVER got to stay – day trips only. So... SOUNDS GREAT TO ME!! :)

We made plans for last weekend a week earlier when the weather reports said low 90's for the high. By the end of the week the reports had changed to high 90's, verging on 100's!! ugh. But thankfully, up on the mountain, the temps weren't that extreme and we did alright....

Well, we did better than alright, we had a GREAT TIME!


I took Friday off to work on the RV, getting things prepared and cooled down, loading some items, etc. I first took the RV to check air in the tires and to fill up the "Firestone Air Ride" system, that sadly, was almost at zero psi, which according to the manual, is a big no-no! Wow, what a better ride with them in use! I then took it back to the storage yard and used their hose to give it a wash down. Squeaky clean now!

Yup, I loaded some of the "essentials"! :)

Everything's Shiny!

I took the driving duties up there to get more familiar with our new rig.

The girls made the comment several times about how much they really love traveling this way!

So after everyone got home, we cruised up I-40 early that evening and stopped in Morrilton, AR for some supplies. While Stacey and the girls shopped, I checked on the rig and the bikes. All secure and the bikes should be really nice to get around!

As darkness fell we headed for the mountain and the short but steep climb up.

It was pretty pitch black when we got there but we found our site, backed her in, hooked her up and commenced to setting up camp. That night we enjoyed listening to the stereo on the patio while cooking rice in the kitchen and grilling tenderloin steak kabobs on the camp site grill. Trust me, no pictures of this but it was GOOD! After a quick rinse shower, we all crashed, tired from the day!

The next morning I asked Rachel to take a few pics of our rig and campsite. She did such a good job, I used one of her pics for our new header above!!

Our bikes all set up and ready to go!

Bath house nearby but not too close.

We had a nice view of Lake Bailey.

Rachel seemed every interested in the camp fire, so she worked on it diligently.

Later we rode our bikes to the visitor center to get some firewood.

Stacey and I found these great, light-weight hammocks at a store in Norfork, AR made of parachute material and love them. They are very comfortable and easy to hang anywhere thanks to the built-in cord/anchor system!

I couldn't resist after seeing this series of photos!

She, obviously, settled in nicely!

So did Stacey!

Corey enjoyed being our camp DJ spinnin' tunes from her iPhone.

Really, it's not been that much work to get us here, so I'm pretty relaxed already...

but I sure enjoyed our wooden flea market found beach chairs with Stacey for a while!

We also enjoyed getting to watch some US OPEN Tennis, too!

Other than watching some tennis on the TV after a bike ride to the visitor center and some adventuring, we mainly just chilled by the site. It was lovely, minus the A-hole grandfather in the next site yelling abusively at his grandkids. This bloated wart hog of a man must have been upset about not seeing his pee-pee in so long that he felt it necessary to publicly demean these kids that ranged from 9ish to 15ish. Thankfully they spent most of their time indoors!

For our second night's dinner we grilled some salmon and Stacey made her homemade Fettucini Alfredo as a side. We forgot to bring veggies this trip, but some steamed broccoli would have been nice! We also forgot the parmesan cheese, so we improvised with some Vermont White Cheddar slices that we had. The cheese already has a very swiss cheese/parmesan kind of tastes and turns out... it worked great! Crisis averted!

And it was good, too!

Hard to photograph but it was a nice campsite after the fire got going.

Corey, sadly, doing what most teens do...can't put the device down :(

Still devicing :(

...and still... ugh.

Rachel's fire attention helped keep it going!

She seemed to really get a kick out of the "job", it was nice to see!

So after dinner we sat around until I just couldn't keep sitting outside, so I took a shower and crashed on our bed, clicked on the TV back there to watch the weather. A few minutes later Saturday Night Live came on, a re-run from last October, and I suddenly found myself sitting with Corey, Rachel and Stacey all on our bed watching it. It was a funny episode and we had a good time laughing together until after the "news" part. It went downhill after that and we called it a night.

Stacey and I woke up 7-8ish and decided to start cooking breakfast on the outdoor kitchen. She cooked bacon, I made scrambled eggs and we grilled our croissants to make some breakfast sandwiches.

We needed it so that we could work up the energy to go bike down to the Mather Lodge and hike the Cedar Falls trail! 2.3 mile ride to the Lodge, 2 mile hike down a switchback rocky path. All of that times 2!

At the start...

we are just sweaty from the bike ride...

little did we know what we were about to endure...

or did we? :)

Ah, youth... they got quite ahead of us!

Wait, wait, I gotta... pose for a shot, yeah, that's it... huff puff huff

These kind people we met, from Lousiana, offered to take our picture all together!

Then the guy saw us sprawled out like this and said "I wish I had your camera...

"...so I could get that shot!"

Glad we thought ahead and brought some nuts and cereal bars for extra energy!

Believe it or not, WE MADE IT! It was grueling getting back up all those trails but we did it.

One of the things I read about on the Forest River Forum (RV forum) was about many people's tendency to leave the TV antenna up when leaving camp...

It's good to be a graphic artist! I made this to hang on it and it worked!

Stacey took the reigns on the daunting task of getting us down the mountain!

I think our AC was working too well for Rachel, or she is now
armless and has huge sagging boobs...  you decide!

All in all we had a great time, we even stopped in Conway to grab some ice cream treats at the Dairy Queen there. We got back to Maumelle, put our RV back into her garage, cleared out our bikes and stuff and headed home to relax a little more before having to start the work/school week all over again. But we did so with a sense of accomplishment. We accomplished relaxing, we accomplished seeing new sights and we accomplished a grueling hike that was beautiful and proved worth it... unh... ugh... excuse me, getting up from this computer is a little hard today as I finish writing this (he says while bracing his back and groaning from the surge of pain emanating from his lower back, limping on his right slightly trail-weary ankle that has been twisted so many times before in his life)

:) Worth it!