Vacation to Lake Catherine 2013

Last week we took a "staycation" to Lake Catherine State Park.  Lake Catherine is one of our favorite Arkansas Sate Parks and we have both camped and stayed in the cabins there before.  The cabins are very reasonably priced (less than $90 per night) and include everything you need except food, clothes, and toiletries. We have to rent 2 cabins because only 6 people can fit in one cabin.  The children think it is fun though to have one cabin for the boys and one for the girls.  All of the cabins also have outside tables, a grill, and a porch swing.  We also had our own dock to fish off of.  Art's brother, his wife, and Art's dad came along for a couple of days too and had a camp site.

I kept the meals very simple while we were at the cabin.  We stopped at Walmart in Hot Springs and I bought everything we needed.  I got burgers, hot dogs, chicken, and steak for supper along with macaroni salad, potato salad, cole slaw, and mac and cheese.  I also got some small potatoes to grill with the steaks.  For lunch we got sandwiches, chips, and fruit.  For breakfast we got donuts, and cereal.  I had popsicles,whales, and supplies for smores for snacks


The children had a great time fishing.  They did not catch as many fish as they did a few weeks ago, but they caught a few.  I think Emelia caught the most!

We cooked Grandpa's big fish

Art caught this fish right after a huge trout broke his fishing line.  Alex wanted to be ready with the net just in case.

They also had fun swimming at the beach.  There is a really nice swim beach at Lake Catherine.  But, the water is always cold!  That doesn't bother the children at all though!

There is a Nature Cabin next to the beach where they do different programs or you can just go in and see the fish, snakes, turtles, and skulls and furs.  The children love going in there!

Art brought his fishing boat.  He did get a chance to take some of the children for a ride and some time to fish in it, but it started having some technical difficulties.

Luckily this nice boat towed them back

And of course we had to cook some "delicious hot smoes" while we were camping!

We had thought it would be fun to rent a big party boat for half a day while our company was there.  But, the day we planned on going, big storms were rolling in.  We didn't want to be in the middle of the lake while it was storming, so we decided to wait a day.  That night there were some pretty strong storms ( I was very thankful to not be in a tent!) and we got a lot of rain.  The next morning they had to open the spillway to prevent flooding and were not aloud to rent any boats.  Oh well, maybe next time!

Since we couldn't rent a boat, we took the children to Mid America Science Museum instead.  They have some new exhibits, including dinosaurs!  My camera flash is not working so my pictures did not turn out great, but the dinosaur exhibit was pretty cool.  The children had a great time!  Lily was sad that we didn't get to do everything, but since we have passes I told her I will take them back again over the summer.

The day we came home, there was a huge front of rain coming through.  It took us over double the usual time the drive takes to get home.  Roads were flooded and there were several accidents.  I was so glad to finally get home!  We had a great time on our vacation, but there's no place like home!