Lake Chicot State Park, Arkansas – Part 1

July 6, 2022

Last Friday (July 1), we decided to check out Lake Chicot State Park. It is on the northeast end of the oxbow. Lake Chicot is a beautiful oxbow lake, the largest in North America.

We decided to take Nox, since we were planning to do some hiking. Since we were taking Nox, we took the truck.

Along the lake, there were houses in some sections. In other sections, the houses were on the opposite side of the road from the lake, but the property extended across the road. On the lake, there wer private docks, boat houses, and piers.

As we got closer to the state park, the scenery changed to fields. I noticed field peas growing. That was a change from the normal cotton, corn, or soybeans that the farmers grow in this area.

When we got to the park, we noticed the visitor center didn’t have a lot of parking. There was no admission fee either.

We stopped in the visitor center to get a map. There were several exhibits, so we took a quick walk through. We had left Nox in the truck with all the windows rolled down and the sunroof tipped up. we did not want to leave her in the truck very long.

There were some aquariums.

There was an exhibit on steamboats.

There was a section on one of the big Mississippi River floods.

The Civil War exhibit was interesting.

There was an exhibit containing wildlife native to the area.

I couldn’t decide if the snake was an actual stuffed snake or if it was a good rubber fake.

There was some information on de Soto exploring the area and John Audubon travels on the Mississippi River.

Here is a map a section of the Mississippi River and how the flow changed over the years. The upper left shows the oxbow shaped Lake Chicot.

There were some other small exhibits.

After our quick walk through, we unhitched Nox from her car harness and put on her walking harness.

The next installment will be our hike along the trail and more information about the park.