Summer Campout: Solstice Weekend at Steel Creek

Alright everyone, after much debate, your Mod team has decided to keep our summer campout to individual booking like our spring campout. We will be at Steel Creek Campground on the Buffalo National River, checking in on Friday June 21 and checking out Sunday June 23, 2024 (the weekend following Summer Solstice). Similarly to before, there are a limited number of sites available for pre-booking, so if you’re serious about wanting to join us, I would not hesitate to book your campsite. If you don’t mind setting your party size to the max of 6 for cushion, we would appreciate it. You can do so here (you may need to make a Recreation.gov account if you don’t already have one):
https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/10001451

The site cap is more difficult than Devil’s Den – no more than 6 people per site, though there is plenty of room for multiple tents. If you are a family of 3 or less, you may wish to discuss here the possibility of sharing a site with others – I realize most of us are families of four. We could have 3 families of 4 across 2 sites and be within their set cap.

For two nights, my site cost the full $40 upfront (unlike Devil’s Den where you pay a deposit). They do give you a 75% refund if you need to cancel as long as you do it the Wednesday before that weekend. [If you should need to cancel at a later date, I would ask that you coordinate with the group so someone who wasn’t able to reserve a site has a chance.]

In addition to the reservable tent sites (1-13), there are also reservable sites at the horse camp (but you must have a horse trailer) and quite a few first come, first serve campsites right next to us if you would like to, perhaps, take the day off Friday and head down early. This is a tremendously popular campground in the summer and about 1.5 hours away, so the chances of finding a FF site after leaving NWA at 5PM is a bit slim. (Again, if you want to coordinate with someone else on that front, by all means go for it – but I don’t recall how great cell service is at the campground to communicate with someone back in town.)

Of course, if you would like to reserve a private cabin nearby, go to a different campground such as Kyle’s, or do some primitive gravel bar camping on your own and join during the day time, you are more than welcome to. We also ENCOURAGE folks who aren’t interested in the summer campout to still come down and join us for our SOLSTICE PARTY on Saturday! We tentatively plan to go on a hike at Lost Valley, Steel Creek Overlook, or the Goat Trail that morning and come back to the campground for festivities as a group following the hike – a more refined lineup of activities will be presented at a later date, but my family makes day trips out here all the time to go on a hike.