Back in December, we started planning some small camping trips to do in the Spring. Scott brought up the idea of going to Burr Oak State Park in Southeastern Ohio. He had gone a few years ago and hiked the entire perimeter of the lake with Freddy, and camped at the campgrounds. He speaks often about that trip, so we decided to check it out together!

Burr Oak State Park was established in 1952, after the Tom Jenkins dam was built in 1950 for flood control. The park itself is 2,593 acres. If you have ever been in this part of Ohio, you know that there are several state parks and TONS of wildlife and greenery to be seen. There are 28 miles of trails, and the Buckeye Trail also passes around the lake.

(Photo is not mine!)

Unfortunately, Scott has been VERY sick for the past 2 weeks. We still decided to go on the trip, but knew we were going to take it easy for the weekend. It’s a quick 2 hour drive from Akron to Burr Oak, so we left after school on Friday.

If you have never been to this State Park and are thinking about going there, make sure your GPS takes you on the main roads. We suggest taking route 13 and NOT 78 as the drive is much easier. It’s a little longer with both distance and time, but worth it to not have to drive on windy roads with a camper behind you! Going, we took 78 which ultimately led us down a narrow and windy dirt road….at night. Not something you want to do.

We stayed at the Burr Oak campgrounds, which was a pretty nice campground to stay at. We arrived at the park around 9:30 due to traffic and leaving home later than anticipated. We got to our reserved site, and quickly realized that they “slight”slope of the site was much greater than anticipated. The campgrounds weren’t very busy, so we parked at another site and decided to deal with it in the morning.

The next morning, we went down to the campground office. The woman in the office was extremely helpful and the switch of campsites was extremely easy! She was awesome! We decided to go down to the beach to walk around a little. There were no pets allowed on the beach, but we snuck Freddy on it anyway (hey, he’s a good dog and we are responsible pet owners! Plus, there weren’t any people around for us to bother). There was a pet area next to the beach, but it was a pretty poor excuse for a pet area (see photo below).

We also decided to do a little hike down to the dam. Again, Scott has been pretty sick so any sort of strenuous hiking was out. Breathing is sort of important 😉 We walked around some, then went back to our campsite. We spent the rest of the day hanging out at the campsite, cooked lunch, and just relaxed. Something we both desperately needed. This was also our first camping experience with boon docking (no water or electricity hook ups), so we learned quite a bit! We specifically picked a campsite like this to give ourselves some experience before our big trip that is coming up quickly!

We recently had a surprise shower, thrown by one of my best friends Holly who sneakily planned it out and invited our friends and family with Scott’s help. We had registered for several items for camping, but assumed we would end up buying most of these things ourselves before the trip. Luckily, many of the gifts we received were things that came in handy for the boon docking trip. We received both a propane stove and a little charcoal stove, a French press, a log mover (which is super fun!), and several camping cookbooks! We are blessed beyond belief at the amount of friends we have and the love that surrounds us as we get ready to start our lives as husband and wife (75 days left!).

Overall, Burr Oak is a quiet and relaxing gem in Southeastern Ohio. The campgrounds were well maintained, the lake was quiet and beautiful, and we enjoyed our time! 9/10 on our camping scale!

Check out the photos below to see some of our weekend!

On our next post: Our 5 week camp-venture begins! We take off on June 1st and are headed West!