After our wonderful time in Shreveport, we headed east to Monroe, Louisiana. We drove right through, and past about 40 miles to the Poverty Point Reservoir State Park. So far, we have loved the Louisiana State Parks (including our past experiences with Fountainebleau)!
Poverty Point Reservoir state park is located on a 2700 acre man-made reservoir that is known for it’s great fishing.
The park has many visitor areas for day use,
and has cabins for rent (how cool are these cabins out over the water!?),
And the park has a very nice campground! There are over 50 sites, with 41 of them being full-hookup sites. We ended up with a huge monster site (#28 for future reference). Since we were only here for one night, we left the 5er hooked up, and there was still room to park the van next to it. (and there are about 4 pull-thrus in their own loop that are crazy big – could probably park 2 of our 5ers + (and left hooked up) in them!
We were near the playground, and a restroom building with washers and dryers in it. The washers and dryers were $1.00 a load, so we caught up the 5 loads that we had in the hampers.
The restrooms were so nice! They were clean, had 2 shower stalls, and I loved how they were decorated!
Right around the corner from the laundry is the girls’ favorite part of the park. The playground! 
The kids had a ball playing on it the morning that we were there. The boys loved the wide open fields – perfect for football!
The park seems like a great place to visit anytime, but my kidlets want to come back in the summer because the park’s playground equipment is really a water park! It has a control button that turns the water on (on a timer); no waste when there is no-one there to use it, and no waiting for certain hours and a ranger.
Poverty Point is a popular water sport destination, and it’s convenient since it’s only 3 miles north of I-20 (east of Monroe). If you don’t haul your water toys with you, the park rents john boats and canoes (open to close for day users, overnight/24 hours for campers!). The prices aren’t bad either – the canoes are $5/hour or $20/day, and the john boats are $15/day.
This is a great park with space to roam in a peaceful setting. Campsites run between $18 and $28/night depending on season and fhu or w/e.
Right up the road is the Poverty Point Historic Monument. It is a state historic site, but it is currently nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (edited to reflect that PPHM became a World Heritage Site in 2014). Because of the time of our visit, and the fact that if we wanted to do anything in Monroe it had to be the next day (everything is closed on Sundays and Mondays), we did not have a chance to visit the earthen mound site. I heard from several people that it is a must see, so we will definitely hit it on our next time through the area.
We really, really liked Poverty Point, but we had hoped to use it as a base camp for exploring Monroe. It was a little far for us to day trip in from ($50 in fuel to drive our rigs past Monroe and back in, and 45 min. each way), so we only stayed one night. That being said, if we were coming from (or heading!) east on I-20, this park would definitely justify a longer stay to unwind and relax. and fish. they have a great fish cleaning station! The park is well groomed, there are extensive grounds to explore, and it has a great atmosphere. We really enjoyed our overnight, and Vaughn and the boys lamented that they didn’t have time to fish the lake (tho they don’t have Louisiana out of state licenses anyway…). Poverty Point Reservoir is a park that we would like to come back to and stay awhile; especially the kids (by request – when it’s hot out and they can play on the water drenched playground!).
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