By the time you reach the top of Mount Nebo, you’ve already done the most interesting thing to do in the park — drive the road up the mountain. It twists back and forth through 11 hairpin turns that are steeper than anything I’ve driven anywhere else. The road is left over from the 1890s when the mountain was a resort reached by horse-drawn coach. For some odd reason, I’ve never taken a picture of it, but pictures wouldn’t do it justice.
The mountain is flat topped and pretty much covered with cabins. The overlooks on either end of the mountain are cool, although the trees on the west end have gotten so high that they block much of the view. Here’s the east end view I took today.
And the view from behind the visitor center with Lake Dardanelle below. I don’t know what’s with the sign, but I felt compelled to obey.
One of the coolest things I’ve seen at Nebo was the huge flock of Snow Geese that hang out in the middle of Lake Dardanelle in the winter. This shot was taken in February, 2024. That’s a tremendous number of geese — in the 10s of thousands, I’d guess.
Not that this has much to do with Mount Nebo State Park, but here’s a shot of a tiny bit of that same flock of geese taken from the lakeshore just a few days before I took the above photo.
Back to today’s visit. The two round peninsulas that jut into Lake Dardanelle each have a section of Dardanelle State Park on the near shore. The further section is where I headed next.
Here are some more photos of the park taken on past trips. I’ve hiked the rim trail three times. It’s a 3.5 mile loop around the edge of the summit, often on a ledge below the rim.