Beavers Bend State Park and Nature Center — Attraction in Broken Bow

While I am sure, upon full exploration, this park has many things to offer, there was one thing that really ruined my experience there.... The Park's/State's pass and ticketing system.

I am not from Oklahoma. I do not know the park guidelines for passes and such. And there is no gate/entry point for the park. I did try to research and see if there were any entry requirements online, but never could find instructions (later after leaving found out it was on their Facebook page....not helpful if that is the main place).

When we parked for our first hike, we never saw a pay/pass sign. It was there we later found. 1 sign pointing out towards the road, so once you are parked you only see the back. Again not helpful. Put another sign facing inward, or right in front of the area that goes to the trail. We got a ticket, $20. We had no reception at that place. So we had to move locations.

We finally saw a sign at the next place. This was critical because the ticket only has a QR code. No website or phone number. We called and spoke to a very confusing lady. By the end of that conversation we were able to finally understand that the park does not operate the ticketing fees, some 3rd party that oversees the entire state system does (again recall, not from Oklahoma, so how would we know).

She told us confusing things about the parking vs premier parking, the fees, moving areas, and that if we paid the violation we'd be fine and not have to pay anything else....even though we specifically told her we planned to hike much more that day.

We paid it shortly after, and sure enough, at our next hike we got another $20 ticket for license place not in system. We went to the main center because we did not understand. We saw one of the people writing tickets and spoke when them so we could understand what was going on.

The lady had told us wrong on the phone, we still needed to pay the $10 pass fee (which isn't included in the violation fee). And we also owed this 2nd $20 violation fee. And since the tickets are issued by the park but managed by the 3rd party, the 2nd ticket could not be removed.

We left, and we did pay the total $40 in fines. I hike a lot and all over the US, and I have never been so confused or misinformed by a parking/pass system. Please, for everyone, put more signs up, post more on your websites, and do not assume people from other states will understand your system. We would have paid the initial $10 if we had known about it. But now, I have a real hard time recommending this park with the...

I got a chance to visit the park with my dad recently. It was an incredible 7 days in the woods. We stayed in the Cyprus (I think it was some type of wood... lol) campground from Thursday to Thursday. It was very well priced as we paid a week's worth of ground for the price of a single night in a hotel, which alone was worth the cost of sleeping on the ground. (Obviously, you can bring a cot or an air mattress😳)

All this talk of cost effectiveness, and I've yet to tell you just how beautiful this place was. Watching the sun rise over the river and through the trees was an incredible experience. Deer, squirrels, and crow (yes, even the crows are awesome af) would just wander the campground giving it live during the day, while the owl would give the occasional hoot at night. It really was awesome.

For me, since I enjoy watching videos to sleep, I was able to walk to the check-in lodge every afternoon and use their wifi to download videos. Word to the wise, I was completely jealous of my father's ability to get almost 100% service throughout the park with AT&T service, but as soon as we left Hochatown I couldn't get a bar with T-Mobile. The wifi made up for that.

Other notable places that I saw (the mini roto car trail (Rugaru House), the restaurant (I wanna say it was the LodgeHouse? Either way, they had a 7' or 8' Bigfoot sculpture that was amazing, and the dock in front, down a rock staircase, juts out into the water so you can see just how beautiful this place is. (Next time I go, I'll be sure to actually eat at the restaurant and give it a better review than: cool sculpture, great view... lol).

Nearest Walmart is broken bow, nearest Walmart super center is Idabel.

Closing notes: me and my dad had an incredible time, he cooked every night and we sat around and got to hang out. It was an incredible experience. Btw, there's a coffee house in Hochatown that does amazing breakfast and coffee. It's behind one of the cafes, and it's down a road that looks like it's a driveway,...

After this park being referred to us by multiple friends ,and seeing that it is highly rated, my husband and I were highly disappointed in this park for multiple reasons. Now the scenery in this area is BEAUTIFUL. The reasons we were disappointed in the park are listed below.

The camp site we stayed at was awful. We stayed in turkey circle #10. The site was extremely un-level, all gravel, and extremely cramped. I guess being from Texas and staying in Texas state parks has us spoiled. Not only was it not a roomy campsite, but emptying the tanks at this site was a struggle. The design of the sewer dump didn't allow enough airflow so the "contents" would back up into the hose and then spray leakage all over the place from where the hose connected to the dump area. There was tissue paper all over from where other visitors had the same problem.

The directions to our campsite were non existent. There was no check in area to ask for directions, or to get a trails map. The website to the skatepark only gives the directions to the main park. Where we stayed was a different turn off form the main park.

The trails were AWFUL. They were not clearly marked on any trail we went on. Please see picture below... This happened on multiple trails. The official trail map we received at a local gift shop did NOT help. A kindergartener could have done a better job drawing a map. We met other visitors along the trail that had the same problem so we know it wasn't just us getting confused.

The trails were also not clearly maintained. Some areas we literals had to walk through knee high grass (see pic below) in rattlesnake country. We were very cautious. Being from Texas, we know the safety measures to take; we were very disappointed in a park that didn't maintain the trails for the safety of their visitors.

Some of the trails were also non-existent. Trails that were on the map were no where...