The state park is fantastic with some amazing views over the Missouri River and landscape. Wonderful hiking trails at different ratings of difficulty. The cabin we stayed in was a 4 bedroom with lots of room for the 4 of us. There would be plenty of room for 8. We brought our dogs, which was really nice. Remember a kennel, as we found out that it's the rule they are in a kennel if leaving them in the house alone. The fishing pond gets a little crowded as it's quite small, but the stocked rainbows were biting like crazy, much to the joy of my kids.

The only negative part, which is not the parks fault, was all the trash in the forest. It saddens me to see a precious state park looking like that, and I hope that there will be clean up during summer and that the park service will put heavy lids on all their trash cans and dumpsters. With the wind howling as it did when we were there, all the dumpster lids blow open, and trash flies everywhere. But apart from that I would definitely recommend a stay at the park and visit to nearby Ponca which has a nice little convenience store with all you'll need. There is also a nice pizza restaurant, Outlaw. Great pizza and ice cream.