The best mornings of a Monroe week happen on the boardwalk at Black Bayou Lake, where the path leaves dry ground and threads through cypress and tupelo standing in the bayou. Walk it to the end and the Wildlife Pier puts you out over open water, the bottomland closed in behind you and the lake flat and quiet ahead. It's an easy walk for small legs, and it's the stretch of the refuge the family will still be talking about at dinner.
Because the refuge is inside Monroe's city limits, the trip works best as a parked week, with the rig staying put and every day starting close to home. When the family wants a change of water, Lake Claiborne State Park is the lake weekend west of town.
Black Bayou Lake and the Ouachita River from a base in town
Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge is off Highway 165 in North Monroe, and past the boardwalk it has 7 miles of trails and a boat ramp for anyone who packed a kayak. Go early in summer, before the heat settles into the bottomland, and be back at the rig by lunch.
Evenings belong to the Ouachita River, which runs right through the middle of Monroe. The heat eases a little once the sun drops toward the water, and a walk along the river is the easy end to a day spent mostly in the shade.
The rig sleeps at Ouachita RV Park off I-20, the in-town park with full hookups and pull-through sites. Summer in north Louisiana is hot and humid enough that those hookups are the reason to stay there, with the air running all afternoon while everyone waits out the worst of it. Winter is mild, and the same parked week works with the windows open.
Poverty Point Reservoir State Park is the other state-park lake around Monroe, an easy swap when a few nights out of town sound good. Lake D'Arbonne, Chemin-A-Haut State Park and the grass-covered Poverty Point earthworks, a World Heritage Site, are written up as two-person weekends in a smaller rig.
Lake Claiborne State Park, the lake weekend west of town
Lake Claiborne is the change of scene in a Monroe week, a 6,400-acre reservoir west of town where the water runs clear enough to look nothing like the bayous back in the city. A couple of nights here after a few in town splits the week between the refuge and open water, and the kids get a lake that feels like a different trip.
Every RV site in the park comes with water and electric, so roll in with the tanks emptied at the Monroe park. The pull-throughs are the sites a family motorhome wants, and they're what to reserve before you book the rig, because the pad you land decides how big a rig makes sense.
For Cajun country and New Orleans, start with the Louisiana RV page.