roadtripper5291431

This is our 6th Florida State Park in the Panhandle the past three weeks. So we can compare this experience to the other state parks. What we love about nature and this life style is hiking. So this park ranks among the others as having the best hiking of all! And that is because it reminds us of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, or the Boone Trail in North Carolina. Details about the hiking are in our blog added in here.

Additional best features of the park:
-Although only one of each, there is an outdoor laundry room with commercial grade machines and worked very well. Only $1.00 for each, washer goes about 30 min and the dryer about 45.
-Restroom are clean. Water pressure was good and plenty hot water.
-All sites are level, have a fire ring, clothes line, electric. The water spigot is placed between campsites so the even numbered ones have it on the same side as electric. Our neighbor didn't have enough hose, so he filled up his tank in his Motor Home.
-Church on Sunday! Sorry we won't be here to enjoy it! When we return, we will take this into consideration.
-Plenty of firewood for a meager suggested donation of $5.00. It's a bit green but if you bring your own hatchet and split it, it will burn with plenty of starter wood.
-Two Ranger offices with some supplies such as toilet paper and mosquito spray. One is in the center of the campground and the other at the Historic Gregory House.The Rangers are readily available. We didn't interact with the camp host, who is behind the scenes apparently. The one additional staff person was very friendly and helpful.
-We love historical tours of any kind, so the tour of the Historical Gregory House was a must! But during the week, only one tour time a day, at 10:00 am for an hour. Use your manual watch the day you want to take the tour! See below....

The not so good features:
-While the sites are very level, they are very narrow and are dirt. In fact, it is a dirt road to the campground, so when we were here, we got dusted good whenever we walked the 1/4 mile to the dumpster. The dirt roads were bumpy so not sure what it would be like to come when its very wet.
-The mosquitos came out the day we arrived (note arrived mid-March). And they are big and swarm you...so need good spray to keep them off.
-Upon checking in, the ranger nearly scared us to death about the copperhead snake. Now, we did need the warning but we came to hike and we have hiked all over the Appalachian and Great Smoky Mountains without any incidents. He said they do have 3 or 4 bites a year and while normally not fatal (unless you are allergic to the venom) it is painful and you will end up in the hospital. He said wear boots and long pants. They use camouflage for protection so are hard to see. They know where to strike if you step on one, thus boots and long pants will help. We ended up hiking a lot and never saw one, but our first hike was done with great trepidation.
-This campground is right at the Central Time Zone/Eastern Time Zone tower so my iPhone kept telling me we were back in Central Time...but this campground and the TOUR are run on Eastern time! So it was just a little annoying at first as I kept thinking we had more "time" than we actually did!

GOOD or BAD, your choice!
This park is very isolated, so come well-stocked and with your tank full or nearly full! It's about a 30 minute drive to civilization. It is convenient to I-10 however. So east or west and you will find supplies/gas. We came prepared and we loved the sounds of nature only!

But in three short days, we were won over! What we liked and didn't like are at the end of this narrative. We started off on the wrong foot. This is a small and somewhat primitive campground. The one-way road around the campground is narrow in spots and there are lots of trees. We were checked in by the ranger and he told us to enter the park on the first road we see as it is one-way. But my husband looked at the map and we were the last site so it made no sense to drive all the way around. So we went in on the "wrong way" and that worked the day we arrived. But we were on that site only one night and had to change to the site next to us the next day. (That was the only way we could get in this fully booked campground!) We had a very hard time squeezing into this site, # 29, between the trees. And once in, we realized the electric and water are on the opposite side from all the other campgrounds we have stayed. In order to plug in, we had to pull our 5th wheel up to the front of the lot. Not ideal as we were concerned our "hitch" would get hit if someone left early in the morning and wasn't able to see clearly.

When we changed sites, we did have to drive all the way around the campground. We haven't seen the damage from scrapping a few trees, hopefully there are no marks. Since we hope to sell our RV soon, that was not a fun sound to hear!

There are a few prime sites that will hold a 40 foot rig. We saw one couple heading here while we were out walking. They were going to be across from us. We advised them to stop before pulling into the campground, walk around and access their site to decide the best way in. They were pulling a 40 foot 5th wheel! Their site is one of only 2 or 3 pull throughs but it did have a power line across the back of it, so he had to watch for that. His site was 26. Site 28 is actually the best for an easy pull through. Site 20 maybe one also. We will upload a picture of the campground map which is a little more telling than what you will see on Reserve America.

What did we like: Very secluded and quiet campground. You wake up to the serenading of a multitude of birds! Each site has a fire ring, clothes line, water and electric. The sites are flat and a hard sand base. The camp host was readily available and very helpful. The bathrooms/showers are clean, a little dated, but at least clean. The nature trails are beautiful and if you are a kayaker or use a canoe, this is a good place to be.

What we did not like: Arriving when all the no-see-ums were hungry. It was 4:00 pm on a Saturday and the weather was cool. They don't like it hot, so eventually, they disappeared. So they were swarming us like a bad Alfred Hitchcock movie. We each have many bug bits and that has been a bit miserable. The couple across from us arrived a little before we did and they were also ready to leave. We did try to stock up on all our food, but needed a few more things. There is only one small grocery store, an IGA, in town and it is closed on Sundays. And the worst thing for us was that the water and electric are on the "wrong side" of the site, unless you want to come on backwards and that worked for the people in the pull through across from us. Our electric cord is 25 feet but our camper is 30 and the electric was up by the nose of our RV.

We wrote a blog about our time here with lots of pictures of the beautiful nature trails and more.