Cozy Rosie: Fort Pickens Campground - Pensacola, Florida (April 2018)

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Fort Pickens Campground - Pensacola, Florida (April 2018)

We were wanting to return to Fort Pickens for several years. In fact, we had reservations a couple years ago only to have them canceled because of a storm. This is because the access road to the campground travels through a very narrow strip of land bordered by the Gulf on one side and the Bay on the other. Storms are known to bury the road in beach sand or, in the worst case scenario, the road ends up underwater for a day or two.

The entrance to Fort Pickens

The road to the campground is on a narrow strip of land between the Gulf and the Bay

This means you always pay attention to the weather reports while camping in the campgrounds of Fort Pickens because storms may strand you for several days. So why is Fort Pickens on our “visit again “ list? The reasons start with great beaches and include fun bike trails. Another reason for liking Fort Pickens is that you have a ringside seat for the Navy’s Blue Angels practice sessions on Tuesday and Wednesdays.

The "Blues" flying in formation

There are multiple camping loops in this park. Loop A is separate from the others and it’s sites are larger and some have shade. Loops B through E are all in one area that appears to be similar to a parking lot. We were told that the hurricanes have blown down the trees that used to line this area over the years.

Another difference between Loop A and the others is that many of the sites outside Loop A were too short to allow both your trailer and tow vehicle to fit, so you end up parking the truck sideways in your site. That means you cannot hookup your rig the night before if you are planning an early exit the next morning.

Rosie parked in Fort Pickens Campground

As expected, the prime Loop A sites are difficult to reserve. That isn’t unique because it is usually hard to reserve a site in any loop at this campground. A possible contributor to this problem is the fact that Fort Pickens is a federal site and campers with the National Park’s Senior Pass card pay only 50 percent of the going rate.

We enjoyed riding our bikes between the campground area and the fort. There is a small bridge along that path that always has a few turtles swimming in in the shade around the bridge. We enjoyed seeing the large “granddad” turtle there.

The bike/walking path between the camping loops and the fort

An unexpected bonus during our stay was that we were able to watch two practice sessions of the Blue Angels. We watched the Tuesday practice run from Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer. We watched the Wednesday performance from the fishing pier and found that to be a better observation area because you could see more of the acrobatics from there.

Watching the Blue Angels practice from the fishing pier area in Fort Pickens Campground

Here are some specifics about this campground:

Reserve America says there are five camping loops in this park. In practice, there is Loop A and then the rest combined onto one large field.
Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service
Our site had a water connection that delivered 40 pounds of pressure
Our site did not have a sewer connection
There are two dump stations in the park. The first serves Loop A and the second is for the remaining loops.
Our site had an asphalt pad. It was slightly off center
Our pad was very narrow. We had to be very careful when exiting Rosie because it was too easy to step off the asphalt pad and potentially twist your ankle
There are multiple bathhouses throughout the park. These seem to have annoyingly loud exhaust fans
A couple of hooks would be a welcomed addition to the bathhouse as these would give users somewhere to hold their items
We had only one bar of AT&T 4G service. For the most part, our iPhones were unusable
We were able to watch Fox using Rosie’s TV antenna. ABC, CBS and NBC drifted in occasionally, but were unwatchable most of the time.