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. 

We are glad we were able to stay in one of Fort Pickens' camping loops and plan to return.

Dunes area at Fort Pickens

Many osprey nest in this park

Selfie at the turtle bridge

A cannon protecting Fort Pickens

Inside the fort at Fort Pickens

Osprey landing on its nest

Rosie parked in Fort Pickens

Walking along the Pensacola Bay side of the park

Our campsite

Sunrise over the Fort Pickens campground

Anchors Aweigh RV Resort - Foley, Alabama (April 2018)

Our participation in Wally Byam Caravan Club International (WBCCI) events up until now was limited to going on caravans and attending their International Rallies. The Alabama Unit people were good about inviting us to their meetings, so we decided that it was time to participate in one of their rallies.

We arrived at Anchors Aweigh RV Resort in Foley and and started setting up Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer. It was fun watching the dozen or so other Airstream units arrive.  

The park's large clubhouse was the focal point of the rally. Many meals, the unit's meetings and the nightly entertainment were all centered around the clubhouse.

Getting ready for a "Low Country Boil" in the Anchors Aweigh RV Park

Our favorite excursion sponsored by the rally was the Five Rivers Boat Tour. This started from the Five Rivers Delta Center near Spanish Fort, Alabama, and was very interesting.

The Five Rivers Center

View from the Five Rivers area

The tour boat in the Five Rivers area

A live owl who is unable to live in the wild being taken care of in the Five Rivers Center

Riding on the tour boat

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection with 38 pounds of pressure 
• Our site had a sewer connection 
• We think there was a dump station in the park, but we didn’t find it 
• Our site had a level concrete pad
• There were five or six individual restrooms with showers around the Clubhouse. They were well maintained and clean. We found all of these occupied several times during our stay in this park 
• The park provided WiFi service with decent speeds
• AT&T provided good 4G voice and data service over our campsite 
• The park had a non-heated swimming pool. The water was too chilly for swimming 
• There was a hot tub in the park
• The park provided a cable TV connection with a good lineup of channels. We elected to skip the cable connection and watch the over-the-air signals in that area
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX, PBS and NBC using Rosie’s TV antenna. We also received digital channels Antenna, Charge, Get, Grit, Me and Stadium, a channel that aired rebroadcasts of college football and baseball games that were played anywhere from one to ten years ago
• This is a pet friendly park 

The Alabama Unit Rally ended on Sunday morning and we decided to quickly hitch up to avoid the rain storm predicted for that day. We saw the news stories as we arrived at our next destination about the tornado that touched down in the Anchors Aweigh RV Resort less than three hours after we left that morning.

TV Coverage of the tornado that touched down and blew over five RVs in the Anchors Aweigh RV Park

We were amazed watching the TV news video because we recognized the motor home that had been parked next to us and saw that the five rigs blown over were parked close to our site. One member of our Airstream group was in the park during the tornado and said that his trailer swayed some during the storm but stayed upright and safe. We were thankful that our group escaped injuries and that we were in Florida when the tornado hit Foley. We were also thankful that the campers taken to the hospital after the tornado were quickly released. 

Things could have been much worse!

Gunter Hill COE Campground - Alabama (April 2018)

The email we received said that some members of the Alabama WBCCI Unit were planning to stop over at Gunter Hill Corps of Engineers Campground while in route to the Unit's annual rally. We enjoyed our previous camping experiences in Gunter Hill, so we decided to meet our friends there in what they were calling a rolling rally. 

Similar to most Corps of Engineers campgrounds we have seen, Gunter Hill is a beautiful park with large camping sites in its two loops. We stayed in the Antioch loop during our first visit to this park. It appears to be the older loop with many trees throughout the site. It also has some excellent views of Catoma Creek, the large body of water that borders the campground. The drawback to this loop is that it only has water and electrical connections. That is probably why it doesn’t fill as quickly as the Catoma loop.

View of the creek

The Catoma loop adds sewer connections to the standard water and electric connections. There are fewer trees in the Catoma loop and that may be why the sites appear to be larger.

Rosie parked in Gunter Hill Campground

After setting up in our Catoma loop site, we noticed that the area around the water connection was starting to flood. A quick check of our hose connections confirmed that they were tight and that meant that the problem was coming from the park's spigot.

A quick call to the camp host suggested a possible cure. The water spigots in this park have weep holes to prevent them from freezing during the winter. If you fail to completely open the water valve, water can leak out of the weep hole. When I checked, the camp host was correct in that the water spigot wasn’t fully on and making that simple adjustment fixed the problem. 

About half-a-dozen Airstream trailers showed up for the night. We enjoyed meeting those members of the WBCCI's Alabama Unit. 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection with 46 pounds of pressure 
• Our site had a sewer connection 
• There are two dump stations in this park, one for each loop
• Sites in the Catoma loop have concrete pads
• Sites in the Antioch loop are dirt 
• Our site in the Catoma loop was level
• There were two bathhouses in the Catoma loop. Both were modern, well maintained and clean
• The park does not provide WiFi service 
• AT&T provided marginal 4G voice and data service over our campsite 
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX, PBS and NBC using Rosie’s TV antenna. (Rosie is our 25 foot Airstream trailer.) We also received digital channels Antenna, Buzz, Escape, Get, Grit, H&I, ME, Movies and THiS 
• This is a pet friendly park 

We noticed something this time that we didn’t have to deal with before while camping in Gunter Hill. We caught a whiff of a bad smell as we we setting up Rosie. We couldn’t decide if we were smelling sewage or if there was a dead animal in the woods near Rosie. Our camp host said we were in the section of the campground that when conditions were right the wind carried the smell from the paper mill across the creek. Conditions must have been right because we smelled the mill at our site and didn’t smell it about two sites away.

Another view of the creek

A walking trail in the park

We hope the wind will be coming from a different direction the next time we camp in this park. 

Rosie's site in Gunter Hill

Gunter Hill COE Campground