Cozy Rosie: Grayton Beach State Park - Santa Rosa Beach, Florida (September 2019)

Monday, October 7, 2019

Grayton Beach State Park - Santa Rosa Beach, Florida (September 2019)

A funny thing happened while on our way to camp for a week at Topsail Preserve State Park near Destin, Florida. We started talking about how we enjoyed Grayton Beach State Park more than Topsail.

This isn’t to say that Topsail isn’t a great park. We simply enjoy Grayton more. If that is so, you may be wondering why we reserved space in Topsail.

It seems to us that Hurricane Michael changed the game when it comes to getting reservations in Florida State Parks. It was always difficult, but not impossible, to get reservations at a park along Florida’s Gulf coast. Hurricane Michael destroyed both camping loops in Port St Joe’s state park. That took 130 prime campsites out of circulation and increased the pressure on the remaining state parks. The result was that it is just about impossible to book a site in one of Florida’s Gulf Coast campgrounds. You find yourself reserving a site in a campground that isn’t on your “A-List” because it is available.

One thing led to another as we talked about campgrounds and we decided to call Grayton to see if a last minute site had opened up. It had and we immediately reserved it.

Rosie at Grayton Beach State Park

We both grew up in Florida and know better than to make a beach trip in early September. It is normally too hot and too humid that time of the year and this one was no exception.

We tend to reserve our beach trips in March and October, but those times were not options this year because we booked WBCCI (Wally Byam Caravan Club International, the Airstream owners association) caravans during those times. We were in North Carolina during the Spring and will be in Delaware during our favorite Fall beach camping time. That put us at the beach in early September, a time we know we shouldn’t be there.

Sunset at Grayton Beach State Park

While suffering through one of Grayton‘s hotter days, we started talking about our childhood homes in central Florida. How did our parents survive in houses without air conditioners? I remember my mother occasionally said we were going shopping in downtown Tampa because the big department stores had air conditioning.

I also remembered the first house we moved to that had air conditioning. There was a window unit in the living room and another in my parent’s bedroom. I quickly learned how to position doors in that house so that a whiff of cool air would trickle down to my room.

Somehow we lost that ability to cope with the heat and humidity without air conditioning and Rosie’s AC unit was up to the task. (Rosie is our 25 foot Airstream trailer.) Rosie was cozy even during the hottest days.

The beach

The downside of the heat was that we didn’t want to venture outside Rosie and spent too much time inside or, taking a page from my mother’s playbook, we went shopping during the hottest part of the day.

We last camped in Grayton two year ago. They were closing the older loop back then to add 50 amp power and sewage connections there. Our fear was that they would remove too many trees from that loop. We were relieved to see the trees were still there.

The campsites were renumbered since our last visit. We found that our favorite site numbers are now associated with not-as-nice sites.

We were able to ride our bicycles by getting up early and going out before breakfast. Temperatures were too high for enjoyable rides by 8:30 a.m. We also tried to get out about a half hour before sunset, if the temperatures dropped enough.

Early morning bike rides

Stopping to take a photo

Grayton is a park you want to bring your bikes to. There are some great trails in Watercolor and Seaside.

Here are some specifics about this campground:

Our site was a back-in
Our site was dirt and gravel
Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service
Our site had a water connection
Our site had a sewer connection. All sites in this campground now have sewer connections
The campground has restrooms and showers in each camping loop. They were clean and well maintained
The campground doesn’t provide a WiFi signal
AT&T placed four bars of 4G service for voice and data
We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and PBS stations using Rosie’s TV antenna. We also saw digital channels CW, Grit, Laff, ME-TV and THiS. After spending a small fortune to fix Rosie’s TV antenna, I’m not sure we accomplished anything as signals drifted in and out. It is hard to tell because we have always had trouble picking up TV stations while camping at Grayton
We quickly learned that biting black flies own the park in September. We never saw these pests when camping there during late fall and early spring

While walking Suzy, our Yorkie dog, around our loop one afternoon, a fellow camper asked me where the dumpster was. I told her and we chatted for a few moments about camping. This was her family’s maiden trip in their new camper. They were heading from central Florida to Yellowstone, a huge undertaking especially since they had no reservations for the entire trip.

That sounded familiar to me. My father bought a 16 foot camper when I was probably 10 years-old and took the family to Yellowstone on our inaugural trip. My parents had to quickly learn the ropes of traveling with a RV. That trip was also one of my best childhood memories.

I hope that family has a great trip. They are heading there much later in the year than my family did years ago and will encounter snow and freezing temperatures along the way. If they make it, the weather will become part of that family’s fokelore in years to come.