Oak Grove Campground (U.S. Military FamCamp) - Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida (November 2021)

This is a first. We decided to spend Thanksgiving out camping in Rosie, our Airstream trailer, instead of at home. It appeared that we were not the only people wanting to spend the holiday out camping and felt fortunate when we were able to reserve a site in Oak Grove Campground "behind the gate" on Pensacola Naval Air Station.

“Behind the gate” meant this campground was on the military base. That distinction was important because it translated to Marines armed with M-16 rifles at the gate checking everyone’s credentials and only allowing those on active duty, retired military members and former military people with service connected disabilities noted on their VA Health ID cards to enter the base. 

The other unusual security issue was also at the gate. We had to weave while pulling Rosie, our Airstream trailer, through concrete barriers in front of the gate. These were designed to stop someone intentionally trying to crash on to the base. I remembered seeing similar security measures at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin during the Cold War. Needless to say, we had to be very careful while we slowly approached the gate.

Past the barricades and heading to the gate guarded by armed military police 

Sign at the campground

You have to admit that these “FamCamp” campgrounds have a higher level of security than your typical KOA. 

We enjoyed watching the Blue Angels practice overhead as we set up Rosie in the campground. That’s another difference between this FamCamp and your typical KOA, where you don't see air shows over your site.

This campground is on the opposite side of the bay from Fort Pickens, a campground we have enjoyed camping in multiple times. It was interesting in that we viewed the Bay side of Fort Pickens as just a bay. Things looked different from the Naval Air Station side. We saw the mouth of the bay as it opened to the Gulf. We also enjoyed waves from the Gulf along the shoreline behind the campground. 

Rosie in the Campground

The barricades were easier to navigate without Rosie hitched to our truck

We ended up being invited to spend Thanksgiving with our son and his family, which were about 50 miles from this campground. We quickly loaded the truck and headed there for the day. Knowing that the Marines were watching over the gate, we didn't feel apprehensive about leaving Rosie behind for a day.

Our grandson with his Becca

Our grandson participated in an art project with his Becca

Dinner is just about ready

Saying goodbye after a wonderful day

We made a mistake in regards to our bikes. We forgot that military bases require bicyclists to wear safety helmets even if the state doesn’t. After a quick run to the store, we enjoyed riding our bikes around the base. 

New bike helmets so we could ride our bikes on the base

Out bike riding along the shore line

Speaking of bikes, there are some great bike paths on the Navy base. We had visited this base several times in the past to see the Naval Aviation Museum and the Lighthouse. We found some amazing views of both on the bike paths that we never saw riding through in our car. 

This view of the lighthouse was easier to see from the campground

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• There were multiple loops in the campground
• Our site was a back in
• Our site was "full sun" 
• Most sites were close together 
• Our site was paved with concrete and level 
• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection
• Our site had a sewer connection 
• There was a dump station in this park 
• The was a trash dumpster near Rosie 
• There was a bathhouse in the campground. It was clean and well maintained 
• There was a great laundry in the park. It cost $1 to wash a load and $1 to use the dryers 
• The park provided WiFi service. The best description of it was annoying. You had to log back onto the slow WiFi every time you paused for a few minutes 
• AT&T provided 2 bars of 4G voice and data service over our campsite 
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were AntennaTV, Bounce, Charge, Circle, Comet, Dabl, Get, Grit, ION, ME-TV and Stadium
• The campground had cable-TV with 100+ channels, but our connection did not work. We didn’t pursue it because we prefer over-the-air TV signals
• There were restaurants and shopping nearby
• This was a pet friendly park

This was our second time camping in a U.S. Military FamCamp. I admit I feel different in a positive way when camping in a military campground. This may be because we know everyone in the campground shares a common thread of service in the U.S. Armed Services. We look forward to camping in more FamCamps.

The beach near the campground

Another picture of the beach

They had a few "spare" Blue Angel jets on the base

Rosie in the campground

Dr. Julian G. Bruce St. George Island State Park - St. George Island, Florida (November 2021)

We never made to St. George Island State Park before this trip. That's odd because if you looked at the campgrounds we tend to visit, it is easy to see that ones along the Gulf Beaches are high on our list. 

One of our favorite Gulf Coast places was St Joseph's Peninsular State Park. What you don’t see in earlier postings in this blog is that we camped there many years in tents before Rosie, our Airstream trailer. It was easier to wait out the occasional thunderstorms once we hung out our tent to dry and started camping in Rosie. We continued to camp there at least once every year. Looking at a map, St George Island is less than 50 miles to the east from Port St Joe. What kept us from St. George Island?

The easy answer was habit. We loved St. Joe Peninsular State Park and felt no need to explore other options. 

Then Hurricane Michael destroyed St. Joseph Park along with its 119 camping sites. That gave us the needed motivation to visit other campgrounds along the Gulf Coast.

A stop at Mexico Beach on the way to St. George Island

Sign at the entrance to the park

But it wasn’t that easy. Getting reservations in any of Florida’s prime state park campgrounds has always been very difficult. I sometimes wonder if everyone else has an uncle in the state’s reservation office looking out for them. My wife has a bumper crop of uncles, but I doubt they have any pull when it comes to making camping reservations.

After looking for an opening a long time, we lucked into landing what had to be a cancellation and booked a week in St. George Island State Park. This gave us time to check out a “new to us” park and to see if it will be added to our list of “must revisit” campgrounds.

Rosie parked at the our campsite

If you ever read reviews about this campground, a reoccurring theme is bugs. We understand why. Our site filled with very angry mosquitoes and noseeums most afternoons. We quickly learned that entering and leaving Rosie needed to be as fast as possible to limit the number of flying pests sneaking inside. Otherwise, we would spend the rest of the day trying to get rid of uninvited and unwanted guests inside Rosie. 

 

The beach and the dunes have to be the main draw here. Locals call this the “forgotten coast.” While it is hardly forgotten, the uncrowded shoreline and lack of condos on the horizon was refreshing. Add in the amazing sand dunes in the park and you have a wonderful campground that lived up to its billing. 

The coastline 

Sunrise at the park

The beach was a short walk from the campground. It was refreshing to stroll down to the shore every day. 

We noticed that the beach sand at this park was different from the sand we saw down the road at Port St Joe. The beach sand there was white and very soft. Beach sand at St. George Island had a slight reddish tint and was compacted down. It reminded us of Daytona Beach. 

A shadow dance along the shore?

There were several hiking trails in this park. We didn’t see any labeled as bike trails and joined in with the other bicyclers riding our bikes on the hiking trails. The downside was that we had to frequently push our bikes through patches of soft sand before we could ride them again. 

Yes, this was a hiking and biking path!

After a bike ride in the soft sand

A campground brochure said there were just a few animals on the island because it was hard for them to get there. We think the raccoons seem to have found a way to the island because we found their sandy tracks on our truck. We also saw the alligator in the pond in front of the campground. 

An alligator along the shore of a lake near the campground

The bird was "on-duty" protecting the shoreline

While the park didn’t have lots of wildlife, we did find a celebrity camping there. The Duke made sure no one was out-of-line in the park. 

A first! John Wayne was in the campground

We talked to the couple in an Airstream trailer parked across from us. We found out the wife grew up on the same street as Becky. What a small world! 

This island must be a million miles away from an AT&T cell tower. Our phones showed a generous 1 bar of service. It took forever for our iPhones to connect to the Internet and text messages tended to fail. 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• There were two loops in the campground
• Our site was a back in
• Our site had some shade
• Most sites had some shrubbery to provide a small level of campground privacy between neighbors 
• Our site was paved with dirt and was surprisingly level side-to-side
• Our site had 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection
• Our site did not have a sewer connection 
• There was a dump station in this park. It was easy to pull our sewage tote to it
• It was an easy walk to take the trash to the dumpsters at the entrance of the campground
• There were two bathhouses in the campground. The one closest to our site appeared to be clean and maintained 
• The park did not offer WiFi service 
• AT&T provided maybe one bar of 5Ge voice and data service over our campsite. Our data usage was excessive while camping there and we did not stream video, hotspot, nor use data-hog apps. Our theory was that there were multiple errors in the received data on our phone because of the poor cell coverage and it had to be resent multiple times and that chewed up the data plan on our iPhones
• We were able to occasionally watch CBS, CW, FOX and NBC in the mornings and nights using Rosie’s TV antenna. The PBS station's signal was watchable most of the time. Digital channels occasionally seen were Bounce, Circle, Charge, Comet, Dabl, H&I, ION, ME-TV and MY-TV. Make sure you bring your DVDs to this campground 
• There were restaurants and shopping nearby
• This was a pet friendly park 

This campground will be remembered in family folklore as the flat tire and binoculars lens cap park. After going for years without a bike tire incident, we had two flats on our bicycles. Perhaps the abundance of sand spurs contributed to this problem. We found new bike tire tubes at a hardware store off the island. 

We had to repair two flat tires on our bikes in the park

We lost a lens cap on our binoculars while on a bike ride on the trail leading to the end of the island. After an afternoon of riding and walking our bikes through soft sand, we realized that we needed to head back to Rosie before darkness stranded us on the trail. Once back at our site, we discovered the lens cap was missing and any attempt to find it would have to wait until morning.

The bike path while searching for the lost lens cap

I retraced our route the next morning looking for that lens cap. It was very windy that night blowing more soft sand on the path making it harder to travel and find it. I was thrilled when I found the wayward lens cap near where we turned around the previous day. 

We took a side trip to St. Joseph Peninsula State Park. It remains a “day use” only park, but a ranger said progress is being made on reopening the campground. Yes, campground because the Gulf Breeze campground will be converted into a day use area. The Shady Pines campground will be reconfigured adding more space between sites and will be full hookups. Losing the Gulf Breeze loop means the number of sites available will shrink from 119 to about 60. The ranger’s estimate was that the campground could reopen as early as late fall 2022, but more realistically late spring or summer 2023. 

Side trip to St Joseph Peninsular State Park

You could see that the park was being worked on to fix the hurricane damage

A picnic at the Marina 

The store was open

Not much left of the trees in the park

Our verdict is that St George Island State Park is a beautiful and quiet park. You need to arrive with all of the supplies and food you need because it is a long drive to a store. We enjoyed the park and hope to return. 

Big Lagoon State Park, Pensacola, Florida (November 2021)

It felt odd to return to Big Lagoon State Park. The park was closed by order of Florida’s governor the last time we camped there in Rosie, our Airstream trailer. That was back in 2020, the early days of COVID. No one at that time had any idea how bad it was going to turn out. What we knew then was that the State of Florida, along with most other states, closed all of public parks and campgrounds and we had to leave after being there for only a few days. 

Sign at entrance to the park

It also felt good to return. 

We read that Hurricane Sally damaged the park and called the Ranger’s Station to learn more before we made our reservations. What we heard wasn’t encouraging. It sounded as if the campground was about the only place in the park that was still open. About three-quarters of the boardwalks were damaged and closed, the observation tower was unreachable and the park's roads were closed beyond the boat launch area. That meant we could not get to the kayak launch area. That was disappointing because we loved exploring the waterways in this park from our kayak. Our expectations were rock bottom after talking to the ranger. We decided that we would simply explore any open trails and enjoy the few areas that were still accessible. 

Rosie's site in the campground 

On our earlier visits to this park, we frequently rode our bikes on the boardwalks from the campground to the bay. We occasionally stopped as we passed by what we called the alligator pond then continued on to the bay side of the park. Stopping was mandatory this time because the rest of the boardwalk was barricaded.  

We hadn’t noticed before the quiet beauty of that spot.  We enjoyed walking there most mornings and afternoons. We remarked several times about how peaceful it was there. In case you are wondering, we did see an alligator in that pond. 

At the "alligator" pond

The reflections were great

We also saw two deer with babies near the alligator pond. Add armadillos, snakes, squirrels and many varieties of birds to that list and you see why some people mentioned wildlife in their reviews of this park.

Yes, you can see the alligator in this photo

The barricades after the "alligator" pond

Experienced campers know that most campgrounds change personalities over weekends. The campground filled with young families with children. We enjoyed seeing excited children laugh and play in the park. 

For some reason, weekenders seem to believe they don’t have a good campfire unless it is belching out a blinding cloud of smoke. It was sadly amusing to see the campground area engulfed in a cloud of smoke as we walked our dog weekend evenings. 

The temperature dipped into the 30s while camping at Big Lagoon. Rosie’s heat pump kept us warm until the temperature was too low for it to keep up and the propane furnace took over. There was a surprising number of people camping in tents and we hoped they were able to stay warm during the cold snap. 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• There were three loops in the campground 
• Some sites had minimal shade. More sites were either full or partial sun. It helps to have a good working air conditioner when camping here 
• Most sites had some space on both sides 
• The surface of our site was dirt. Make that soft dirt. We needed to use leveling tools to correct a side-to-side lean in Rosie, our Airstream trailer. We noticed that the leveling blocks kept sinking in the sand as we stayed there
• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service. It appeared that only a handful of sites had 50 amp service as most sites were 30 amp only
• Our site had a water connection
• Our site did not have a sewer connection 
• There was a dump station in this park. It was near the entrance to the camping area and was a long way from our site.
• The trash dumpsters were near several bathhouses. It was easy to walk there with your trash
• There were three bathhouses in the campground. They appeared to be clean and well maintained 
• The park did not provide WiFi service 
• AT&T provided 3 bars of 4G voice and data service over our campsite
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were Bounce, Comet, Court-TV, Get, Grit, ION, ME-TV, Stadium and TBD
• This was a pet friendly park 

We noticed while walking around the campground one afternoon that there were a couple of sites with about six or seven people pitching one-man tents. We talked to several in that group and found out they were a bicycle tour group traveling from San Diego, California, to St Augustine, Florida. They described their bike ride as three weeks before Texas, three weeks in Texas and three weeks after Texas. Most of the members in this group were in their 60s and 70s. That group was gone the next morning as they continued their trip. 

We hope the park recovers from Hurricane Sally. It was easy to tell that they are making progress rebuilding what we have always considered to be a fun park to camp in. 

Wildlife at the park

A selfie