Gulf State Park - Gulf Shores, Alabama (April 2022)

Our trip to Gulf State Park last year only wetted our appetite to return. You would think that it would be easy to get reservations in a park with 496 sites. One of the new realities of camping is that it is harder than ever to find an opening in popular campgrounds. It took diligent and frequent checking to find what had to be a cancellation that allowed us to reserve a site on the water in this Alabama State Park. 

The trip from our previous campground in Pensacola to Gulf State Park took less than an hour. That meant we arrived before the park's official check-in time. We camped before in a park that rigidly enforced their check-in time. Fortunately, that didn't happen here. Our site was empty and we were ready to park Rosie, our Airstream trailer, when we arrived that morning. 

Gulf State Park

The campground at Gulf State Park

Our moods were brighter as soon as we turned onto our loop. There was grass between sites, the sites were large and our paved site with full hookups was on the water. After spending a week in our previous campground where everything around Rosie was dirt or mud after the rains, we were so excited over our site that we made an original mistake. We forgot to check for level before we unhitched Rosie from our truck. It was a good thing that our site was mostly level with only a slight side-to-side lean. 

Rosie's site was on the water

There are signs all over the park warning people to not aggravate the alligators. We were not tempted to bother the half-dozen gators we saw in the park, including the one we saw in the water right behind Rosie.

Alligator in water behind Rosie's site

 

Two alligators enjoying the sun

Another alligator in the park

Baby "gator" along a bike path

There are some great bike trails in this park. We enjoyed going on five to eight mile rides most mornings. I’m not sure I would have wanted to use our kayak in the lake behind Rosie after seeing a gator there. 

One of the bike trails

A bike trail

Bike trail

We were surprised to see several park trucks blocking one area of a bike path. It was easy to see the reason as we got closer to the trucks. A power pole cutout pole breaker was arcing and the park employees were there waiting for the power company truck to arrive and fix that problem. We assumed there were several power feeds into the park, but we didn't know if that power pole was feeding power to Rosie. We decided to quickly head back to Rosie to make sure our power surge protector wasn't being overloaded. It was clear to us when we arrived back at Rosie that our electrical service was coming from another feed into the park. 

Problems with the electrical feed into a section of the park

This campground is across the street from the Gulf coast. It is easy to bike there. 

We saw an unusual event along the beach while camping at this park. We were surprised to see a tent city camping on the beach area. We found out that the park sells camping spots on the beach twice a year as a fundraiser. We estimated that 100 tents were camping on the beach that night. That was a great idea for a fundraiser!

Some people were camping on the beach during a special event

We were surprised by the afternoon and evening winds while camping in Gulf State Park. We easily had 30-40 mph winds several days. That meant we spent more time than usual inside Rosie. We were grateful that we enjoy being inside Rosie. 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• There were multiple loops in the campground
• Our site was a back in
• Most sites could be classified as "full sun" 
• Our site was on the water
• Most sites had some space on both sides
• Our site was paved with asphalt and was level
• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection
• Our site had a sewer connection 
• The only trash dumpsters in this campground with almost 500 sites were at the entrance of the campground. Most people had to drive to the dumpster.  Our site was was within walking distance of the dumpsters
• There were two bathhouses in our camping loop. One was closed for renovation 
• The park provided good WiFi service 
• AT&T provided 3 bars of 5G voice and data service over our campsite 
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, NBC and PBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were AntennaTV, Bounce, Charge, Circle, Comet, CourtTV, Cozi, Dabl, Escape, Get, Grit, ION, Justice, LAFF, ME-TV, Rewind, Stadium and TBD
• There were restaurants and shopping nearby
• This was a pet friendly park 

Seen along a bike path

Kids loved playing on this tree in the campground