There have been days while pulling Rosie, our Airstream trailer, that we wanted to put a lot of miles behind us. On our long travel days, we could be on the road all day. Not this time.
We were heading to a campground near Jacksonville, Florida, on the Atlantic coast and we didn’t want to arrive there after sunset. That meant we needed to find a place to spend the night while on our way to our destination park. The Suwannee River State Park was close to the Interstate highway and a comfortable number of miles from home. We could arrive in the afternoon, explore the park and be able to arrive at our next campground the following day.
The Ranger on duty told us Suwannee River was a small park as we checked in. We quickly discovered that he was correct as this may be the smallest state park we have ever camped in.
You cannot translate "a small park" into one with nothing to do while there. There were several trails to explore and you could not ignore the star of the park, the Suwannee River. But, small park did mean that that you could explore most of it in a day. That was OK to us because this was mostly a nice place to park for the night and our main reason for stopping there had more to do with geography instead of the amenities. From walking around the camping loop, we saw several other rigs that didn’t unhitch for the night. That made it appear to us that some other campers saw this as a convenient stopover for the night.
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| Rosie in the campground |
We ended up in one of the shorter sites in the campground. We had to remove our bikes from the rack behind Rosie because there wasn’t enough space to do so once we backed into our site. We were glad we had our bikes to explore the park.
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| The Suwannee River |
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| Another view of the Suwannee River |
Including Rosie, there were five Airstream trailers in this campground. The other campers were probably convinced that there was an Airstream rally there. No, but it was a coincidence to see that many Airstream trailers in a small camping loop.
There were a handful of short hiking trails in this park. Most were unsuitable for bicycles.
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| Path to one of the trails |
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| Along the trail |
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| Another view along the trail |
Two bicyclists set their tents up in a site near Rosie. We found out that they started their trip in Monterey, California and were heading to Miami. It was interesting talking to the cross country bicyclists.
Here are some specifics about this campground:
- There was only one loop in the campground
- Our site was a back in
- Our site backed into the woods and trees
- Our site had shade
- Most sites had some space on both sides
- Our site was paved with dirt and we needed to use several leveling tools to correct a side-to-side lean in Rosie
- Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service
- Our site had a water connection
- Our site had a sewer connection. It took nearly 30 feet of sewer hose to connect to it
- There was a dump station in this park.
- The trash dumpster was in the back of the campground
- There was a clean and up-to-date bathhouse in the campground
- The park did not provide WiFi service
- AT&T provided maybe one bar of 4G voice service over our campsite and data service that reminded me of the days before 3G
- We were able to watch CBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were Circle, ION and ME-TV
- According to Google Maps, there were restaurants and shopping about 10 miles from the campground
- This was a pet friendly park
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