Who flipped the weather switch over to summer? It was a comfortable spring day when we left Mayport and traveled the 50 short miles to Kings Bay Submarine Base in Georgia. When we arrived, the temperature and humidity screamed summer. How could the weather change so fast? People in the South are fond of saying, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a few moments and it will change.” Four days later, the temperature dipped back to the early spring range.
Eagle Hammock RV Park is located on the Navy Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Georgia. That meant we had to pull Rosie, our Airstream trailer, past base security at the gate. There was plenty of room to park Rosie, our Airstream trailer, at the Pass and ID office to get our credentials in their system before heading to the gate.
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| A reminder that Kings Bay is a submarine base |
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| Heading to the gate |
Once our information was in their system, we were told we could proceed to the gate. After the usual scan of our IDs, the base policeman told me there were additional security checks before we were allowed to drive onto that military base. I hoped he wasn’t about to ask who led the National League in home runs in 1945. He didn’t. After completing the enhanced checks of our rig, we were waved through the gate.
Since this campground was named Eagle Hammock, I half expected to see an eagle or two while there. I didn’t. But, it didn’t take long after we parked Rosie to see our first critter. We saw a baby four-foot gator walk between our neighbors' trailers towards the lake. One neighbor told us a 10 foot gator lurked in the lake. We knew we needed to be very careful when walking our dog around this campground because gators move surprisingly fast on the ground.
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| Entrance to the campground |
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| Campground office |
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| Rosie in the campground |
It was interesting that the size of the big gator grew during the time we stayed in this campground. It started as a 10-foot gator then grew to 13 and finally a 16-foot gator. Sure, there was a possibility that several large gators lived in the lake. On the other hand, people telling us about the gator were fishing and they probably used their “fishing eyeball estimates” about size.
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| Gator in the lake |
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| Sign warning about the alligators |
There were other critters in the campground as well. We spotted rabbits behind Rosie most afternoons and a turtle laying eggs on the side of Rosie. There was ample evidence that armadillos were digging holes throughout the campground and an abundance of birds around the lake. What we didn’t see were eagles.
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| Turtle behind Rosie |
Several online reviews of this campground mentioned great bike trails. It took a couple of days looking for them, but we found them. We could only ride bikes early in the mornings because it was too hot to be outside by mid morning.
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| Along one of the bike paths |
We had a maintenance issue during our stay in this campground. Our macerator toilet quit working. After trying to fix it for longer than I wanted, I walked over to the camp host's trailer and asked about mobile RV service units that had access to the military base. I called three. Two said they could not show up for three or four weeks. The third could be out in two or three days, but they charged a $500 service call fee to show up on base then an additional diagnostic fee and the actual hourly fee to work on the trailer. I feared that some mobile RV service businesses decided that they can charge what I considered to be unreasonable fees on military bases and I translated that into the opposite of saying “thanks for your service.”
The camp host, a Navy Master Chief, overheard my conversations with these people and said that he would take a look at our problem. It didn’t take him long to realize I misread the fuse chart and changed the wrong one. Our problem disappeared when he replaced the correct one. That was a learning experience for me and I was glad I didn’t have to deal with the company that charged veterans outrageous service fees.
There were constant reminders that this was a very high security military base. We frequently saw patrols from base police officers and Marine security forces while riding our bikes on the designated bike paths. To emphasize base security, we heard an announcement over the base public address speaker system that the use of deadly force was authorized. That was a first.
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| A reminder about where we were |
We also noticed that about 10 of the sites were occupied by people serving on active duty at the base. The sites on both sides of Rosie were active duty families.
Our search for eagles ended in disappointment. We did find the six-foot gator, but not the 10, 13 or was it a 16-foot one.
Here are some specifics about this campground:
- There were multiple loops in the campground
- All of the roads in this campground were loose gravel
- Our site was a back in
- Our site was on the lake
- Most sites could be classified as "full sun" as trees were few and far apart
- Most sites had some space on both sides
- All of the roads in this campground were gravel and that made it hard to ride bikes within the campground
- Our site was paved with concrete 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
- There was a dump station in this park
- It was an easy walk to the trash dumpster, which was at the entrance of the campground
- There was a bathhouse in the campground. It was clean and maintained
- The park provided WiFi service. We had 3.58 mbps download speed
- AT&T provided 2 bars of 5G voice and data service over our campsite
- We were able to watch ION and FOX using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were Bounce, Court-TV, Decades, Get, Grit, H&I, LAFF and ME-TV,
- There were restaurants and shopping nearby
- This was a pet friendly park and it had a dog park
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| Fishing pier in the campground |
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| Rosie in the campground |
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