Fort Pickens Campground- Pensacola, Florida (September 2022)

There is always an element of chance when making reservations for the campground at Fort Pickens National Seashore. While it is hard to get reservations there, keeping them is harder. 

Our previous trip to Fort Pickens is a good example. The ranger on duty at the check-in station was turning everyone away because the road to the campgrounds was flooded. What was frustrating to us was that the park closed three days earlier, but no one bothered to inform those traveling there. That wasn’t the first time we were surprised as were arrived at Fort Pickens. 

Signs for Pensacola Beach and Fort Pickens (its the much smaller sign!)

We breathed a sigh of relief when we made it thru the first ranger’s station and were told to proceed to the campground check-in office. We did and were surprised to find that office was closed for lunch. Well, chalk up another first for Fort Pickens. 

We checked in after lunch and, as usual, were told the major rules of that campground. You could sum up the rules at most campgrounds as “Don’t do anything stupid.” 

The final rule was that we had to wait until 2 p.m. before we could back into our site. That translated into waiting in a parking lot for 75 minutes on a day that the weather people on local radio said was breaking heat records for that day. We were told that the forced delay was to allow the volunteers time to blow any leaves off the site and to mow. We were glad when we were able to park Rosie, our Airstream trailer, in our site.

We were also glad our site had 50 amp power. We needed to run both of Rosie's air conditioners several times while camping at Fort Pickens. 

A cannon at the Fort

Enjoying the Gulf

The lighthouse in the distance

Sunset in the park

This is a park that we always try to bring our bikes with us. The campground roads tend to be busy, so we tend to ride on the hiking/biking trails. It appeared that the park skipped a few cycles of maintenance on its trails as they were overgrown and difficult to navigate. 

We ended up having to venture out onto the busy roads to ride our bikes. The day we felt the safest was when a large bicycle club was also on those roads. We found out that this group was in the middle of a 42 mile ride that morning. No, we resisted the desire to join in with them and simply leisurely rode back to Rosie. 

Cannon designed to protect Pensacola Bay

Backside of a cannon

A hallway inside the fort

Inside the fort

U.S. Coast Guard on-duty in the Bay

We also saw a group of divers near the fort performing a service project of cleaning up fishing wire and hooks left by fishermen. It was interesting to watch the divers work.

Most people would name the fort as this campground's primary feature. While it is interesting and deserves being explored, we think the beaches are second to none and are incredible. We took advantage of being able to walk from Rosie to the beach. 

We mentioned earlier that weather has always been a central factor when camping at Fort Pickens. This time wasn’t different. We were watching a hurricane in the Gulf and we were uncomfortable with rising winds in the area. We decided to hitch up and go. The park rangers must have been thinking the same thing because they sent out an email saying they were closing the campground and all 200 sites there must be vacated within three hours. By leaving early, we missed the mad rush to get to one of the only two dump stations in the park and being stuck behind 100 or more trailers going across the bridges connecting the campground with Pensacola. 

Hitching up a few hours before the "Hurricane Evacuation" order was given

Ready to leave before the storm hits

At one of the two dump stations in this campground

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" as trees were few and far apart
• Our site had shade
• Most sites had some space on both sides
• Our site was paved with asphalt and we needed to use leveling tools to correct a side-to-side lean in Rosie, our Airstream trailer. 
• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection
• There were only two dump stations in this park for the 200 campsites. 
• The trash dumpster in our loop was near the bathhouse. It was easy to walk there with your trash
• There were multiple bathhouses in the campground.  The one in our loop was very hot inside. I imagine it is very cold in the winter 
• The park did not provide WiFi service 
• AT&T provided 1 bar of 4G voice and data service over our campsite 
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, CW, NBC and PBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were Antenna-TV, Bounce, Circle, Comet, Court-TV, Dabl, Get, Grit, ION, ME-TV and Stadium
• There were restaurants and shopping nearby
• This was a pet friendly park 

One of the two bridges leading to or from the campground