Some places make you happy by just being there. Several Florida state parks we frequent fall into that category and so does this Alabama state park. Having said that, we were again confused about paying for our reservation when we arrived because we added on a military discount as we checked in and ended up owing more than the amount quoted on our reservation paperwork. I guess I’m glad that we only asked for one discount or we could have ended up owing more for our fees.
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| Sign over the road at Gulf State Park |
It was a snap backing into our site, which was paved with asphalt. That was welcomed after having trouble at our previous campground backing into a site with too much loose sand.
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| Walking our dog on a cold day in the South |
We quickly set up Rosie so that we could enjoy riding our bicycles on the many trails in this park. As the weather turned colder, we were glad we had an opportunity to ride a few times on our bikes.
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| Selfie while out riding our bikes |
We noticed some campers in this campground looked different this time. They had what appeared to be storage sheds behind their RVs. We found out that the park started accepting longer term reservations for the winter on November 1st. It was easy to pick out the winter residents by their sheds, bird feeders and site decorations.
It looked like an Airstream rally was taking place in the park. It was a coincidence that so many Airstream campers were there at the same time. Oddly two Streamline trailers, an Airstream competitor from the 1960s, were also in the park.
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| A vintage StreamLine trailer in the campground |
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| A classic Silver Streak in the same camping loop |
It was too cold and windy to walk on the beach. Instead, we walked on the fishing pier. The surf was probably the highest we had seen in years. That combined with the cold wind was probably the reason we saw only a few people fishing during our visits to the pier.
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| Entrance to the pier |
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| On the pier |
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| View from the start of the pier |
The cold weather was probably the reason we didn’t see alligators in the park this time. There are two places we enjoy riding our bikes to that we typically see a gator or two. Since it was cold, the gators were probably hibernating in deep water.
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| We could not find any wildlife this time |
There were signs around the park inviting everyone to the activity center one Saturday for a free cup of soup. Our expectations were as low as the temperature as we headed over to the soup line. It turned out that the soup was good and welcomed on a cold day.
Speaking of cold days, we noticed that a camper in a site near us was refilling his propane tanks on his new trailer. He asked how fast we burn through a tank in our trailer. We told him that we were using Rosie’s heat pump and hadn’t turned on the furnace yet. We saw the lightbulb moment as he said his trailer also had a heat pump and he could save a lot of money by turning it on.
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
- 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 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 near the dumpsters and was unmarked
- The trash dumpsters were at the entrance of the campground. We had to drive there with our trash
- There were multiple bathhouses in the campground
- The park provided WiFi service. Our download speed was 40 mbs
- AT&T provided 3 bars of 4G voice and data service over our campsite
- We were able to watch ABC, FOX, NBC and PBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were Antenna-TV, Circle, Comet, Court-TV, Dabl, ION, LAFF, ME-TV, Retro, Stadium and TBD
- There were restaurants and shopping nearby
- This was a pet friendly park
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| Christmas decorations at Gulf State Park |
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| A favorite place to ride our bikes to look for alligators |
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| The water tower at Gulf State Park |
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