Fort Pickens Campground at Gulf Islands National Seashore, Florida

We returned to Fort Pickens for our second visit during October, 2014. One of the facts you must deal with when heading to this park is that you will pay a toll to cross the bridge heading to the island. The question about the toll is how much you will pay.

Last year our GPS took us over a $12 toll bridge to get to the island. While paying the toll, the attendant told us that we could have saved a bundle by picking the $1 toll bridge, which was down the road.

Armed with that knowledge, we double-checked our GPS's route against Google Maps to make sure we took the U.S. Highway 98/Gulf Breeze Parkway path to the park.

On the road to Pensacola Beach

Speaking of the toll, it is only charged for the south-bound traffic. Vehicles leaving the beach area are not charged the toll.

On the road to Fort Pickens Campground

Just as before, we found the beach road leading to the park to be magical in that our spirits were lifted by sight of the surf, dunes and sand on this beautiful beach. Snow-white sand and clear blue water help us think that the Gulf of Mexico beaches along the Florida and Alabama coasts to be the best in America.

Road to the campground after a day of 20 mph winds

Fort Pickens Campground is inside the Gulf Islands National Seashore. You have to pay admission to the National Seashore park before you can get to the campground. If you have the Senior Pass for federal parks, your admission to the National Seashore is waived plus the campground fee is cut in half.

The sign at the entrance of the park

The last time we camped at Fort Pickens was during the Spring and enjoyed seeing the many bird nests in the park and the osprey and herons feeding their young hatchlings. While we saw osprey, bald eagles and herons this time, we didn't see any baby birds.

A heron on the fishing pier (bay side)

The baby birds were replaced by bigger birds; much bigger birds.

Fort Pickens is across the bay from the Pensacola Naval Air Station. This is where all Naval and Marine aviators learn how to fly. We watched those early in their training go up in prop airplanes in the morning and more advanced students go up in the jets during the afternoon. Mid-days were special because this was when the Blue Angles, the Navy's precision show air team practiced their routines.

It was an amazing sight to see the Blue Angles in their F/A-18 Hornet fighters scream across the sky above Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer. We watched as the Blue Angles practiced their routines two days while we were at Fort Pickens.

The Navy's Blue Angles flying over Rosie

The Blue Angles over Fort Pickens

The Blue Angles

This camping trip was made special because our youngest son and his wife were able to visit us in the park. We really enjoyed being able to see them and explore the fort together.

Jeremy and Elizabeth join us at Fort Pickens

There are three main areas of the park. The first is the Gulf beach area. We think this is one of the best beach areas from those we have seen. The water is clear and the sand is soft and snow-white.

The Gulf at Fort Pickens

Steve and Becky along the Gulf

The second area of interest in this park is the fort itself. Fort Pickens was active during the Civil, First and Second World Wars. It is interesting to see the maze of rooms inside this fort.

Fort Pickens

Fort Pickens

The third place of interest is the bay side of the park. You find more shells and there is a pier for fishing on the bay side.

The fishing pier

Path to the Bay

We thought we did just about everything you could do at Fort Pickens on our first visit. We were wrong. There are many things to see and do at this park and we have more things to do when we return for our next visit.

Some specifics about this park:

• There are five camping loops in this park. Loop E is where you find mostly tent campers. Loops A-D is where you find RVs.
• The maximum length listed on the Web for each site is very optimistic. It was a tight fit to get Rosie in our site.
• There isn't a lot of shade in this park. You would want to make sure your air conditioner is working at peak capacity if you decide to camp at Fort Pickens during the heat of summer.
• Some of the bath houses need more than causal maintenance. They need to be demolished and replaced. We were not sure if the mold or the unidentifiable bugs were more alarming in the bath house serving Loop A. The campground host said that the park has scheduled replacing that bath house and the new one will operational within a year.
• There was only one bath house in Loop A. There were multiple bath houses in the Loops B-E.
• Bring your bicycles. There are some great trails to ride in this park. The vegetation on our site backed up to Rosie's rear bumper. After hooking up shore power and water we discovered that poison ivy was the predominant vine at our site. We did not see poison ivy at other sites.
• Most sites in Loops A-D have 20, 30 and 50 amp service.
• AT&T provides reasonable 3G and 4G service over the park. We had to carefully choose the window we would place our iPhones near in order to connect to the Internet.
• There is no Wi-Fi service in the park.
• There are two dump stations in this park. One serves Loop A and the other is for Loops B-E.
• There is a camp store in the park. It has the normal supplies you expect to find in a campground store.
• If you need more food items than the campstore can supply, there is a Publix about six miles from the park. You will spend a dollar in tolls to cross the bridge to this grocery store.
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS from our TV antenna. We also received digital signals with programming from ME-TV, GET-TV and MY-TV.

There were six Airstream trailers at this park while we were there.

Fort Pickens was the inaugural trip for our new kitchen tent. We talked for a while about getting a kitchen tent to place over the picnic tables at our camping sites. We recently camped at a park that had, as Grandma would say, more flying bugs than Carter had Little Liver Pills. That experience convinced us that we needed to look for a screened-in kitchen tent instead of a canopy type.

Our trips to the usual sporting goods stores were not promising. Most of the designs appeared to have been created by a disgruntled engineering school drop-out who wanted to add mental anguish to humanity.

While sitting on the floor at a major sports retailer, we realized that most of these screen houses were too small, too complicated or they have too many little parts to loose. That was when we found a YouTube video about a screen house from the Clam Corporation. The video boasted that anyone could put the Clam up in 45 seconds or less.

That was a bet we were willing to take. It was worth the risk to order a Clam to see if it would be the answer to our search. Turns out it was.

The downside is that the Clam does not fold down into a tiny package. The carrying case is probably 6 feet in length, so you need to know how you are going to transport it.

We were also concerned about how to put it up over the camping site's picnic table. That turned out to be easy because we simply unfolded it on top of the table then started the 45 second set-up process.

Inside the Clam Kitchen Tent

Inside the Clam Kitchen Tent

The set-up was very easy and it didn't take more than a minute. The campers in the next site came over to ask about our screen kitchen tent. It appears that our rookie attempt to set it up impressed them enough that they wanted to get one.

As before, we found Fort Pickens to be an amazing campground and one we plan to frequent in the future.

Path to the Gulf

Foot/Bike bridge on a nature path near the Fort

Family photo inside the fort

Bald eagle nest near the campground

Happy campers at Fort Pickens

Sunset at Fort Pickens

Scene along one of the bike/hiking trails at Fort Pickens

Hunting Island State Park, South Carolina

Welcome to paradise! That was the greeting given to us by a park volunteer as we checked in to Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina.

Hunting Island State Park

We started to doubt the "paradise" claim as we arrived at our camp site. There were little pockets of trash scattered around it. Did we arrive before the volunteers had a chance to tidy the site? Were the previous campers trashy? We found the answer to those questions later that night when we saw a couple of racoons examining our site looking for anything we foolishly left out for them and we noticed some trash treasures every morning shared with us by the racoons.

Setting up Rosie, our Airstream trailer, was more of a challenge than normal because our site had a strong left to right slope. We had to use every leveler tool we brought with us to get the level's bubble near the center circle.

Rosie at Hunting Island State Park

Hunting Island State Park is in the area of South Carolina called the "Low Country." You pass through salt marshes and swamps to get to the park and you can definitely see why the locals call this the "low country."

A salt water marsh at Hunting Island State Park

Low country has another meaning in this park. Beach erosion, which is normal along the Atlantic coastline, keeps shrinking the park. We talked to one couple who proudly said that they have camped in Hunting Island several times per year for the past 15-20 years, but their favorite site was now underwater as the ocean continues to claim more and more of the park. 

Several people, including park officials, said that an entire camping loop, a bath house and some camping cottages subcomed to the waves over the past couple of decades. We found traces of roads and buildings as we walked along the beach.

More evidence of the effect of erosion was seen at the lighthouse. We were amazed to read that it was built in the center of the island. Today, the surf is approaching it and they estimate that it will reach the lighthouse entrance within 15 years. 

The Lighthouse

While you cannot escape the effects of erosion on the changing face of the park, we were impressed with its size. This is a large park with more than 200 camp sites and there are lots of things to do here. But the big draw for this park is the Atlantic Ocean.

Becky and I both grew up living close to the Atlantic Ocean. I was about 10 miles from a north Florida beach and she was less than five miles from a central Florida one. This was our first trip in Rosie to see the Atlantic, a body of water that was a big part of our childhoods.

There was a path behind Rosie that led through the dunes to the ocean. Our site was less that 50 feet from the beach and the first sight of the water was very nostalgic for both of us.

The Atlantic Ocean at Hunting Island

Selfie along the beach

Evening clouds

We were amazed at the tides along the beach at Hunting Island State Park. We estimated that you have around 1,000 additional feet of beach sand at low tide. The waves came right up to the sites along some waterfront sites during high tide.

One of the things campers seem to love doing at Hunting Island is catching crabs. One person said she liked catching crabs better than fishing because you can see the results much quicker. It only took a few minutes to see these campers start reeling in blue crabs.

For the campers who love fishing, there is a pier on the south end of the park. Of course, many enjoy fishing in the surf or on the salt marsh side of the park.

Fishing Pier

Most of the camping loops have shade. The closer you get to the sites near the ocean, the less shade. Of course, the sea breeze makes up for that issue.

Modesty is not the operative term when it comes to the bath houses. I had a flashback to my Army basic training, which was also in South Carolina, when I saw the showers because there is no privacy. There are a couple of hooks across the walkway for your clothes, but no curtain separating you from anyone else in that bath house.

The park is less than 10 miles away from the U.S. Marine Corp basic training base on Parris Island. I could not help but wonder if some old Marine Drill Instructors participated in designing these bath houses.

A flimsy shower curtain went up while we were camping at Hunting Island. It blocked view from anyone in the restroom area from the showers. I wasn't sure if a camper or the park officials installed this. While this curtain was appreciated, there was very little privacy behind it between the twin shower stalls.

We saw a variety of wildlife while at the park. Deer and racoons were daily sightings. There was a large alligator near the park office. We found a flock of Wood Storks roosting in the trees near the campground and we saw a bald eagle one afternoon. Herons, pelicans and ospreys were common sights during our stay. One of our more interesting sightings was three baby alligators near the park's office.

While speaking about the "critters" at Hunting Island, we have to mention the bugs. Mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers where everywhere in this park. While talking to a couple from South Carolina about the ticks, their response was that we would get used to them if we lived there. I disagree.

We both came home with some chigger bites and one of us had a significant number of bites that continued to itch for another couple of weeks. Annie, our dog, brought home fleas.

Site selection may have contributed to our invasion of bugs. There were trees and dunes between us and the beach, meaning we didn't feel the ocean breeze. A couple of the camping loops were right along the beach and campers in these sites said the ocean breeze helped keep the pests away. If we return to this park, we will be camping along the ocean front.

We enjoyed the maritime forest in this park. Many petrified tree trunks were on the beach and in the Atlantic and this was an amazing sight to see. This alone is reason enough to visit the park.
Several people told us that the Vietnam scenes in the Forest Gump movie were filmed on the island. It was easy to picture Forest, Bubba and Lieutenant Dan being there.

Trees near the ocean

Trees along the ocean

Some of the petrified trees

More petrified trees

Petrified trees at high tide

Some specifics about Hunting Island State Park:

• There are multiple camping loops at Hunting Island State Park. Some are directly on the ocean and others are back in the woods. You can hear the surf and feel the ocean breeze on the campsites nearest the Atlantic.
• The park has several areas reserved for tents. Several of these are in the prime spaces facing the ocean.
• Most of the RV campsites have both 30 and 20 amp service. A few sites also have 50 amp connections.
• AT&T provided weak 4G and 3G service over the campground.
• Wi-Fi was available at the camp store. It was common to see several people trying to share the bandwidth to check their email messages.
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC TV stations from our antenna. We also saw ME-TV, CW, THiS and GET -TV digital channels.
• I talked about the restrooms earlier in this posting.There are multiple restrooms/bath houses scattered in the park's camping loops. They appear to have been around for a long time without updates, but they are well maintained. The volunteers do a good job trying to keep them clean.
• It is easy to ride your bicycles inside the park's camping area. We ventured out to the road connecting the park to the lighthouse and were amazed at how many cars were speeding past us on a narrow two-lane road. We found out that there is a residential area on the next island and those living there have to drive through the park to get there. We decided to keep our bike rides confined to the camping loops.
• You don't want to walk your dog to the trash disposal area. We were cautioned our first night that the racoons in that part of the park have been known to attack small dogs. After that, Becky would stop about 50 feet from the dumpsters and hold our dog and I would loudly stomp to the trash area to scare away the racoons before throwing in our trash bag. (Not all of the racoons were scared away by this technique. Several would simply stare at me as I threw our trash in the dumpster.)
• The park has water and electrical connections, but not sewer hook-ups. There are two dump stations in the park.
• There is a Publix grocery store about 14 miles from the park and it takes about 25 minutes to get there. Make sure you have your needed supplies before you start to camp at Hunting Island State Park.

We saw six Airstream trailers in the park while we were there. These ranged from a 1967 Safari to a new International. As we have experienced in other parks, the Airstreamers tend to be very friendly and willing to share ideas with each other,

We need to mention one additional point about Hunting Island State Park. We were warned about the narrow bridge on the only road leading to the park. It certainly was scary and I would not want to meet up with a big rig on that bridge.

The narrow bridge

One of the park rangers said that Hunting Island is the premiere park in South Carolina in that it has significantly more visitors than the other state parks. While we think the beaches along the Florida/Alabama Gulf coast are closer to "paradise," there are many things to see and do at Hunting Island State Park.

Watercolor painting by Becky

Becky's watercolor painting of the lighthouse

Skidaway Island State Park, Georgia

One of my hobbies is amateur radio and I like to check in to the Wally Byam Caravan RV Service Net a couple of mornings each week. This is a group of RV'ers with amateur radio licenses who meet on one of the Ham radio frequencies to share information about things of interest to campers.

I mentioned on the net one day that we were packing Rosie, our Airstream trailer, for a trip to Skidaway Island State Park in Georgia. One of the Hams responded that he lived near Savannah, where Skidaway is located, and that he had visited the park once.

That didn't sound like an endorsement to me since we have visited the parks close to our home multiple times, so I asked him about his impression of the park. His response was one word, "bugs." When asked what kind of bugs, he said that Skidaway is known for having red bugs and an abundance of flying pests.

Entrance to Skidaway Island State Park

 

That on-air conversation greatly lowered our expectations for Skidaway. We feared an army of bugs would invade our campsite the moment we arrived and we were not disappointed. I'll talk more about the bugs in a moment.

We arrived mid-afternoon, right after a quick rain storm. It was easy to see that some areas of the park are lower than others and that it would take longer for some sites to dry out after a hard rain.

This was a fortunate observation because it rained often while at Skidaway. We found a site that was "high ground" when compared to others in the park.

Trying to find the higher ground while camping in Georgia's low country

 

The camp hosts were incredibly helpful in recommending potential sites to us. They even carted us over to look at some sites in their golf cart. Similar to other Georgia State Parks, you don't reserve a specific site when you make reservations at Skidaway. You end up roaming the park when you arrive looking for the best of the remaining sites.

Speaking of golf carts, it seems that a high percentage of the campers in this park had them. We frequently saw people "cruising" the park in their golf carts. We had the impression that most of the people in the park were locals and that they frequently camp together there.

All of the campsites are pull-thru in Skidaway. Most people would think of this as an advantage, but our primary view in Rosie is out the back window and a pull-thru means we are staring at our neighbor's rig, not the woods. We found a site that worked for us by changing Rosie's angle and we could now see the woods.

While setting up Rosie and disconnecting from the truck, the heat, humidity and dew point were all in the "oppressive" range. It was the middle of September when we arrived at the park. I would not want to be there in the heat of July and August.

The park is on an island and about a block away from housing subdivisions and shopping areas. That means you are not exactly in the wilderness at Skidaway. Needless to say, we didn't see too much wildlife in the park.

Skidaway is surprisingly small. In addition to the camping area, there are a couple of hiking trails and a day-use area. It didn't take too long for us to ride our bikes around the entire park on the first day,

I mentioned earlier that we were on alert for red bugs and mosquitoes. We tried to dress to discourage the red bugs, but the mosquitoes were everywhere. We found that full squadrons of mosquitoes lived in the bath houses and would attack anyone venturing into that space. You need to plan how you will combat the bugs while at Skidaway Island State Park.

The town of Savannah has to be one of the major draws to this park. The Savannah city limits are just over a couple of bridges and it appeared that most people spent their days exploring that city. And Savannah is certainly worth visiting and exploring. You will want to spend a day in the historic district.

Some specifics about Skidaway Island State Park:

• Most of the campsites have both 30 and 20 amp service. A few sites also have 50 amp connections.
• AT&T provided moderate 4G and 3G service over the campground.
• Wi-Fi can be found in the campground's office. You will want to quickly complete your online tasks because lots of mosquitoes will be waiting for you there.
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC TV stations from our antenna. We also saw ME-TV, CW, THiS and Antenna-TV digital channels.
• The restrooms have some age on them and appear to have lived a hard life. The campground volunteers seem to work at keeping them clean, but there was an abundance of dead bugs in there. We wondered if the dead bugs were an accumulation since the last cleaning or if there was a dead bug collection taking place in the bath houses.
• The park has water and electrical connections, but not sewer hook-ups. We could find only one dump station at the park. That means you may have to carefully schedule your exit time to avoid waiting at the dump station.
• There is a Kroger grocery store near the park. If you need a gallon of milk, it is less than five miles down the road.

One of the more interesting things that happened at Skidaway was the arrival of new neighbors next to Rosie's camp site. As we were driving up, we thought a vintage Airstream was across the street, but the angles on the front and rear of the trailer were wrong. It turns out that a Spartan Royal Mansion from the 1940s had moved in.

Spartan Royal Mansion

I had never seen nor heard of the Spartan Royal Mansion, but this was a trailer made after World War II by J. Paul Getty's aviation company to help offset the loss of building aircraft for the war. This trailer was more than 65 years old and it was amazing. The owners had carefully restored it.

Spartan Royal Mansion

 

I looked up some information about the Spartan Royal Mansion and a source found on Google said that these trailers were selling for $4,000 in the 1940s. The median value of homes sold during that time was $8,000, meaning that buyers were affluent and looking for a mobile "mansion."

Another view of the Spartan Royal Mansion

Rosie across the street from the Spartan Royal Mansion

The bottom line on Skidaway Island State Park is that it is a nice little park and deserved a visit. I don't think it will be added to our "A-List" and I doubt that we will return for a second visit.

 

 

Vogel State Park, Georgia

One of our camping neighbors from an early trip in Rosie, our Airstream trailer, shared with us their favorite campgrounds. Vogel was at the top of their list and our research suggested that Vogel is one of the top rated state parks in Georgia. That was good enough to get us to add Vogel to our agenda.

Vogel State Park

Reservations at Vogel are similar to having a hunting license. You don't reserve a specific site, you simply reserve one of the remaining open sites in the park. That means you end up having to hunt for your camp site once you arrive. It was entertaining during the week to watch some trailers pass through our loop multiple times while they searched for the best site available.
We did our homework prior to showing up at Vogel. We downloaded the park map to see the campsites that looked better to us then we went online to the campsitephotos.com web site to look at photos of the actual sites. I think the sites we identified as our top choices were accurate because those were the occupied as we roamed the park looking for the perfect spot. While the photos on the Web were helpful, we discovered that it was easy to misjudge some of the sites. You need to carefully scout your potential sites once you arrive at the park.
We picked a site that backed up to a mountain stream featuring the sound of water cascading over rocks. Perfect! This site wasn't on our "A-list" from our research, but it turned out be one of the best in the park.

Mountain stream behind Rosie

As we were setting up Rosie, the weather radio was alerting us to severe storms in the area. Thunderstorms, hail and 60 mph winds were in the forecast. Our camping neighbors were "locals" and calmly said that the bad stuff was in another county. We ended up getting our fair share of rain that night, but nothing severe.
Bad weather is one of the primary reasons we have Rosie. We would reserve a tent campsite on the beach for a week before we had Rosie and a bad storm would drive us out. We noticed that as the tent campers were tearing down in a hurry, the people in the trailers were simply rolling in their awnings. That observation started us down the road that led us to finding Rosie.
We must have gotten the weather out of the way our first night because the park was our comfortable mountain oasis the rest of our time there. Part of the pleasant temperatures came from the trees providing a canopy in our park loop. We found that it was easy to sleep in because the shade helped make feel as though it was always early morning. Temperatures fell into the upper 50s a couple of nights and the highs creeped into the low 80s a couple of days. The weather ended up being great during out visit to Vogel.

Rosie's camping site at Vogel

The lake at Vogel State Park

Our trips to the camp store were always surprising because it was in the sun and much hotter than our camping loop. We really learned to appreciate our site on the day we elected to visit Helen, Ga., about 10 miles from Vogel State Park. That was when we discovered how hot Georgia can be during August. We welcomed our return to the cooler temperatures in Vogel's camping area.

Camp Store at Vogel

There are hiking trails both inside and outside the park. The Applachian Trail is less than three miles away and it is worth driving over to Neel's Gap to hike on this famous trail. The "AT," as it is called by hikers, passes through the Mountain Crossings outfitter store at Walasi-Yi. Look upward while there to see the many hiking boots hung in the trees and the rafters of the store. According to workers in the store, the boots must have a minimum of 500 miles on them before they are eligible to be left in the trees or the store by AT hikers.

The Appalachian Trail is about 3 miles south of Vogel

Hiker boots in the trees at Neel's Gap on the AT

Other attractions both in and near this park are the numerous waterfalls that you can hike to. One of the camp hosts told us about a pretty waterfall about three miles from the park. The Forestry Service roads leading to the waterfall were more than we bargained for in that we met a car leaving the falls as we were driving in. The narrow road and steep dropoff left no room for error as we creeped past each other. (We had to pull in the outside mirrors on our truck to clear the car!)
A relative advised us to bring our bikes to Vogel. One of the lessons we learned on this trip is to leave the bikes home when heading to the mountains. It was a lot of fun riding the bikes down hill from our site to the camp store area. The return trip was all up hill and convinced us to leave the bikes parked the remainder of our stay at Vogel.
In the wildlife department, deer sightings in our loop were common. Our neighbors told us that a mama bear and her two cubs came up out of the creek behind Rosie and walked through our campsite. We missed that! We think we saw a bat flying around near the camp store one evening and the lake has a duck that seems willing to make friends with dogs.
Here are some specifics about Vogel State Park:

• This park must be in some rare RF (radio frequency) vortex. We noticed that none of the campers had their TV antennas extended. After checking multiple directions at different times of the day, we could not find any TV signals. Don't expect to watch TV while at Vogel.
• RF Vortex II - Strangely, we had a hard time picking up over-the-air AM and FM radio signals in this park.
• RF Vortex III - AT&T cell coverage didn't exist in the camping loops of this park. We didn't see 4G, 3G nor Edge signals there. Our cell phones were disconnected from the universe. Our neighbors said they were on T-Mobile, which also had no service in the park.
• RF Vortex IV - It was a struggle to pull in a mediocre signal from XM satelite radio.
• RF Vortex V - Our neighbors with satellite TV antennas said they had difficult times picking up the satellite through the trees.
• There is Wi-Fi at the campstore. That is also the spot where there is enough cellular service at allow a phone call.
• As far as we could tell, there are three primary loops in this campground. Two are for RVs and one is exclusively for tent campers. There are a couple of camping "spurs" with four or five sites in each.
• The RV loops have water plus 30 and 20 amp electrical service.
• There are two dump stations at the entrance to the RV loops.
• There are multiple gray water dumping sites scattered throughout the camping loops.
• There are bath houses scattered throughout the park. If your campsite is at the end of a loop, you will have a heathy hike to the restroom. The bath houses are well-maintained by the camp volunteers.
• There is a campstore at Vogel with the necessities you normally run out of while camping. Beyond that, you are 20 minutes from a store. (There is a well-stocked Ingels grocery in Blairsville.)

The bottom line is that we enjoyed our stay at Vogel and plan on coming again.

Original watercolor painting of our Vogel campsite by Becky

Visitor's Center at Vogel

Miniature Golf at Vogel