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

Grayton Beach State Park, Florida (2014)

It didn't take long for us to schedule a second visit to Florida's Grayton Beach State Park. This is a park that has a lot to offer campers.

If you love the Florida/Alabama Gulf Coast, this park has a great beach.

If you love riding bikes, there are many paths and trails for you to explore.

If you love camping in the woods, this park has some nicely wooded sites.

Lets take a look at these elements.

Several publications have named some Florida/Alabama Gulf Coast beaches as in the top 10 beaches in North America. While I haven't seen enough beaches to evaluate the credibility of this claim, the Gulf Coast beaches are very high on my list.

OK, beautiful beaches are not unique to Grayton. It almost comes down to simply picking a state or federal park along the Florida and Alabama Gulf Coast and you have an amazing beach and it is easy to enjoy Grayton's incredible beach.

The beach at Grayton Beach State Park

Make sure you take your bikes to Grayton Beach State Park. The trails inside the park are not the big draw. There are bike trails outside the park that are lots of fun. Turn right as you exit the park and you are heading to Seaside or turn left and and you are in the community of Grayton Beach.

These are mostly up-scale communities and they have some great city parks and trails for riding bikes. They also have restaurants and shopping areas for those wanting a break from the beach.

One of the community parks in Seaside, which is near Grayton Beach State Park

The bottom line is that you will find many things to do both inside and outside this park.

There are two loops in this park. The first has full connections, including sewer, for RVs. The down side is that there isn't a lot of shade in that loop.

The second loop is more rustic and has more shade. It also has sites near one of the lakes. These sites have water and electrical connections, but no sewer. We plan to always bring the sewer tote to this park because we prefer the more rustic and shaded sites closer to the water.

Rosie at Grayton Beach after dark

 
While I am sure that the water in the park is safe to drink, it has an unpleasant taste. The water filter on Rosie, our Airstream trailer, and the additional one on the sink helped make the water easier to deal with while there.

The odd feature in this park is the dump station. There is only one and it is in the loop without sewer connections. What I find peculiar is that the dump station is along the entrance to this loop and not the exit. That means you will probably have to circle the loop twice to use the dump station.

The dump station may have been an afterthought because any trailer using it ends up blocking the road. You will need patience because all traffic in the loop stops when someone is using the dump station.

We didn't have an ant problem at this park, but the misquotes seem to drop by for an afternoon visit. You need to be prepared to deal with these pests.

Some specifics about this park (2014 version):

• AT&T 4G service was strong over the park. We were able use our iPhones for both calls and online services.
• WiFi doesn't exist at this park. You will find yourself driving 10 or more miles to find a WiFi hotspot.
• TV service was up and down this time. The ABC affiliate provided a solid signal over the park. CBS, NBC and Fox were occasional visitors as their signals tended to fade in and out. We were able to see ME-TV on one of the digital channels.
• Both loops had clean and up-to-date restrooms.
• There isn't a camp store, but you will find a Publix in Seaside.

One of my favorite things to do while at Grayton Beach State Park is to ride our bikes to the Seagrove Village Market for a fried shrimp lunch. The bike ride is fun, the lunch is reasonable and the food, which is from the Gulf, is very good.

Our second trip to Grayton Beach confirmed that we love this park.

Here are some additional pictures taken at and around Grayton Beach State Park:

The famous trees near Grayton Beach State Park

Along one of the walking paths in the park

Sand art on the beach

The surf

Annie taking a break inside Rosie

Becky enjoying the beach

T. H. Stone Memorial St. Joseph State Park - 2014

This was Rosie's, our Airstream camper, third visit to the T. H. Stone Memorial St. Joseph Peninsula State Park. We booked the same site we were in last year and, surprisingly, we found that a larger number of people than expected from last year were also in their same sites.
This isn't to imply that we developed lasting friendship with these campers. We noticed last year that these campers seem to frequently socialize among themselves and that tradition carried over to this year. After all, there is nothing wrong with campers planning to meet up year after year in the same park and this park seems to have a healthy number of camping groups staying at that time.
Our three previous postings about this park have covered the park's details. This continues to be a wonderful spot to camp on the Florida Gulf Coast. The park's beach area is amazing. There probably isn't a better spot in the Florida panhandle to watch the sunsets because the beach area faces the western sky.
Our visits to this park have always been dictated by my work schedule. As a college professor, I get the same week our students take off for Spring Break. This means that we have consistently visited this park around the same time every year for the past decade or two. While there are some college students in this park, the ones looking for the "party" atmosphere of Spring Break are up the road in Panama City. The college students staying in this park are mostly on ecology type "field trips" sponsored by their universities.
So, it rained and it was cold, but Rosie was warm and dry and we enjoyed our time at Port St. Joe again this year. The weather and the raccoons were the "stars" of this visit.
Winter was unusually cold this year and cooler temperatures carried over to Spring Break along with lots of rain. That meant we spent more time than usual inside Rosie.
In previous years when we tent camped in this park, similar weather would have forced us home. It was such a camping experience a couple years ago when storms forced us from the park after two days that we started talking about getting a camper. Rosie entered our lives about six months later. We had no idea that we were going to jump directly from tents to an Airstream.
One of the things different from last year was that we didn't see any rats this time. Instead, we heard raccoons and we saw "footprints" on our mat every morning. If we were given a choice, we prefer having raccoons visit us during the night.

Raccoon footprints

The park specifics haven't changed from last year:

• This is a "pet friendly" park.You will find many family pets at this park.
• AT&T 3G and 4G service continues to be spotty. We had to walk around the park to find a reliable spot to make a phone call. Trying to use the Internet on our iPhones was a frustrating event.
• Wi-Fi continues to be available at the camp store. It is common to find several cars parked in front of the store with all of the occupants using their computers, tablets and smartphones.
• There are two camping loops in this park and each has two bath houses. The four bath houses are up-to-date and clean.
• We camped the last two times in the Gulf Breeze loop of the park. Shade is a premium in that loop and you see lots of bigger fifth-wheels and motor homes there. You will find more shade, tents and Rosie-sized campers in the Shady Pines loop. Size is a consideration in the Shady Pines loop because some of the turns in the road are sharp and difficult for larger rigs.
• The park continues to offer both 30 and 20 amp service to the camp sites.
• There are multiple television stations that you can watch at different times of the day. We were able to watch ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC during the morning hours. Selection around midday was spotty. By the evening, we could normally watch ABC, CBS and NBC. The digital channels these stations included were Me-TV, ThiS and Antenna-TV.
• This is a park that you want to make sure you are well-stocked with what is needed before setting-up. You are miles away from shopping and it is inconvenient to run out for some milk or bread. Some people see the lack of commercial establishments as one of the charms of this park.

The bottom line is simple. This is a great park to ride your bicycles, has wonderful beaches and the sunsets are spectacular. We plan to return next year, but we will try to stay in the Shady Pines loop during our next visit.

Grayton Beach State Park, Florida

Our visit to Grayton Beach State Park was unplanned. We were going to stay a full week along Florida's Gulf coast at another popular park, but discovered our original park was not the natural paradise we thought it would be. A camper there suggested we might be happier at Grayton. After a quick check, we found that we could check out of the first park and move to Grayton Beach State Park.

Grayton Beach State Park

Within moments of arriving, I knew that this park was much better suited for us. The main attraction at Grayton is nature and not the park itself, although the park is excellent. We had a site with shade and it had bushes on the sides of our spot, meaning we were not staring at our neighbors. We felt we were in the woods along the Gulf coast.

Rosie in the Grayton Beach State Park

Our moods immediately changed as we started setting up Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer. Instead of parking on a level concrete pad as we did at our last campground, we had to use our levelers because our site was gravel and dirt. While some people love concrete pads, we are OK with a natural site.

One of the trails in this park

As we were pulling in the park, we noticed that there were several other Airstream trailers there. During our stay, 11 different Airstreams visited the park. We first thought we stumbled into an Airstream rally. It turns out that we are not the only Airstreamers who enjoy Grayton Beach State Park.

One of the views from Grayton Beach State Park

Park literature claims that Grayton Beach is consistently ranked among the most beautiful beaches in the United States. While our ability to compare all of America's beaches is limited, it is difficult to imagine too many other beaches better than this one. If you like beautiful beaches, you will love Grayton Beach.

The beach area

The Gulf shore

We noticed that we were not finding sea shells along this beach. We were told that an offshore reef keeps the shells from washing ashore. That is interesting because we have camped along the Florida Gulf coast less than 50 miles away and found lots of shells.
While there are some good bicycle trails in the park, we enjoyed following the bike trails a mile or two outside the park to the Seaside Beach area. If you are wondering about what Seaside is, think up-scale tourist beach. For example, the Seaside community invited about a dozen artists there to paint during the week then had an art show and sold their work over the weekend. A spare couple thousand dollars could have landed you some amazing paintings created in the area that week. We ended up munching on the food served at the art showing and enjoying the paintings without taking one home.

Artist at work in Seaside

There are two camping loops in Grayton Beach State Park. One has sewer connections and the other one doesn't. We noticed that the side with sewer connections didn't have the amount of shade found in the other loop. When adding the sewer connections, the construction team clear-cut the camping sites in that loop. While the trees are starting to grow back, it will take a few years before they can start providing the needed shade in that loop. Sadly, sewer service is going to be added to the second loop one day at the cost of the trees there. We will miss the shade in that loop when the State of Florida decides it has enough money to complete this project.
Make sure you bring your water filtration system to this park. We have a water filter on the main water connection plus another water filter on the kitchen sink. With the dual filters, the water tasted fine, unfiltered water didn't.
Both camping loops had well-maintained bath houses. These were located in the center of each loop.
The one element of the park that didn't make sense to us was the dump station. There is only one and it is in a strange location. Anyone using the dump station blocks the road so that no one can pass. If you are caught by another camper using the dump station, you simply need to be patient and wait until they finish.
Campers know that this has been a banner year for ants in many parks. We had legendary battles in some of the parks we visited trying to keep the ants outside Rosie. We lost the battle in a couple of parks and held our own in others.
As soon as we started setting up, I walked over to our neighbors and asked them about the ant problem only to find out that they had not seen any ants at this park. It was nice to not worry about ants while camping at this park.
Some specifics about this park:

• Electrical connections in our loop were 20 and 30 amps. We didn't have 50 amp connections.
• AT&T provided stong 4G service over the campground.
• There is no WiFi service in the park.
• There is no WiFi service close to the park. If you need WiFi, plan to travel 20 minutes to find a restuarant with free WiFi.
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC TV stations from our antenna. We also saw ME-TV and CW digital signals while in the park.
• While you feel as though you are in the woods when camping here, you are very close to shopping. We were able to ride our bikes to several shopping areas.

Painting by Becky while at Grayton Beach

Grayton Beach was not the park we planned to camp at on this trip. In fact, we hadn't heard that much about Grayton Beach. As it turned out, Grayton Beach was a great find and a park that we will return to in the future.
Here are some additional photos from Grayton Beach State Park:

Sunset

A trail in the park

The famous pines

Prayer of the Woods

Topsail Hill State Park, Florida

For more than a year, we planned our trip to Topsail. While sharing favorite parks with other campers on our many adventures, Topsail kept coming up as a "must see" park.
First, Topsail is along Florida's Gulf coast and is located near Destin Beach. This is a beautiful area of Florida and we love camping on the Gulf.
The campsites in Topsail are not on the water, but there is a tram that moves campers to the beach. You cannot be in a hurry because the tram only runs every hour.
While speaking about the beach, you need to know it is beautiful. Of course, most of Florida's and Alabama's Gulf coastline areas qualify as beautiful.
Arriving at the park, we commented on the major "theme park" quality there. The park is amazingly well manicured. Every bush in the park is well groomed. The park is spotless and it looks like they must mow the grass daily.
The other thing we noticed was how many campers they can squeeze into a small space. We were going to be next to other campers on all sides of Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer.
The closeness of the trailers became apparent when we started backing into our site. One of our neighbors had to move his children's bicycles from along the front of their site because there was no way we could maneuver into our site without our neighbors moving their stuff.
I was able to repay our camping community back later that evening when a huge fifth wheel arrived after dark and several campers had to help that young family navigate into their site.
Once we parked Rosie, I started the outside set up and Becky started getting the inside ready. After a few minutes, Becky asked if the power was on because she wanted to switch on the air conditioner.
When I replied that we were connected to the AC, Becky informed me that there was no power inside Rosie. A quick check confirmed that we were connected to the camp's power source, but power was not making its way into Rosie.
While I was getting out my tools ready to play Mr. Fix-it, Becky went looking for a Park Ranger to check our power connection box. Quickly, several rangers converged on our site to start working on our problem. Sadly, they determined that it was OUR problem. Our electrical cord was broken.
To set the stage, it is 3 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. If we don't find a power cord, we will be spending the night without power and that means no AC. Once again, the Rangers came through by telling us where the closest Wal-Mart was plus they mentioned that a new Camping World just opened in Panama City, which was about 50 minutes down the road.
We jumped into the car and headed to Wal-Mart. While Becky was driving there, I used my iPhone to find and call Camping World to confirm that they had the cord. We stopped at Wal-Mart and quickly looked over their camping supplies. They didn't have the power cord. Immediately, we changed directions and started heading to Panama City.
Another wrinkle in the mix was that Camping World closed at 5 p.m. and that was 90 minutes away. If you have ever driven through Panama City, you know that traffic can be an issue there. We were fortunate in that there were no traffic delays and we arrived before the store closed.
Camping World had the power cord we needed plus it was on sale for the store's grand opening. We ended up buying two power cords and started back to Rosie because the next issue was that it was starting to get dark and we didn't want to complete our setup after sunset.
The new cord confirmed that our old cable was the problem and Rosie was back on the power grid.
That was the easy problem to fix at Topsail. The next probelm was a doozey.
After we completed setting up Rosie, we went for a walk around the park, There are two loops in this park. The first, the one we were in, seemed to have campers packed in as tight as possible. The second also had a high number of RVs, but that loop had a little more space between campers.
We were not happy at Topsail.
We felt as if we were in a fishbowl because campers were packed in all around us.
We were not happy at Topsail.
They call Topsail an RV resort and we cannot argue with that. The park was well maintained and nothing was out of place, except us. We prefer more of a "back to nature" atmosphere at our campground, not the world of a resort.
We were not happy at Topsail.
Another camper told us about Grayton Beach State Park. It sounded better to us because it was a state park focused on nature and not on providing a resort atmosphere.
We called Grayton and the ranger said that they had one of their non-reserved sites open that morning and he would hold it for us for two hours.
We had two hours to tear down our campsite at Topsail, hitch up Rosie and travel up the road to Grayton Beach. Needless to say, we were in our "get on the road as quickly as possible" mode.
It took about 30 minutes to completely tear down and hitch Rosie up to our truck. We quickly checked out of Topsail and set our sights on Grayton Beach.
We will talk about Grayton Beach in our next posting.
Here are some specifics about Topsail Hill State Park:

• If you like well maintained parks, Topsail is for you.
• The park offers 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service to the RVs.
• The restrooms and showers are not at the level you would expect for this type of park. Maybe these facilities haven't been updated because all of the camp sites have sewer connections.
• The park has TV Cable service. Our cable connection wasn't working, so we ended up watching over-the-air TV.
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox plus ME-TV and THIS digital channels while in this park.
• The camping pads were concrete and they were level.
• AT&T had good 4G service in this park.
• Half of the park has WiFi and the other half has to go to the camp store to use WiFi.
• If you have a problem, the camp volunteers and rangers will quickly come to your rescue.
• There is lots of shopping near this park.

Many people love this park and it is easy to see why. It is a very nice park. It just isn't the style of park we enjoy.

White Oak Creek Campground, near Eufaula, Ala.

White Oak Creek is an Army Corps of Engineers park located on Lake George just south of Eufaula, Ala. This is a park that is normally open only during spring, summer and a little during the fall season. It is scheduled to be closed during winter. We didn't know this little fact when we arrived for a visit.

White Oak Creek

We were surprised when we arrived because only one loop of this park was open. The park attendants had volunteered to stay for a while and keep the park operating after the scheduled seasonal closing passed a week or two earlier. Needless to say, we were very grateful that the park attendants volunteered to keep one loop of the park open.

Camping at White Oak Creek

There was an air of uncertainty while we were in the park. One of the conversation points among our fellow campers was speculating how long the volunteers were going to keep the park open.
Similar to many COE parks, the camping sites were spacious. We always appreciate having some space between Rosie, our Airstream trailer, and the next camper.

Lots of space at White Oak

Our spot was on the water and we enjoyed watching the ducks, geese and other birds playing along the shore. At times it sounded as if the ducks were all laughing at a joke told by one of their flock. We also saw schools of fish jump in the lake right after sunset.

Lots of ducks and other birds

The volunteers keeping the park open did a great job keeping it up. The park and restrooms were clean and well maintained. It was easy to see that they took pride in this park and wanted to share it with everyone.

White Oak Creek did reinforce our idea that most of the COE parks we have visited are great places to camp.

Camping at White Oak Creek

Some specifics about this park:

• This park is close to shopping. If you need to get some supplies, there is a store about five miles outside the main gate.
• I thought that we would see all of the TV stations from Columbus, GA. We ended up only seeing an occasional signal from a CBS station.
• AT&T provided good 4G service over the park.
• There wasn't a WiFi signal at this park.
• The park has power and water at the camp sites. There was a dump station in the park. (We think there was another dump station, but it was probably in the closed section of the park.)
• The power connections were interesting. The power box at our camp site offered only 30 amp service. There wasn't a 20 nor a 50 plug available.

The rumor mill among the campers kept speculating if the park would be open beyond the Monday after we were scheduled to leave the park. My first thought was that the volunteers keeping the park open were about to throw in the towel. It appears that our fellow campers were thinking about something we were not considering--the federal government's shutdown.

A rainbow after a fall shower

As hard as it is to believe, the federal government did shut down the following Monday and the park was scheduled to close along with every other federal park in America. White Oak Creek did not close because the city of Eufaula entered into an agreement with the Corps of Engineers to keep the park open. According to local news reports, White Oak was the only federal campground open during the shutdown.

Rosie on the road again

This qualifies as both good news and bad news. It is good that the local community decided to step up and keep this wonderful park open. The bad news is that all federal parks need to be open, not just one.

Watercolor painted by Becky at White Oak Creek

Before drifting intro a tirade about what is wrong in Washington, I'll conclude by saying White Oak Creek COE Campground is a solid campground and worth visiting.

Watercolor of hickory nuts by Becky