On this leg of the trip we have stayed at quite a few RV parks that include “Resort” in their name. We have found that many of these parks do have some extra amenities but none were really of the calibre we would call a resort. Santa Rosa RV Resort was the first one to live up to that name. Even though sites were still relatively close together, the lush landscaping made it feel like you had privacy. There was also a lot of landscape lighting that gave it a resort feel at night. Amenities included a nice pool area, somewhat of a beach – although I’m not sure you could really swim there and a fishing pier. They also had kayaks and bicycles for rent although we didn’t give those a try. The area was well equipped with stores and restaurants. We drove through the Destin area on the way to Navarre and decided we’d much rather spend time here than Destin. Destin was much more crowded and much more expensive. To us it looked better suited to a younger crowd but wasn’t really our cup of tea.

The nearby Santa Rosa Island across the bay was really the place to go for swimming. Like Destin, the beaches are made up of powdery white sand and the water is beautifully turquoise. We made several trips there to swim and bask in the sun. The last day we went the waves were quite large and we didn’t get in as much swimming but it was still a great day!

At the recommendation of one of our neighbors, we took a trip into Pensacola to visit the Museum of Naval Aviation as well as a well-known fish market called Joe Patti’s. The museum was on the Pensacola Naval Air Station and a fascinating view of the history of Naval Aviation including many famous airplanes along with the significance each of them made to our history. One of the exhibits showed five Blue Angels jets in a simulated formation flight. We heard that when they put that in, one of the pilots saw it and asked why the planes were placed so far apart. I think they hang about 5 feet apart and he stated they should be MUCH closer!

Joe Patti’s fish market rivals the Pikes Place Fish Market in Seattle although without quite as much show. The market, opened in the 60’s, offers a huge selection of fresh fish and the boats are docked right behind the market. We ate sushi there and then bought shrimp, crabs and oysters so we could make some seafood gumbo. Anna made the gumbo in our Instant Pot and that worked out really well.

Rating: 
Site Quality:  Concrete roads and pads. Long enough for our rig and truck although we had to back up under the front of the RV. Sites are fairly wide and have nice secluded patios along with a picnic table.
Type:  Commercial Park
Access: Right on US highway 98 in Navarre.
Staff: The staff were friendly and helpful.
Amenities:  Laundry facilities, Restrooms/showers, swimming pool, recreation room. Free cable TV and WiFi.
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both good. They had WiFi but we did not use it.
What we liked: Full hookup sites, clean park. Nice pool and exercise room. This park really did have a “resort” feel unlike most other parks where we have stayed that have been called resorts. Walking distance to stores, etc. Really enjoyed the beautiful beaches at the Gulf Islands National Seashore and using our National Park pass to get in free.
What we didn’t like: There was some road noise from US 98. The site map was somewhat misleading in showing a beach area right behind the park. There is a small beach behind the pool but that was it. The beach was nice for hanging out but likely not for swimming. We were back to back with another trailer in our 3rd tier site so would want a waterfront site or a pull thru next time.
Verdict: We would definitely stay here again especially if we could get a waterfront site. This would be a great option for a long term stay of a month or more.

Eastpoint and Appalachia were the nearest towns to the park. Both had some smaller groceries stores but there is no Walmart anywhere nearby. There were numerous restaurants that were pretty good as well as several fresh fish markets where we bought some of the local catch for dinner on a few nights. In Appalachia there was even a small Farmers Market one weekend. Our favorite restaurant was The Blue Parrot on St. George Island. It is near the lighthouse right on the beach and Anna is still talking about the Grilled Mahi Ruben Sandwich.

Although the park was right on the beach, you really couldn’t swim there as it was very rocky. Luckily, Saint George Island was only a short 10 minute trip and to had nice beaches for swimming or fishing. We went over there several times to enjoy the sun, sand and water. The beaches here although nice are not quite as pretty as the ones further West. More on that later…

Rating: 1/2
Site Quality:  Gravel roads and pads outlined with a concrete border to keep the gravel in place. Long enough for our rig and truck. Sites are fairly wide and have nice patios made of paver bricks along with a picnic table and grill.
Type:  Commercial Park
Access: Right on US highway 98 on the east side of Eastpoint.
Staff: The staff were friendly and helpful.
Amenities:  Laundry facilities, Restrooms/showers, swimming pool, recreation room. Free cable TV and WiFi.
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both good. They had WiFi with a tower right behind our site but we did not use it.
What we liked: Full hookup sites, clean park. Nice pool, rec room and exercise room. Our site was on the first row so we had ocean views.
What we didn’t like: There was a lot of road noise from US 98 which was only about 50′ from our trailer. Not a lot of options for groceries here beyond some basics.
Verdict: We would stay here again if travelling through the area but we might consider a site in the back of the park away from the highway. It is a trade off between having a view of the bay vs road noise.

Cedar Key is a small fishing village that has not only had to survive after hurricanes that affect the area on average less than every three years but also banning of net fishing that effectively ended their ability to commercially fish the area. After that they moved to clams and are one of the largest producers of them in the US. In the past they also supplied Cedar for pencils. Although we noticed a lot of properties for sale, this is an area of true survivors – always adapting to survive.

Today tourism is a big part of the success of the area but it has not substantially changed the character of the town. There are no major chains or high rise hotels there – just smaller properties and houses for rent. You will also find quite a few good restaurants and even a small coffee shop where we enjoyed a great cup of coffee one morning.

Rating: 
Site Quality:  Asphalt roads and pads. Just long enough for our rig and truck. Sites were wide and each had a picnic table.
Type:  Commercial Park
Access: Just off FL-24 about 10 miles east of Cedar Key. Easy access for big rigs.
Staff: The staff were friendly and accommodating when we shortened our stay. Workers within the park picked up our trash and frequently stopped by to see if we needed anything.
Amenities: 
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both decent.
What we liked: Full hookup sites on pavement (important during the rainy season). They fogged the park for mosquitos while we were there. The park was clean and well maintained. Good Clam Chowder at Tony’s. We had numerous recommendations for 93 West but we didn’t care for it as much.
What we didn’t like: Occasional minor road noise from FL-24. We did hear that the park was up for sale so new owners could change things for the worse.
Verdict: Although there are several things to do in the area that we didn’t get to, this park would be good to come to for some rest and relaxation when you don’t want to stay busy all the time. In the winter we understand it stays full of snow birds from up north but off that peak the park was only about 30% full. We would definitely stay here again.

Lake Magic included paved roads and sites so we felt much better about being there in the rainy season. Even though we stayed 12 nights we really weren’t there much. Five of the days were spent on a Disney cruise with family and three more were spent on an unplanned trip to Oklahoma City to attend Anna’s father’s funeral. He had lived to the age of 94 and succumbed to cancer within a week of finding out he had it. While it’s always difficult to lose someone, we were grateful he didn’t suffer long.

On returning from the cruise we found that ants had invaded our RV. Although we had seen ants before they were never as bad as this. They basically took over our cats food and so she just stopped eating. With a trip to OKC two days after our return we had to fix the problem quickly. I found they were coming in up our water hose so I lifted it off the ground. That didn’t help as they just started climbing the pole and onto the overhead water hose. In the meantime, we also deployed Terro liquid ant baits. We had used these before and they work really well. Initially you get more ants but after a couple of days they start to diminish. We also deployed poison at the pole (probably shouldn’t have so the ants could return to their nest with the poison). By time to leave for OKC the ants were greatly diminished but we also wanted to protect the cat food while we were away. After some research on Google, someone suggested putting the bowl within another container filled with water so there is a moat around the food that the ants cannot cross. We tried that and when we returned the ants were almost completely gone and the moat had worked well to protect the food. The cat was much happier and so were we.

Rating: 
Site Quality:  Asphalt roads and pads. Long enough for our rig and truck, we had to back the truck up as close to the trailer as we could. Sites had concrete patios with a picnic table.
Type:  Commercial Park
Access: Just east of US-27 on US-192. Easy access even for a big rig.
Staff: The staff were friendly and accommodating as we lengthened our stay for our trip to OKC.
Amenities:  Laundry facilities, Restrooms/showers, probably others but we didn’t use them as we only probably hung around the park a total of one day.
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both decent.
What we liked: Full hookup sites on pavement (important during the rainy season). Lots of space between sites. Felt safe for leaving our rig there while we were away.
What we didn’t like: Ants were a big problem in the park and were mentioned by several others in reviews. No shade in the area we were in. We weren’t real fans of the Orlando area. It is very crowded and congested and most things in the area are very overpriced.
Verdict: The park has a lot of potential but the ant problem needs to be worked on. There are always ants around but they seemed to be particularly bad at this park. We would likely look elsewhere if we were in the area again.

Rating: 
Site Quality:  Asphalt roads and pads. Barely long enough for our rig and truck, we had to back the truck up under the trailer as far as we could. Sites are somewhat narrow and only have broken concrete patios with a picnic table. Luckily they have electrical limitations supporting 50A trailers so they generally only fill every other site which makes it feel less cramped.
Type:  Commercial Park
Access: Just off Interstate 75 on Hamilton Ave in Jennings.
Staff: The staff were friendly and accommodating as we lengthened our stay twice as we tried to figure out where hurricane Dorian was going to go. The owner moved other reservations around so we wouldn’t need to change sites part way through.
Amenities:  Laundry facilities, Restrooms/showers, Volleyball, Shuffleboard, horseshoes, Bocce, Basketball, Cornhole, Gaga Ball, Tic Tac Toe, community fire pits. Playground and picnic area along with a small lake. Swimming pool. Recreation room. Free cable TV and WiFi.
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both decent at about 4 Mbps. Their WiFi was also usable at about 3.5 Mbps.
What we liked: Full hookup sites on pavement (important during the rainy season). Although within site of I-75, there wasn’t much road noise.
What we didn’t like: KOAs are always expensive for what you get. Sites are narrow and the site we were on (#50) was difficult to get the truck parked in front of the trailer. You either had to back up a long way or go through an empty site. There isn’t much around Jennings, however, Valdosta Georgia is only about 20 miles away and has pretty much everything you would want including a Walmart and Sam’s Club.
Verdict: This is not a destination park but for us it was exactly what we needed. It was about 100 miles from the coast which helped distance us from the expected path of hurricane Dorian. It also had paved roads, few trees above the sites (nothing to fall on our rig in high winds and satellite TV access) and it had cable TV which included the weather channel and several locals for us to get weather information. Overall, it was one of the nicest and best maintained KOAs we have stayed at.

New terms such as ‘Cone of Uncertainty’ and ‘Evacuation Plan’ soon became very important to us. 

We followed all the weather news projections, read the hurricane prep websites and created the important Evacuation plan!  This meant sitting in lines at gas stations, hunting for a propane refill center that had not run out, enduring the grocery store as the last pallet of water was fought over and stocking up on food.  We booked the last spot at the Jennings, Florida KOA at the Florida/Georgia state line and evacuated there.

Now a new term to us is ‘Hurricane Fatigue’.

Dorian has strengthened to an incredible Category 5 and is crawling along. We’ve extended our stay at Jennings to ride out the storm with hopefully only tropical storm conditions. We hope to reserve a spot in an RV park in Orlando later this week so we can meet up with our family and still go on our Disney Cruise. 

Stay tuned!

Rating: 1/2
Site Quality:  Dirt/gravel road with quite a few pot holes and mud puddles. Grass/dirt pads with some having gravel pads. We got lucky and had a wood deck but as it wasn’t tied down so we were very concerned about safety in hurricane force winds.
Type:  Commercial Park
Access: From Interstate 95 take FL-50 west to the park.
Staff: Friendly but indifferent. Not helpful when we called to make original reservation and took a couple of calls to reserve site. Manager called us crazy when we left early to evacuate.
Amenities:  Heated pool, mail service with TV/game room, community fire pit, shuffleboard, meeting halls and kitchen, 2 very clean laundry rooms, 2 very clean restrooms/showers, dump station, onsite well and sewage treatment. Lots of planned activities during the busy winter season.
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both decent at about 4 Mbps.
What we liked:  Our site was D-1 on Dasher Lane. Many friendly long-term residents stopped by to visit, invite us to Friday happy hour and make us feel welcome. Lots of trees. All the names of the roads in the park and buildings were Christmas season names. Nice sunsets.
What we didn’t like: This park was all mostly dirt which made for a soggy, swampy mess during the summer wet season. All sites are dirt and grass with a crushed shell mix on a few. The mosquitoes and no-see-ums were relentless. Being here in the wet summer season was not a good idea but the drier winter season is likely better.
Verdict: Despite the friendly residents we would not return.

We found an Osprey waiting for the launch nearby where we decided to set up to see the launch. We were in Jetty Park where we camped the week before.

We were about 8 miles away from the launch pad which is about as close as you can get for safety. The picture below shows what we could see (with magnification) of the launch pad from where we were viewing the launch. The rocket is hidden just below the trees.

We weren’t too sure what we’d get into at Jetty Park since many of the sites including ours were grass and the roads were dirt. It turned out to be about as we expected with numerous small pot holes in the road and at least some of the sites were in bad shape due to recent rains. Ours turned out to not be too bad and we managed to get in and out without leaving deep ruts. The other issue was that we were only able to get a 30 amp site instead of a 50 amp site. Because of the way 50 amp connections work you actually get 100 amps of power to work with. So, 30 amps was less than 1/3 of what we normally have. What this means is that we could only run one AC unit at a time and with temperatures reaching into the 90’s they each run full time normally. We managed by just running the AC in the area we were using – bedroom at night and living room during the day. Lucky for us, we had rain nearly every afternoon and that helped too . The one night it didn’t, it took a while to get the bedroom cooled down from 90 degrees.

Of course one of the main draws to the area is the nearby beach. During the week it was largely deserted as primary school is already in session. Weekends were quite a bit busier but it still wasn’t that bad. We had a day where they flew red flags indicating dangerous currents and waves but we found them to be much smaller waves than we have experienced along the gulf coast. Water temperatures varied from somewhat warm to almost cold but that was very refreshing on hot days. One day we even saw some dolphins nearby and a couple jumped all the way out of the water.

When not at the beach, we had fun hanging out along the jetty area watching the cruise ships and boat traffic. We had one cruise ship make an unplanned stop that we think was possibly due to a passenger having medical issues. One afternoon we watched the Harmony of the Seas leave about 4:30PM on schedule then we woke up at midnight only to see it leaving the port again. Looking at the maritime tracking map we saw that it headed toward its destination for about 2 hours before turning around and coming back, leaving again an hour or two later. We never did figure out why that happened. Anna loved waking at 5 AM most mornings to see the cruise ships all lit up coming into port.

Nearby the campground was plenty of shopping (beachwear, groceries, etc.) as well as quite a few restaurants. We had good meals at Salsas Mexican, Rusty’s Seafood & Oyster Bar and Rising Tide Tap & Table. Rusty’s offered great seafood with views of Port Canaveral from inside or outside seating. Rising Tide offers 60 craft beers and specializes in Street Tacos, Stone Baked Pizzas, Smash Iron Burgers and Handcrafted Cocktails. We had lunch there and found their burgers and fish tacos to be excellent.

Rating: 
Site Quality:  Dirt roads with quite a few pot holes. Grass/dirt pads with some having a concrete pad. The west end of the park has larger sites and satellite access whereas the east end has smaller sites and more trees so a site large enough for us could be challenging to find. Water and sewer seemed to have been laid out by a drunken sailor. To save on water spigots pair of sites share a single spigot. For us that meant we had to run water to the opposite side of the trailer which wasn’t too bad. Our sewer (site 130) was positioned well for us but the neighboring site’s sewer was right at our door despite the fact that the power pole was 10′ away and would have been the traditional place to find the sewer connection.
Type:  County Park
Access: From Interstate 95 take FL-528 east to the George King Blvd exit then follow it east into the park. There were no traffic issues on this road but they are building a new Port Terminal beside the park which could cause congestion on cruise days in the future.
Staff: The staff were friendly and helpful.
Amenities:  Shuffle board, horseshoes, community fire pits, dump station. Playground and picnic area along with a fishing pier adjacent to the campground. The beach is off the east end of the campground.
Cellular/WiFi:  Verizon and AT&T were both decent at about 4-6 Mbps.
What we liked: Full hookup site (not all are), stores and restaurants nearby. Lots of things to do nearby particularly hanging out on the beach. In mid-August the beach was not at all crowded during the week although it was on the weekends. It rained almost every day which turned out to be pretty good because it helped cool down the temperatures. Otherwise, it was quite hot and humid. It might be better to come here in the spring of fall before the winter floridians arrive.
What we didn’t like: Our site was a 30A site – meaning we had less than 1/3 of the power available than we normally do. This means that only one air conditioner can run at a time and using the microwave may even shut that down. In spite of that we managed pretty well by only running the AC in the area where we were spending time – bedroom at night and living room during the day. Previously mentioned connection layout was just odd. The site next to ours needed some dirt to level it out and fill in some ruts. Mowing grass in the campground on a Saturday when the park was full vs during the week when it was fairly empty.
Verdict: Despite the low rating for the park, we would come back just because of the access to the beach, watching cruise ships, local restaurants and shops.