We love the Florida panhandle, and I had dreams of some time on the beach at one of the many fabulous state park campgrounds on our way across. Times in the past we’ve stayed at Grayton Beach and St. Andrews State Parks, and would have liked to check out some of the other coveted spots along the shore.
But options for the time we’d be passing through were exactly… well.. nill. Why? That thing we full timers often forget about – Spring Break.
Sure, we likely could have snagged some last minute cancellations or timed our arrival to pick up one of the few walk-in sites the state parks set aside. But after long driving days, like we are doing, the last thing I want to do is route to a park only to be turned away.
So what is a nomad to do with a couple weeks to fill during a high demand time? I think we did a fine job of making the best of it.
Overnight Stop in Summerdale
With 359 miles ahead until our next destination, we left a spare day in for good measure. It would be unlikely we’d want to cram that many miles into a single driving day.
We set aim for checking out Rainbow Plantation (our review) in Summerdale, AL. It would be our first time staying at one of the Escapees RV Club owned parks, and we had heard good things about this location.
That would make for two easier driving days of 160 and 199 miles each – giving us a much more leisurely pace.
On our way out of Fontaineblue State Park, we decided to use some of our spare time for a stop at the Infinity Visitors Center at the Stennis Space Center right at the Mississippi border and welcome center.
As space buffs, we had high hopes of this being a worthwhile stop to learn more about this area’s role in the space program. Unfortunately, our hopes were dashed – as the visitors center is really more geared towards school field trips.
It’s very scant on displays and information, and what is there is very poorly curated. The one thing interesting sounding was the shuttle bus tour out to the rocket test facility – but they ran so seldomnly that we decided to not wait around.
Overall, we felt it was a waste of time and $12 admission fees – we were in and out in under half an hour.
Oh well, turns out we needed that extra time as our brand new starting batteries we just had installed back in November had been acting up. It hadn’t caused any problems yet, as Chris just bridged them into our lithium ion house batteries which made up the extra needed oomph to start our bus.
But at our next reststop break, not even bridging would do the trick and we blew a 300A fuse on our lithium pack. Oops. No big deal, Chris is handy and installed a new fuse. We ran the generator for about 20 minutes as we had lunch and that gave us enough voltage to start the bus and get us to Summerdale.
Once to the park, we checked in and took a dry camping spot for $5 for the night. A very pleasant park off the beaten path, but still accessible to the Alabama shore area. The longer term full hook-up spots were nicely spaced and offered ample shade – definitely not a bad place to be for an affordable price ($340/month plus electric).
Chris isolated that only one of our starter batteries was bad – so he was able to bypass it, leaving the bridge in place. Which would serve us well enough until we could manage a warranty swap of the failing battery.
All and all, a pleasant overnight and glad to have checked this park out.
Eastbank Campground, Bainbridge, GA
While I was searching around for any availability in a public park in the Florida panhandle over Easter weekend, I was surprised to find one open spot available just over the GA state line at Eastbank Campground.
A quick check of reviews (our review) led us to believe this would do just fine for us. So we snagged it.
And we have to say, this park was perfect. Run by the Army Corp of Engineers (one of our favorite public campground networks), it sits along Lake Seminole right at the FL/GA border. Many of the sites are waterfront with amazing views.
We of course were not so lucky to grab one of those, but were thrilled with our site nonetheless.
Our first full day, we got a lot of household maintenance done (yup, life on the road.. exciting!).
We swapped in a new starting battery into the MINI (yes, another battery – this time, just age related), did some cleaning and installed a new plug on our 50A power cord which was at near fire-hazard levels. It always feels good to have time and space to handle chores.
Of course, as soon as we checked on RVillage, we discovered not one, but TWO blog readers in the park. Just goes to show, y’all have great taste in content AND parks (smile).
We enjoyed an afternoon happy hour making friends before the rain started.
And then it rained pretty much non-stop for 4 days, with just brief breaks to sneak in walks that kept us from going completely stir crazy.
The rain allowed us time to get caught up on things like tax preparation, some blogging, getting SSL setup over at RVMobileInternet.com and content creation.
But it also seriously put us behind on other projects (including some video filming) we were hoping to use our 6-days in one spot to accomplish.
Oh well.
Despite the rain, we thoroughly enjoyed our time at Eastbank. It might not have been the beachfront campground I was dreaming of, but it was certainly tranquil, scenic and perfect for a nice extended rest along our repositioning.
What’s Up Next?
After another awesome stop near Ocala (we’ll get the blog caught up eventually), we have finally completed our cross country repositioning that we’ve been on for the past six weeks since we left Arizona.
We arrived to our destination of Spring Hill, FL and are enjoying time with family.
We’ll be here this week, and then will bounce around a few more locations in Central Florida before we depart on our cruise later this month (so excited!).
A Note about the proposed HUD Rule Changes
If you hang out in any of the RVing related groups or forums – you may have seen videos and links making their way around that would have you think it’s about to become illegal to full time RV due to a proposed change to a HUD regulation.
We’ve gotten contacted by several readers asking what we think about the government taking away our rights.
Before getting worked up over link bait titles, please do your further research to learn what is actually being proposed. An article by Howard over at RV-Dreams.com”‹ (he’s a former lawyer), we think, gives a great easy to read overview.
His summation, that we agree with:
“There may be laws, rules, or regulations in the future that severely curtail the ability of people to live in their RVs, but this minor rule, buried within manufactured housing regulations, isn’t one of them.”
Further reading:
Hey Gang. I am Jim and my wifes name is Ginger. We are entering our second year as full timers, and we spend our summers in Wisconsin so we can be near the grandkids as much as we can before we head out again in September. Last year we left our summer spot at River Bend RV Resort in Watertown WI for our first venture south since buying our deisel pusher in Feb of 2015. We had gone to Texas in earlier years in our car on vacation, and knew that we wanted to go south if we ever got an RV so we sold the house after retiring from the Fire Service, selling our hobby business, and away we went. I found you guys in youtube and have decided to follow your blog to help us transition to the full time RV lifestyle. You supplly much needed information about the lifestyle, and take away some of the trepidation one feels when making such a move in the later years of our lives. plenty to talk about but I would save that for another time. Perhaps if we cross paths in our southern travels this coming fall and winter.
Our Airstream stopped rolling this winter, and it is parked in Spring Hill for a hiatus whilst the hubby recovers from shoulder surgery. Meanwhile, we have found a heavenly spot right on the Weeki Wachee River where the paddling is magical! We have decided to make it our home base but look forward to exploring the Panhandle as soon as he is done with PT, so I appreciated your sharing of info. And we have a tandem if you want to get out on the river!
I agree about the HUD thing. I saw it on tiny house talk and was worried when the date was not April fools. We just have to let our lawmakers know for the future, what us RV’ers want so something does not come along in the future. If anything there are more full-timers than ever. Glad you are having a great time in FL and glad you are going to spend some time in the NE.
Hopefully with folks spreading the word that the HUD proposed change really doesn’t impact us – it won’t keep going crazy. Like Howard said, there will likely be things that continue to crop up that DO have impacts however.
Hi, Cherie and Chris –
I will be visiting relatives in Estero, FL in Oct. and hope to find some decent camp sites. By decent, I mean reasonably priced and comfortable.
Thanks for all the information you always give.
Pamelab in Houston
I wish I had some recommendations for you, but that’s actually an area of Florida we’ve not been to. Enjoy your visit!
We love Eastbank as well, missed you by a couple of weeks. A possible midpoint stop for you would have been Meaher SP east of Mobile and just a few minutes from I-10. Probably not as cheap as Rainbow Plantation but a much nicer setting IMO and easier access.
We usually do find overnight stops more along our route (and tend to lean towards free if just for one night). But this time, we did want to specifically check out an Escapee’s owned park, so worth the diversion. Likely wouldn’t return for just an overnight however.
Always nice when the last minute openings land us in a beautiful spot! Even with the rain (which sounds heavenly to me right now) it looks wonderful. And yes it does feel so good to get “stuff” done – Bill replaced the plug on our 50 amp cord just yesterday 🙂 Glad you’ve made it safely to your family destination! Thanks for including Howard’s post on FB, I shared it with the Living the RV Dream page where everyone has “bit” the bait I’m afraid.
Woohoo for safer wiring 🙂 And thanks for helping share the facts about the HUD proposal. Hopefully it’s starting to diffuse some of the hysteria.
Wish we would have known you were in the area. We just drove across the FL panhandle as well, spending time in Carabelle and Lake City. Just pulled into Brunswick/Jekyll Island area of Georgia.
Sorry we missed you (for future reference, our travel intentions are at the bottom of the page 🙂 ). Enjoy Jekyll Island, imagine we’ll be up that way in a couple months ourselves.
We’ve stayed at Eastbank COE CG on several occasions and always enjoyed it. Glad you had a nice experience there as well.
It is such a nice little park… good to know we’re not alone in that 🙂