Blackwater River State Park

Well, one last camping trip of the year for the CurbCrushers. Grandmother CurbCrusher (my Dad’s mom) turned 95 the 15th of December and had a party in Pensacola. Since Pensacola is about an eight hour drive from the CurbCrusher homestead in Orlando, we packed up the RV and decided to make a long weekend out of it, and try out the new campground at Blackwater River State Park near Milton, Florida. Not that anyone reads this blog, but back in June we stopped by Blackwater and took a look at the campground while it was under renovation.

We arrived at the park around 2:30 in the afternoon. A sign at the gate said that campers with reservations should go to their site and come back to the ranger station between 3:00 and 5:00. They don’t have enough rangers to do all the work in the park and man the station, so they only spend two hours a day at the station. So we moseyed over to our site and set up. After a while we walked back to the ranger station and checked in. There had been a lot of rain the week before and the Blackwater was high. On the approach to the park, there was probably about two inches of water on the road right after crossing the bridge. By the next morning there was no water on the road, but the trails and boardwalks were very wet, and covered by water in a number places. To get an idea of the water level you can compare this picture from our trip in May to this picture taken at the same point in December.

Campsites - This park gets an A+. I pulled up in front of the campsite, and got out of the motorhome to walk the site before backing in and turned to Lady CurbCrusher and said “This is the nicest campsite we’ve ever had.” The campground road is paved, and the sites have a deep bed of gravel. Our site was huge and full hookup (water, sewer and electricity) along with a grill and a fire ring. Not all the sites were as deep as ours, but even the shallower sites were plenty wide. Our campsite had a small creek running behind it that was very full due to the recent rain. As we sat around the campfire, we were able to listen to the babbling brook, it was like a scene from one of those RV ads.

Stuff To Do - If you just stay in the park there are trails, fishing and swimming when the weather is warm enough. There is a canoe outfitter down the road from the park that will take you upriver with a canoe and let you float down the river. Your about an hour from The National Naval Aviation Museum which I talked about back in January and still think is the best aviation museum I’ve visited. The Gulf Islands National Seashore is nearby and actually stretches along the coast and includes Ft. Barrancas located near the Naval Aviation Museum (Pictures from our visit to these places) .

Overall - The CurbCrushers really enjoyed this park as a matter of fact we wish that Blackwater River State Park was not eight hours away. We definitely want to go back, but then we want to go to a lot places, so it may have to wait. This will probably become the new place to stay when we go to Pensacola to visit family. For $13.26 a night this is a campground that can’t be beat.

Our pictures from the park are here.
I’ve updated the gas mileage summary, and this trip brings our total number of camping nights for 2008 to 44

This entry was posted on December 17, 2008 at 10:24 am and is filed under RV Stuff, Travel Review, Campground Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.