Our February road trip started out with plans to visit Gary and Ellen in Gulf Shores, AL. In February Road Trip – Part 1, I talk about our stops on the way there. In this part I talk about Gulf Shores, AL and Gulf Island National Park.

Gulf State Park

We get up early to get a good head start. We did as much as we could last night to be ready to leave. We drive to the day-use parking lot and hook up the tow car. We don’t need to dump because we have a full hook-up site tonight.

We stop at a Flying J for gas. It has two RV lanes. There is an RV filling up in one and a small pick-up truck in the other. I get behind the pick-up truck. This is the wrong choice. He’s not there. He went inside to use the bathroom, and is waiting in line to buy a Pepsi and then pumps his gas. We can’t back up because we have the tow car. We wait about 30 minutes, and now have to pump gas in the rain.

We get to Gulf State Park at 1:30. We crossed over into Central Time Zone, so we gained an hour. Check-out here is 2:00, so we have to wait while they make sure our site is empty. We disconnect our Honda while we wait.

We back into our site, and it feels more like a neighborhood than an RV park. All the roads are paved with paved sites and neat lawns. Camping here gives you free access to the fishing pier and free parking on the beach. There are many trails here for walking and biking.

We drive to Publix, get some appetizers, and head to Gary & Ellen’s beach house for sloppy Joes and Super Bowl.

We are in this site for only one night. We move the RV to our next site and walk around the park. We visit the nature center and then hike on some trails.

We go Walmart, and then to Gary and Ellen’s for happy hour. We go to the Crazy Cajun for dinner, but there are no customers so we go to the Oyster House instead. We have Oysters on the half shell, fried crab claws, flounder and popcorn shrimp. The food is good, but a little pricey.

The next day we go to the Farmers’ and Fishermen’s  Market in Foley with Gary and Ellen. We buy shrimp, salmon, oranges, eggs, cabbage and honey. We go to lunch at Wolf Bay Lodge. We get shrimp and grits, sweet tea, and salad bar for $10 each. Excellent.

We walk to the end of the fishing pier. Then Gary and Ellen come to the RV for happy hour.

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Gary and Ellen come to the RV and we cook hamburgers on the grill.

On Thursday we go to Publix and then to Gary and Ellen’s to do laundry. We visit and eat chili. It has been a great visit.

Fort Pickens

We have three nights reserved in Fort Pickens Campground in Gulf Islands National Seashore. It’s only an hour and a half from Gulf Shores, but we feel lucky that we found a site for the weekend. We leave Gulf State Park at 10:35 and get to Fort Pickens at 12:35. We have to cross a toll bridge. It is $1 on our Sun Pass. Once you get to the park entrance it’s about three miles to campground registration, then another mile to the campground.

Our site is small. The roads and pads are asphalt, and are surrounded by sand and grass. We back in as far to the left as possible so we can put out our awning without hitting trees. We back in as far as possible so we have room to park the Honda.

We go for a walk around the campground. We see armadillos digging in the dirt. We walk on the Florida National Scenic Trail to the fort and look around.

The next day we drive to Peg Leg Pete’s for lunch. This is a very busy restaurant. We have oysters, shrimp and gumbo. Very good. We drive into town, to Joe Patti’s seafood market and buy grouper and oysters. We take our seafood back to the RV and walk on the beaches. First, the gulf, then the sound. We make blackened grouper for dinner. Excellent!

It starts raining and rains all through the night and next day. No good for outside activities. The rain put a damper on our weekend. This is a really neat place and we have to come back again.

When we found out our friends, Gary and Ellen, rented a house in Gulf Shores, AL for the month of February, we looked for a nearby campground. Gulf State Park is just down the street. Despite having 496 sites, there were no sites for a full week, or even three consecutive days. We did find five days in three different sites starting on Sunday.

Gulf Shores is about 814 miles from Marathon, so we decided to stop twice on the way. We booked two nights at Ortona South Campground, an Army Corps of Engineers park in Moore Haven, FL, and two nights at Manatee Springs State Park, in Chiefland, FL. We estimated that the first leg would take four hours, the second leg would take five hours and the last leg would take six and a half hours.

Ortona South

The day before our trip, we go to the RV to turn on the refrigerator and load some stuff. We disconnect the chassis battery when in storage, so we connect it and try to start the engine. It doesn’t crank. It won’t even jump-start. The battery is only year and a half old. We bought it at Walmart. We go to NAPA and buy a new battery for $161. We install it and it starts right up. The steps are not working again and the leveling jacks are giving us an alarm. We reset the leveling control panel.

We pick up the RV the next day at 9:00. Fran has a hair appointment so we drive to Winn Dixie parking lot.

After her appointment, we hook up the Honda CRV and take off. We stop at a service plaza, on the turnpike, and get to the Ortona South Army Corps of Engineers’ campground at about 5:00.

This is a very nice campground. It has 51 sites, with concrete pads that are large and spread out. It’s quiet and far from the main road. In fact, we thought we were in the wrong place when we turned in, because we could not see the campground. The campground is on the Caloosahatchee River. There are some nice trails to walk, you can fish and watch boats go through the lock towards Lake Okeechobee, or the Gulf of Mexico.

The camp host tells us that the water here is very hard. We hook up our On the Go water softener, but we don’t put any in our tank.
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The next day we cook breakfast outside, and walk around the park and watch boats go through the lock. I clean the electrical contacts for the steps and they are now working again. We have a nice campfire in the evening.

Manatee Springs State Park

Then next day we drive to the dump station and dump our black and grey water. We hook the Honda to the tow bar and leave at 9:10. The GPS suggests two routes. We take the second choice, which is shorter distance, but one minute longer. It takes longer because of all traffic lights.

We get to Manatee Spring State Park around 3:30. We walk around the park. There is a place that sells barbecue they smoke themselves. We buy a half chicken and a rack of ribs ala-carte and bring it back to the RV for later. Then we walk around and see some manatees. These are small compared to what we are used to seeing in the keys. We go to Walmart, we buy stuff to make cole slaw, because the cole slaw at the barbecue place is too sweet for our tastes.

This is a very busy campground. They have 92 sites, which are full. The sites are sand. We have a back-in site with 30 amp electric and water. The water spigot leaks, so we fill our water tank and turn it off. The Verizon wireless signal strength here is low. It’s good for text messages, but not phone calls or internet.

There are lots of trails here. We hike on the scenic trail, with a self-guided tour, about three and a half miles. We walk around the campground and see lots of deer. They are not afraid of us. We have a nice campfire.

Tomorrow we drive to Gulf Springs, AL.