Parks in the Jacksonville area…

Since our plan was to visit the Jacksonville Mayo clinic to get our annual medical exams out of the way we left Charleston to find a place to stay relatively close to the Mayo Clinic. We needed somewhere in close proximity as we were unsure how often we would be going to and from the clinic. Finding parks in our price range around the city was not an easy task. When we left Charleston, SC we decided to only drive part-way to Jacksonville, Florida and then figure out where we wanted to stay.

Our first stop was at the Walkabout Camp and RV Park and with its $16.50 Passport America rate it may be the most inexpensive full hookup site we have stayed in. The park is owned by a young family who moved to America from Melbourne, Australia so that they could own their own business and raise their four young children in the country. They are a really nice couple and have put a lot of energy into this park. This is not a destination location and the sites are open but very close together. However, it is very convenient to I95 and was less than an hour north of Jacksonville so it was perfect for our one night stay.

We had a list of parks in Jacksonville to check out but the one park that was a destination location was called Hanna Park. This large beautiful park is run by the city if Jacksonville, Florida and is a drop dead gorgeous park that has over 280 sites located on a road across the from the beach. There are several large inland lagoons and numerous hiking and biking opportunities. The only caveat here is the sites are not all level and you have to find one that works for your rig. Also the sites are wooded and they are cut into the palmetto understory vegetation providing some challenges for those of us with multiple slides.

However, we are now camped in Hanna Park and have booked a week stay here and were fortunate enough to have arrived here on the day they discounted their rates to the off season rates of $25.00 per night. Now we are 15-20 minutes from the Mayo Clinic and yet we are still in a beautiful park on the coast…

It has been windy here so much so that the waves are crashing in hard towards the shore and due to the turbulent sea there is a lot of blowing sea foam along the shore. Reminds me of our time in Sydney, Australia where they refer to breaking waves as “foamies” – seemed to be the right word for the waves today.

  

I will close the blog today with a picture from South Carolina where we stopped by the Angel Oak since Kevin and Ruth mentioned it was worth a look… boy were they right as a stunning old oak tree lives in the middle of the woods… so much history it has seen as it is estimated to be 1400 years old.