Two Florida RV Parks and A Vegan Meal
This is not the ideal way to RV, at least not for us. At this pace, we almost didn’t put the slides out. Almost. But traveling on a holiday weekend with no reservations, we took what we could get and moved on. Thankfully, we still got to enjoy each of the parks we visited.
Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, Jacksonville, FL
When searching for a place to stay, we often default to state parks because they tend to be the best deal. But don’t overlook city and county parks.
The City of Jacksonville manages Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park. And even though they have a link to book your site online, their website kept throwing errors because of the Thanksgiving weekend traffic. So we ended up emailing them, and they called us back the next morning, and we were able to book for that night. You might want to call to book your reservation and not wait until the last minute like we did.
The park itself had tons of camping sites, almost 300, but a little greenery separated each campsite, so it didn’t feel like you were on top of people. Someone had apparently decided to use our fire pit to store bagged dog crap. We weren’t going to use it, but still, if you do bullshit like that, you’re an asshole.
After we had got settled, we rode our bikes around to check it out. There’s loads of beach with no one on it. Even if it was a little chilly for swimming, it was plenty comfortable for a walk on the beach.
Then we checked out the lake on the property on the way back. We saw a few cool birds hanging out there. Birds covered the island in this photo. You can see some of their outlines if you look closely.
The park is also full of mountain bike trails, about 20 miles worth, but we both have road bikes, so we didn’t try them. They looked fun though winding through the woods. There was also a disc golf range which we know nothing about but feel like we might need to figure out.
For only being there overnight, we felt like we took a nice tour of the place. Oh, and there’s lots of Poke stops if you’re into that kind of thing.
Anastasia State Park, St. Augustine, FL
Anastasia State Park is where we planned to meet Taylor and Beth. We’d already snagged a reservation to stay Sunday night.
As we pulled into the park, there’s a sign that says to watch for turtles crossing. Then immediately we saw two turtles! This site was similar to Hanna Park, but fewer people were camping since we were going on a weekday. Anastasia State Park also has half the campsites of Hanna Park, so it feels less busy.
Again, after we got set up, we headed out on our bikes to have a look around. The beach here is also lovely. It was a little busier, but not by much. We had an enjoyable walk on the beach, maybe caught some Pokemon.
We forgot to put on our new state sticker, so it was time to rectify that. The map doesn’t get a sticker until we’ve slept in the state. It’s going to be a while before we hit another state.
We also went for an early morning bike ride. As we were leaving the beach, we saw this guy and got to get up close. He was all about the digging and couldn’t care less what we were doing. I totally wanted to touch him, but I’m glad I didn’t because apparently, they can carry leprosy. Ew.
Present Moment Cafe, St. Augustine
For lunch, we headed over to try The Present Moment Cafe with Taylor and Beth. It specializes in vegan and mostly raw food. We tried our best to eat all the things. Everything was fantastic, but the show stopper was the samosa. It’s pretty filling and is nearly a meal in itself.
After this, we bust it down to St. Pierce where we stay a couple of nights, so that gets its own post. 🙂
[…] Abbey Hanna Park in Jacksonville was our first RV park after we officially hit the road full-time. We loved it and hated that we only got one night there. So on the way back out of […]