Camping at Savannas Recreation Area

Kevin’s parents live on Hutchinson Island, so we planned to swing by there on the way south. It’s one of the reasons why we were in such a hurry when we were further north. We wanted to be able to spend a couple of days hanging out with them.

There are some RV parks relatively close to them, but they were pretty expensive, at least the ones that had openings. Like $80+ expensive. Nope.

Savannas Recreation Area Campground

Luckily, Kevin found the Savannas Recreation Area Campground. It’s managed by the St. Lucie County Parks and Recreation Department and is part of a large wildlife reserve, 550 acres. The campground was maybe half full, and the full hookup sites were $25.25 per night. Score!

GPS Challenge

Warning: if you put “Savannas Recreation Area” in your GPS, it may direct you to another part of the park. And to get from there to the actual campground involves a ride down a 2-lane road that says it’s okay for RVs, but it’s not. Not if your rig is 35 feet like ours. All the way down we saw where trucks and rigs had nailed trees all the way down. Not a fun time. Follow the directions on their site that bring you down Midway. That’s no problem.

The Sites

The sites back up to a waterway through the marsh. It was a little buggy but not terrible if you don’t leave a light on next to a window where you left the screen cracked. *facepalm*

Wildlife

Every morning a pair of huge birds, sandhill cranes, I think, would start making noise about sunrise. They seemed to own the campground. The birds would start off on a little island in the marsh behind our rig and then work their way around the campground.

Our neighbors are really loud this morning but we ain’t even mad.

A video posted by VeganRVr (@veganrvr) on Nov 30, 2016 at 3:57am PST

There were plenty of other birds around too. But that wasn’t the only wildlife we saw. In the waterway that runs through the campground, we saw alligators from about a foot and a half long to one five or six feet long. The big one wasn’t going to do any tricks for us, but the smaller ones were more active, moving around and swimming.

Nature Trail

If you continue past the campground, there is a trail through the marsh at the end of the road. The trail is paved for multi-use, so we took a couple of morning bike rides down that way. It’s only about a mile long and then just stops, so you turn around and come back.

Out on this trail is where we saw the big alligator under a bridge. We also saw a female slider turtle getting ready to deposit eggs in a nest she was digging on the side of the path.

Cell Signal

Since we work from the road, it’s important that we have usable Internet. We had great connections here with both Verizon and AT&T.

All in all, this is a great stopover if you’re traveling I-95. It’s not far off the interstate, it’s inexpensive, and you get to check out the native wildlife in their habitat, which is far superior to a zoo.

Oh right, vegan food. We went out to eat a few times, so I’ll cover vegan-friendly restaurants in Jensen Beach and Stuart, Florida in a separate post. Otherwise, we’re still trying to get our bearings on cooking and meal planning in the RV. So far we’ve been eating a lot of sandwiches for lunch which I’d like to stop doing.