After leaving our friends in Florida, we continued our journey west. Another place we had considered staying in last year was Gulf State Park. Since it was on our way west, we decided to make a quick stop to check it out.

Gulf State Park is huge, both the park itself and the campground. With over 500 campsites, 496 of them full-hookups, it feels more like a RV park in some ways than a state park. We stayed in an area off the main road with campsites that were a little more spread out, so it wasn’t quite as bad as the central area that seemed almost indistinguishable from a commercial RV park.


With only a day to see some of the park and do errands and chores, we spent most of our fun time at the beach and pier. The weather was relatively pleasant with highs actually reaching the 60s, and consequently, while the beach was hardly crowded, we certainly were not alone on it either.

Besides the beach, one of the best aspects of the park seemed to be the many miles of bike trails that we unfortunately did not have time to check out.