Apalachee Campground in Historic Blakeley State Park

We left Stay N Go RV park in Marianna, FL around 9:30 am on Wednesday, February 21, 2024 to drive 3 hours to the Apalachee Campground inside Historic Blakeley State Park in Spanish Fort, Alabama for a 14-night stay. 172 miles of the 176 mile trip were on Interstate 10, so not much sightseeing along the way.

Cindy told they had a very strict policy about not checking in prior to the 1 pm check in time and though I rarely went over 60 miles an hour our GPS ultimately showed us arriving 30 minutes early. But, luck was with us! There was a Buc-eee’s about 20 miles away right along the Interstate, so we stopped to grab a couple of their sandwiches for lunch and a few snacks for later.

Buc-eee’s

If you’ve never been to a Buc-eee’s it is quite the experience. Dozens of gas pumps, places to walk your dog (they even provide poop bags and disposal cans) and the inside can range in size from a small store to one that is more like a medium-sized town. This one was VERY large and they even had shopping carts (NOT baskets, shopping carts…on wheels!) in the expectation that you will be buying a lot more items than you can walk around holding. And amazingly, there were many, many people pushing carts filled with Buc-eee’s merchandise.

Historic Blakeley State Park

It helped us eat up some time and we arrived at the park entrance gate around 1:15 pm. We were a little nervous because Historic Blakeley State Park does NOT allow you to choose your site online. In 2 1/2 years of traveling around the U.S. and Canada we have only been to one other park that wouldn’t let you pick your site. We LIKE picking our site, using the online park maps and satellite views in Google maps to see what the site would look like and what it might be near (playgrounds, restrooms, trails, etc.) during our stay. But again, luck was with us! The park ranger looked at our rig and assigned us to site #10. When we got there we discovered it was a HUGE pull-through site, basically on a corner and nestled amoungst the trees. After the sterile setting of Stay N Go, Cindy could not have been happier!

Cartoon showing how a guy stacked blocks extremely high under the tongue to get his RV level.

Set up was a little more difficult than usual. Though the site was beautiful, it was not level. Not front to back and not side to side. As you can see in the photos, we used all of our stabilizing boards to get Nomad as level as we could. It was still a little “off”, but not horribly so. There were lots and lots of trees, which Cindy loved. Our nearest neighbor is about 40 feet away and our view of them was mostly blocked by trees and natural shrubs. Yay! Our site had plenty of room for the screen room.

The sites are full hook up and there are vault toilets for tent campers. No showers. We had good signals on AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.

Historic Blakeley State Park encompasses more than 2,000 acres and contains what is said to be some of the most biodiverse habitat in North America. In addition, the park includes the site of Alabama’s largest Civil War battle (the last major clash of the Civil War), as well as the remnants of Blakeley, an important town in the history of Alabama that was founded in 1814 on the banks of the Tensaw River. Before that, in the early 1700’s, while the area was still claimed by the French, a Native American group from what is now Florida called the Apalachees had a village on this land. And before the area came under American control in 1813, British and Spanish settlers farmed the region.

But humans lived, hunted, fished and farmed on what are now State Park grounds long before even that. More than 2,500 years ago the land was inhabited by the Woodland Indians and archaeologists have discovered traces of their settlement in various areas of the park. It is truly a gold mine of history.

There are more than 20 miles of trails in the park, something Cindy, Bella and I made extensive use of during our two-week stay. Many of the trails follow skirmish and battle lines drawn during the last major battle of the Civil War which occurred on April 9, 1865 following a siege of 7 days by the Union Army. 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers clashed for control of nearby Mobile and its port facilities, including one of the largest contingents of African-American troops assembled for any battle during the Civil War. The battle that day culminated in a massive charge all along the three-mile long redoubts (reinforcing earthworks formed by men digging defensive ditches and piling the dug up dirt in front of the ditches) that made up Fort Blakeley. The Confederate’s fall led directly to Union forces capturing Mobile.

On that same day, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. Smaller clashes continued around the country in various places for a few more months, but the Battle of Fort Blakeley was the last major battle of the Civil War.

Attack of The Cardinal

When we first arrived I had Voyager parked in from of Nomad’s trailer tongue, as I usually do. But the first morning a male cardinal began attacking its reflection in my outside rearview mirrors. Apparently he was defending his “area” from what he perceived to be an intruder. He pecked with his beak, clawed with his feet, and dropped bird shit all over my mirrors and doors. I cleaned the scratch marks off the mirrors and got the bird poop off the doors and then turned my mirrors “in” but the next day he still worked his way into the small space between the mirror and window and made another mess for me to clean. I ended up moving Nomad behind Voyager. Removing the mirrors from his “area” seemed to solve the problem. Cindy thinks there may have been a nest in the nearby bushes that he was defending. There were a lot of cardinals near our site and we enjoyed seeing their bright red plumage and hearing their beautiful songs each day. I could just do without the attacks on Voyager, lol.

Attack of the Snakes

In addition to the cardinals at our site, we saw wildlife during our hikes. Not a lot though, and some we would rather not have crossed paths with. We saw some deer bounding out of the woods when some horseback riders got too close; that was fun. Twice we almost stepped on snakes that were on the trails. Two different looking (and acting) serpents. The first one just wanted to slither away as quickly as possible. The second was rather aggressive and looked like it might strike, especially when Cindy threw a pine cone at it. There are photos of them in the album and in the video. If you recognize what kind they are, please leave a comment for us.

We did have some rainy days and cloudy nights, but the nights that were clear displayed beautiful stars. We also ooohed and ahhhhed at the fireflies that came out at night and flashed themselves at us.

TV Shows and Girl Scout Cookies

During our two weeks we finished watching “Manifest” and it ended better than I expected. I was afraid we were going to endure another “Lost” type debacle, but the writers came through in a good way. We also watched (well, I re-watched but Cindy hadn’t seen them yet) “Falcon and Winter Soldier”, “She-Hulk” and then we both enjoyed a first watch of “Echo”, all on Disney+.

During one of our errand-running days we tracked down some Girl Scout cookies. There was one Girl Scout and her mom (I guess) manning the table. I was wearing my Marvel Periodic Table of Superheroes T-shirt and as I walked up the Girl Scout exclaimed “Look, he’s wearing a shirt with the periodic table of Marvel superheroes!” Then she told me that her “cool” science teacher had all his students create their own periodic tables based on their favorite interest. So, anime, manga, LOTR, cartoons, authors, movies, etc. and how much they all enjoyed it. Needles to say, I bought lots of my favorite (Thin Mints) and Cindy even got a box of some kind of toffee cookie.

Halfway through our first week the park notified us that they were paving the main dirt road that ran through the campground the following Wednesday and we would not be able to leave or return between the hours of 9 am and 4 pm. We just hung around Nomad all day and I took some before and after photos you can see in the album.

Historic Blakeley State Park is full of history and miles and miles of trails. If we’re in this area again it’s a place we would definitely return to for a stay.

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