Heading South & Thoughts on Thousand Trails

We had a couple of short stops this week as we continued our trek to Florida.  First was The Oaks at Point South (Thousand Trails), and second was Kathryn Abbey Hanna City Park.

The Oaks was a nice RV park in South Carolina.  Overall clean, all pull-through sites, and relatively spacious sites (for an RV 'parking lot').  Like the last Thousand Trails park we visited in Williamsburg, the campground was quite wooded, giving more of an illusion of privacy than you actually had.  We had some neat neighbors from Canada also trekking to Florida.  This RV park also had the relatively unique feature of a walking trail around a neighboring lake.

It was interesting to contrast this to our previous private and beautiful spot at Cheraw State Park.  We've watched a lot of RV YouTube videos and it's fairly common for people to share their thoughts on staying in RV parks like the Thousand Trails collection vs. boondocking or staying in state/national parks.  I feel like most people express a strong preference for the state/national parks, though we've personally met a lot of happy Thousand Trails campers.  I'm thinking there are some pretty strong pluses to both...pros for Thousand Trails: (1) it's 'free' on a per night basis (you pay an annual membership); (2) they are almost always very close to an interstate, so there is minimal motor home driving on narrow winding country roads or crowded city streets; (3) you almost always get full hookups (50A power, water, sewer); (4) you almost always have a reasonably priced on-site laundromat; (5) the sites are typically level.  Pros for national/state parks: (1) they tend to be BEAUTIFUL; (2) the sites tend to be private; (3) they usually have a lot of hiking trails and/or other natural outdoor activities; (4) they usually have fire rings and frequently grills on each site.  The pros for each, negated, become the cons for the other category.  So I think I like both.  The state parks are refreshing for the soul, but the RV parks involve less stressful travel days and make it a lot easier to get chores done.

The Oaks at South Point was kind of in the middle of nowhere, but the weather was pretty decent so we went walking a lot and set out to explore.  We stopped by the visitor center, where they directed us to some impressive ruins of Old Sheldon Church, and where we learned about a nearby Spanish settlement (Santa Elena) that pre-dated Jamestown.  We attempted to learn more about the settlement first hand, but the site itself was on a marine base and thus inaccessible to us, and a museum in downtown Beaufort was inexplicably closed in the middle of the day.  Still, it was neat to learn that the site even existed.

After The Oaks, we FINALLY made it to Florida and stayed at Jacksonville's Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park.  This park was beautiful; the campground was sandwiched between a lake and the beach, both on park property and within walking distance.  Unfortunately a cold front had just moved in and it was too cold to do much more than take a quick picture at the ocean.  We learned here that although the peak season for southern Florida is in the winter, the peak season for northern Florida is in the summer just like the rest of the country.  The campground was not even half full, which made it wonderfully quiet and peaceful.  The roads to get to the campsites though were narrow, windy, and a bit scary in a 40ft long, 9ft wide motor home!

At our next stop we should finally be far enough south in Florida to escape the cold!