In this blog, we’ll review Florida Caverns State Park in Florida’s Panhandle. The park sits about 70 miles northwest of Tallahassee, Florida, near the small town of Marianna, Florida, just off of I-10 in the Panhandle. As of my last visit in the Spring of 2024, the park is still recovering from the lingering devastating effects of Hurricane Michael, which leveled most of the trees and much of the infrastructure in the park in October 2018.
The campground at Florida Caverns State Park had to be rebuilt after the devastating effects of Hurricane Michael, and there is almost no tree cover. It took nearly three years to reopen the campground. One can still see much of the prior tree canopy near the campground cut at mid-height due to the tremendous wind shear from the hurricane, even many years later. According to the Park website, the hurricane destroyed 90% of the tree canopy. According to Wikipedia, “Michael was the first Category 5 hurricane on record to impact the Florida Panhandle, the fourth-strongest landfalling hurricane in the contiguous United States in terms of wind speed, and the most intense hurricane on record to strike the United States in the month of October.”[1]
Thirty-two rebuilt campsites at the modern campground at Florida Caverns have full hookups, including electric, water, and sewer connections. Florida Caverns is “the only Florida state park to offer cave tours to the public. The cave has dazzling formations of limestone stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, flowstones, and draperies. Stables are available for equestrian campers. The tour lasts approximately 45 minutes and is considered to be moderately strenuous.”[2]
Before we delve into our five criteria for rating a campground, we want to remind you about our RV maintenance process document page on johnmarucci.com. We have detailed process documents on everything from Winterization and Dewinterization, to replacing vinyl trim, to backing in a travel trailer. Each process has a free downloadable .pdf that you can take with you when doing RV maintenance. Just head over to johnmarucci.com/docs-downloads. We’ll put a link in the video description below.
There are five criteria we look at when rating a campground. First up, Hospitality and Check-In. We give this a 5 out of 5 as it was easy to check in. We were able to remain in our vehicle to check in, making it very easy to confirm our reservation with the park ranger, receive our site tag, and be on our way.
Next in our review is Infrastructure & Amenities, which we are giving a 4 out of 5. The main park roads and campground loop roads are paved and in good condition, and it was fairly easy to maneuver with the truck and trailer. However, the one-way campground loop road is narrow, and most campsites sit perpendicular to the loop road, making it difficult to back into the campsites. Given the narrow one-way campground road, we had quite a difficult time doing a blind-side perpendicular back-in.
The bathhouse at the campground was in good condition, and several laundry machines were available. Like most Florida State Parks, there is a security gate at the park entrance to enter when the ranger station is closed.
Site Quality gets a 4 out of 5 as the rebuilt campsites were composed of gravel and were generally well-marked, wide, and level. There were a few sites that were paved for accessibility. The location of the sewer hookup at the sites was good. There is generally a decent distance between sites, yet privacy is limited as there is little berm between sites. The main drawback of the campsites, besides the general difficulty backing in, is that there is little if any tree cover due to the hurricane.
Our Exercisability rating is 4 out of 5 as the trail system was limited but good, and there were plenty of lightly traveled paved roads for running. The main park road is in good condition but can get flooded out at times. The campground is 2.5 miles from the ranger station, making for a good distance for those morning runs. We enjoyed running on the main park road as there was very little traffic, and the pavement and scenery were good.
For our final rating, we are giving a 3 out of 5 for Workability, as the bandwidth on Verizon was only fair. Using an iPhone 13 Pro, we had speeds of 2.12 Mbps down and 1.36 Mbps up. Fortunately, we were only passing through on this visit and didn’t need to work much. Otherwise, we would need Starlink, which we tested the year prior. With Starlink, we recorded speeds of 64.7 Mbps down and 11.8 Mbps up in early April 2023. Given the lack of a tree canopy, Starlink worked flawlessly.
Overall, I would stay at Florida Caverns State Park again, especially as a last place to camp before heading north from the Panhandle in early Spring or as a first stop in Florida coming down from the north or west via I-65 and I-10. It isn’t a place for a longer-term stay, but it is a great location to have a few days of R&R before or after a more extended travel.
That should do it. All the best in your camping adventures!
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