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According to Wikipedia, the Blackwater River is “one of the purest sand-bottom rivers in the nation, making this park a popular place for swimming, fishing, camping, and paddling.”[1] The sandy bottom and dark-colored water make for the river’s name. It certainly is a paradise for canoeing and kayaking as well as tubing, since the river usually flows at a gentle 2-3 miles per hour.
The campground is a short walk from the nice sandy Blackwater river via the Nature trail. The campground has just 30 campsites, each with full hookups. It is a nice spacious and shaded campground situated among the Longleaf Pines with only a few sites seeming close together. There is a modern bathhouse located in the middle of the two campground loops but no laundry facilities. Even though each campsite has full hookups, there is still a dump station provided near the campground loop entrance if needed. Almost all campsites are well-defined, large gravel sites. There are some sites with concrete pads. Likely the main drawback of the park is the general location as it is a good distance from any town.
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 because it was a simple matter of driving up to the ranger station and interacting with the ranger without getting out of our vehicle. The ranger confirmed our reservation and handed us our site tag and we were on our way.
Next in our review is Infrastructure & Amenities which we are giving a 4 out of 5. The main park road and campground loop roads are paved and in excellent shape. The modern bathhouses in the campground section and at the pavilion are also in excellent shape. The campground is well maintained and cleaned regularly by the campground hosts, and there is a security gate with passcode to enter the campground area after hours. Of note is that the campground hosts have a trash collection each morning, so you don’t have to run trash over to a dumpster. The trails are also well maintained as are the beach, boardwalks and the Pavilion area. Really the only thing missing are laundry machines.
Site Quality gets a 5 out of 5 as the sites are very well defined, large, mainly private, and laid with course gravel. In this regard most sites are ideal, although some are more private than others. Obviously having full hookups, which includes electric, water and sewer is a great benefit of staying at this campground and all sites also have fire pits, picnic tables and are basically level. There are some sites that are more private than others, but generally you can’t really go wrong with any of these sites.
Our Exercisability rating is a 4 out of 5 as there are several miles of paved park road to run on with very occasional slow traffic and some hiking. There is direct access to Blackwater River from the short trail walk so a myriad of water sports are easily available. We saw many people at the campground traveling with kayaks and for good reason. As a runner, the only issue was having to run on the more traveled Deaton Bridge Road in order to get significant mileage. There wasn’t much traffic, but we did have to be aware of cars and trucks while running.
Finally, we are giving a 4 out of 5 for Workability as the bandwidth for AT&T was abysmal, with Verizon being considerably better. Using an iPhone 10, we only had speeds of .57 Mbps down and only 0.05 Mbps up on AT&T – making AT&T pretty much unusable. Using our Verizon Jetpack 8800L MiFi, we experienced solid speeds of 28.5 Mbps down and 2.45 Mbps up. Basically, if we didn’t have the Verizon Jetpack, we would have been dead in the water in terms of working remotely.
This a good time to speak to the idea of mobile data redundancy, if you happen to work remotely or may desire to do so. We have significant experience working remotely, including attending important conference calls and accessing corporate VPN for work. At this point, we would strongly counsel anyone thinking of doing so to spend the money and have data plans and devices from both major carriers. As noted above with Blackwater River, only Verizon worked. At other Florida State Parks in the panhandle, we actually experienced the opposite where Verizon was fairly unusable, and AT&T worked well.
By the way, on johnmarucci.com we have an interactive campground review map that captures all of our campground reviews, including our ratings for workability.
Overall, we thought Blackwater River State Park was an excellent value and plan to return. The ability to work remotely and exercise, having a full hookup site, and the excellent quality of the campsites and campground infrastructure make this a do-over given the very reasonable state park price. This is really a top choice when in the western panhandle of Florida. If you are traveling east or west on I-10 in Florida’s panhandle, you may want to try it out.
All the best in your camping endeavors!
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_River_State_Park ↑