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In this blog we’ll review Three Rivers State Park in Florida’s Panhandle, about 50 miles northwest of Tallahassee on Lake Seminole. While the campground is smaller and has an older feel, the park itself is out-of-the-way and relaxed and provides excellent access to Lake Seminole as well as significant hiking opportunities. There are also excellent birding opportunities in the park, and we even saw a mature bald eagle while hiking.
Three Rivers state park became a Florida state park in 1955 when congress passed a special bill allowing the transfer of certain Army Corp of Engineer property to be designated as recreational land. The land was then leased to the state of Florida. The park and campground are primarily designed for access to Lake Seminole and therefore mainly benefit those who desire watersports of all kinds.
Fishing and boating, including kayaking and canoeing, are the most popular pastimes at the park. The park has two separate boat ramps, one at the day-use area and one at the campground for the use of registered campers. You can also rent canoes and kayaks at the campground.
I think one of the highlights of the park are the two hiking trails along Lake Seminole. Eagle trail near the day-use area is named appropriately. It was a first for me to see a Bald Eagle in Florida while hiking this trail.
Let’s look closer at the campground…
There is one small campground with only 28 rentable RV campsites sitting right on Lake Seminole. The campground shows its age in terms of the layout, with only part of the campground road being paved. Each site has water and electric but no sewer hookups. There is one dump station that can accommodate a single RV at a time. Given only 28 campsites, the dump station ratio is good, and you likely will not have to wait much to dump tanks.
The main drawback of the park is likely the quality of the individual campsites and the poor park roads. In fact, this park easily made it to the top of my bad-roads list as the main park road has huge dips and giant-sized potholes. It is actually difficult to navigate the potholes when driving on the main park road. The park road is in obvious disrepair and needs to be repaved in short order.
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 we simply pulled up to the ranger station and checked in while remaining in the vehicle. The ranger handed us our site tag and we were on our way.
Next in our review is Infrastructure & Amenities which we are only giving a 2 out of 5. The main park road is about as bad as I’ve seen in any Florida State Park. Go slow even if you aren’t towing. The actual campground road is fine where it has been paved, but the gravel is uneven in places. Unfortunately, the lack of paving the entire campground loop gives the campground an old look and patchwork feel. There is a modern bathhouse in the campground, but we didn’t see any laundry machines. There is also a security pad at the ranger station to key in for after-hours entry.
Site Quality gets a 3 out of 5 as there is a good deal of difference between the quality and privacy of the various sites. Most sites are gravel with some short weeds or grass mix and do have some definition around the campsite. Yet almost all need a good deal of new gravel to freshen the sites. Some sites have decent privacy with some distance between sites. Where we stayed in Lot 3, the sites were very close together and not very private. There are a few great sites, like site 15, which is private and overlooks the lake.
Our Exercisability rating is a 4 out of 5 as there are several miles of very hilly paved park road to run on with occasional slow traffic, as well as several miles of hiking trails. Be aware of the potholes when running and the significant hills to ascend and descend. It is quite a workout running the steep park roads. As mentioned before, the hiking trails are very nice along Lake Seminole and you will likely catch a glimpse of rare birds and other animals. Obviously, there is the main draw of fishing, canoeing and kayaking on the lake with convenient access from the campground.
Finally, we are giving a 5 out of 5 for Workability as the bandwidth for AT&T was outstanding, with Verizon almost as good. Using an iPhone 10, we had speeds of 75.3 Mbps down and 5.20 Mbps up on AT&T. Using our Verizon 8800L Jetpack MiFi, we experienced speeds of 26.4 Mbps down and 1.66 Mbps up. So, you shouldn’t have issues with bandwidth for working.
Overall, we thought Three Rivers State Park was a fair value for a short stop. We could work remotely and exercise, but the overall quality and closeness of the campsites as well as the poor park roads, made the park feel neglected. I haven’t seen worse paved roads at any Florida state park. If your main goal is to find great watersports, and quality of infrastructure and campsites isn’t a concern, this may be a nice choice. The hiking and wildlife are also impressive and worth pursuing.
All the best in your camping endeavors!
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