Camping at General Coffee State Park, Nicholls, Georgia

We started our planned trip for October 2025 on the 12th of October (no hurricanes thus far this year, yay!!!).  Always wonder if we will be able to take our planned trips in October (or September for that matter). This trip we decided to focus on a few parks in Georgia and Florida – not driving the longer distances for this trek.

Our first stop was at General Coffee State Park located in rural Georgia in Nicholls, Georgia.  Douglas, Georgia is close and it is a sizeable town if you need anything while staying here – we went to the Walmart there because we needed a few things – about 20-minute drive from the state park.

I know there is a guideline that says “3 3 3” which means travel no more than 300 miles, get there by 3pm and stay 3 nights but we seem to have our own guidelines.  300 miles, yes – stay at that or below.  Time and time again is showing we usually arrive around 4 and it doesn’t seem to matter when we leave on many of these trip legs.  The  number of nights depends on what our overall destination is and what the park has to offer in terms of things to do.

Park Details

General Coffee State Park

Address: 46 John Coffee Road, Nicholls, GA 31554(

GPS Coordinates: N 31.509300 | W -082.755116

Phone: 912-384-7082

Park Office hours: 8am – 5pm

Cell phone service (Verizon) was good at this park

When I checked-in they gave us information about the trails that are open (Hurricane Helene did a lot of damage) and other details as well as a map of the park.  They also mentioned that most of the trails would probably be open by now (almost 2 weeks later from our camp dates).

One item to note – this is a very large park, 1,511 acres.  As such, unless you love to walk you might want some other form of transportation.  Whether this is a bicycle, electric bike (these seem to be very popular now), or vehicle.  This is why I wanted to have a travel trailer instead of a drivable RV – I can easily pick up and go without disturbing my campsite.

Campsite Details

30 amp electric

Picnic table, Fire ring

Gravel campsite

Our campsite was mostly shade, campsite #39, Loop 2. Lot of trees in this campground providing shade

Water/Electric (has dump station)

Pull through sites – most all of the sites appeared to be ‘pull through’ which is different (I don’t recall seeing back in sites but there might be a few)

Checkin is 1pm

Checkout is 12pm

Quiet hours 10pm - 7am

Guard dog? (Rue)

Hurricane Helene

I mentioned earlier that this park was impacted significantly by Hurricane Helene that came through in September 2024.  In front of the museum is this tree stump as a reminder.

Heritage Farm

One of the unique features of this park is the heritage farm.  Quick note – this is dog friendly so we were able to take the dogs with us to walk around.  They have several farm animals including goats, pigs, a horse, and chickens.  Our dogs like to bark at chickens so we steered away from them.

Curious enough, the dogs didn't see any reason to bark at goats, sheep or pigs (well, they almost barked at the pigs).....

The horse is ‘free range’ so we had to look harder to find it up on the hill.

They also have a museum that has several different things from the time period to explore.  In the back half of the museum, they have some live animals (snakes, turtles, salamander) in live habitats.  I found it very interesting to look at these as I knew they were behind glass and not a threat to me - non poisonous critters.  One of our family members ran out fast as soon as she found out there were snakes.

After walking around in the Heritage Farm, we walked around the 'fishing pond' that is next to it.  Beautiful - with a boardwalk going across the pond.

After walking for a bit, we started heading back to the parking lot and the dogs turned their attention to the water.

I began to wonder if Ollie was planning to take a swim!

Gopher Trail/Nature Walk (from Campground 2 loop)

This is one of the trails that was open at the time we camped.  It has an entrance from the campground so it was a logical option for us to walk with the dogs.  A good portion of the trail is shaded.  I didn’t see any signs that said “Gopher Trail”, just signs that said “Nature Walk” – but based on reviewing the map I believe we were walking on the Gopher Trail.

After Dark

This park is located in some of the more rural areas of Georgia.  As such, there is a lot of stars that can be viewed after dark.  The main problem is finding a location that doesn’t have any street/parking lots.  I thought for sure that we would be able to do some viewing in the big field that was set up for archery – but when we got there, a big bright shining light was lit.  So, we drove around trying to find a dark or at least darker spot.  We did find one but I’m challenged to know exactly where we were within the park.

Here's a few photographs from our night time star viewing.

Archery

When we were driving out of the park to head to Walmart, we noticed several archery targets in an open field.  I’ve never seen this in a park – but we bought an inexpensive archery set at Walmart and had fun for an hour with bow and arrows.  To my surprise I actually did manage to hit the target (yes I was standing a little closer than the ‘line’)….and then I made a bull’s eye.  Time to quit while you’re ahead!

It's the beginning of our 12 day trip but seems Abby is already into sleeping when she can....in the middle of the archery target area (but safe as there were several targets and she was laying behind us).

Campsite Visitor

A good portion of this park is known for the Gopher tortoises that live in the area.  The trail off the campground loop 2 is called ‘Gopher trail’ and also portions are labelled ‘Nature trail’.  We didn’t exactly expect that we would have one come by for a visit (especially with the dogs) but it did – and we enjoyed photographing our visitor.

MAP of Park

"X" marks the spot for where our campsite is located on the map.

The other map they gave us gives information on where the 'next big' city is because Nicholls itself is pretty small.

Additional photographs can be viewed by clicking this link - General Coffee State Park photographs