Camping at Fort Clinch State Park, Fernandina Beach, Florida

Continuing on our journey, we travelled back to our home state with a stop at Fort Clinch State Park located in Fernandina Beach, Florida.  We travelled approximately 237 miles from Hamburg State Park to Fort Clinch State Park.  Fort Clinch State Park is located on the northernmost point of Amelia Island along the Amelia River.  It is not rural – boy could I tell when we were ‘back in civilization’!  There were cars everywhere – time to stop enjoying being the only car on the road and pay attention to all the traffic.  Earlier this year we had taken a day visit over to Fernandina Beach and I noticed they had a lighthouse – hence the reason we were doing a 1 night stay here so I could photograph the lighthouse.

Park Details

Fort Clinch State Park

Address: 2601 Atlantic Ave, Fernandina Beach, FL 32034

Park  (904) 277-7274

Park 8am – 5pm

Park Office 8 a.m.–8 p.m.

Cell service was great here with Verizon.  I didn’t take time to check whether or not there was any antenna channels on the tv.

This is a fairly large park, 1,100 acres which includes the 19^th century Fort Clinch, sand dunes, beach, trails in oak covered areas.  Upon the entrance to this park (which we missed the first time because it is surrounded by trees), you will find the ranger station.  After checking in at the ranger station you’ll be treated to a wonderful (over) 2 miles of tree lined wonder.  It was pretty cool driving through all the canopy provided by the trees.

Campsite Details

30 amp electric

Picnic table, Fire ring

Dirt campsite and level

Our campsite was mostly shade, campsite #24. Lot of trees in this campground providing shade.  The campsite was a little different than some of the campsites in terms of size.  We have a small rig, 17 feet, so we parked our rig backed up to the hookups.  There was not enough depth in our site to park the truck in front of the camper, so we parked it along the site of our camper.  Different, not necessarily bad.

Water/Electric

Back in sites

Checkin is 1pm

Checkout is 12pm

Quiet hours 10pm - 7am

NOTE: Thus far, it seems that Floria state parks have a checkin of 3pm, checkout of 1pm.

There are 2 campgrounds at this park – one is the ‘beach campground’ and the other is the “river campground’.  We stayed at the river campground as it appeared when I booked the reservation that it was shady and the beach was not.

While we were there, we walked around the ‘river campground’ and enjoyed the shady canopy of the trees.  When we went out to visit the lighthouse, we took a tour of the ‘beach campground’ and my thoughts were:

1. Mostly large rigs at the beach campground
2. Sunny sites, not much shade on any of them
3. Sites were close together

River campground

1. Mostly smaller rigs and tents at the river campground
2. Shady sites under the canopy of trees
3. Sites were further apart with more privacy than the beach campground

The bath house was very nice and clean – it was located a few campsites down from our site.  The laundry machines were at the bath house also.

The dumpster and dump station are located at the end of the campground loop.  Currently they are building a new, nice dump station at this park.  Since we were there on a Friday night/Saturday morning we did not have any construction noise.

This is the bath house for the River Campground.

Sunset

The sunset was very nice the one night we were at the park.  A short walk down the road we were staying on took us to the park area that allows access to the sandy shores.  This is along the Amelia river (so I guess it’s not traditional beach since it is not salt water).  Any way there were several sailboats and other boat traffic to watch go by.  The beach area is NOT dog friendly.

Oh, if you take your dogs down to the ‘beach’ area where they are allowed (not near the water) watch out for sandspurs.

There is a trail just across the way that goes back into another part of the campground and leads to an area we weren’t sure what was – so we walked the dogs for a bit and then turned around and headed back to our campsite.  Abby standing at the beginning of the trail with the sunset light.

Fort Clinch

The fort is open for tours, although this particular activity is NOT dog friendly.  Jim elected to stay back at the campsite with the dogs while I took an hour to go visit the fort.  This fort is built of bricks – a little different than what I have seen in the past.  I did not realize that you can go to the ‘top’ of the fort and see Georgia as it is just over the St Mary’s River.

The beginnings of Fort Clinch began to take shape in 1736 (that’s before we became the United States!) and almost 300 years ago now.  The fort itself began construction in 1846 and was not totally completed prior to the beginning of the Civil War.  The fort was under the control of the Confederacy due to its location.  During the Civil War the fort was utilized by the Army (March 1862-1864) and then again during the Spanish American War (1898).

After some time, the Army no longer had any use for the fort and sold it.  It was restored and created into a park by CCC Company 1420 who were stationed at Fort Clinch constructed the museum, campground and park roads as well as removed massive amounts of sand and debris from the fort itself.  This is another park that was created as a part of the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal project back in the 1930s.

I enjoyed walking around the fort and seeing the various exhibits now that I have a much greater appreciation for history than I did when I was younger.

Amelia Island Lighthouse

I love light houses – I am sure I am not alone on this.  So, when I saw the light house from afar, it was time to figure out how to get closer.  This light house is still operational and as such you cannot tour the light house.  It was recently painted and the lenses on it clean making it the perfect time to capture a few photographs to show off its beauty.  Just a note, the gate to get in and see a better view of the lighthouse is open Saturday from 11-2.  Very limited hours.  We got lucky - it was Saturday and the woman that was responsible for opening the gate came early so she told us about the lighthouse and then left us to look at it.

The light house itself has 4 foot walls at the base tapering to 2 foot walls at the top – image 4 foot walls!  It stands 67 feet tall and is visible for 15 miles.

Interesting enough, this light house now sits in the middle of a residential area.  I am sure that the folks that live in these streets aren’t thrilled with people coming to see the light house but then again, the light house was there first having been built in 1839 (none of the houses were that old for sure!).

MAP

In driving from Hamburg State Park to Fort Clinch State Park Google maps had us travelling without much interstate.  This was fine with me, stay away from all the crazy traffic.  As such we took smaller highways along most of the route travelling through rural Georgia - seeing small towns - some almost ghost towns now, cotton fields, water towers, open fields of hay, grass, etc.  It goes to tell you that while some places like our home area (Tampa, Florida) are crazy with people and traffic yet some areas are very uninhabited.  There is tons of land in the southern United States that does not have people.

We stayed in Amelia River Campground of the Fort Clinch State Park.  If you want shade, this is where you need to camp.  If full sun with the big rigs (maybe you have a larger rig) is your thing then perhaps you'd prefer to camp in the Atlantic Beach Campground.

That's all for this stop on our trip - if you want to see all the photographs from this stop, click here.