Our first trip in 2025!  This trip was a little different than some of the trips we took in the past as it was a chance for Jim to visit friends and family.  During Jim's younger years, he spent quite a few years living in Jacksonville.  So, we decided to take the camper over to Jacksonville, Florida and enjoy camping while visiting.

Since I last posted about an RV trip, I have joined several different facebook groups and I asked - Any one know good places to camp in Jacksonville, Florida?  A large number of the people mentioned "Hanna Park".  This park is on the east coast located very close to the military base located in Jacksonville.

When we arrived Sunday afternoon, we were greeted with a very nice park!  Our campsite had full hookups (water, electric and sewer).  This park does have a gate to enter the campground and you must have the code (you'll get it when you check in) for the gate in order for the gate to go up when you arrive.  The code changes on Tuesday's - you can get the new code at the front office or the camp store (it looked like a really nice camp store, but we never actually got a chance to visit).  We did find out that the code doesn't change real early, so make sure you don't lose the old code until it is changed.

The entire campground is shaded from what we saw (we didn't see the entire campground because it is large!).

We stayed near the back of the campground (and this is a really big campground). Our campsite, #167, was located on the last row of sites. 
 

The electric hookup includes 30 and 50 amps along with a few plugs if you need to plug in something else directly to the hookup.

Nothing glamourous about this, but it's nice to have!

Rue found her spot!

A short walk to the lake which we checked out just about every day! 

The dogs loved walking down to the lake as they had an open area that was good for taking the pups to explore and do what dogs need to do.

Shortly after sunrise...

There is a dock that goes over the water a short distance.  A sign indicates that it can be used for fishing but I never saw anyone actually fishing in this area.  There are signs for alligators, but didn't see one of those either.

A short trail goes off from this area which the dogs were all for checking it out.

We ended at another part of the campground.  It was a very short walk, but enjoyed it!

They have a lot of biking and hiking trails at this park - we didn't get to explore that much, but if you're into doing either of these - it's a good place to go.  

The beginning of a trail - you can always tell who got stuck with me because they are in the foreground of the photographs (in this case, Abby and Ollie).  Rue is busy running off on the trail with Jim (much to their dismay).

Rue and Abby took a few minutes to pose for me!

And Ollie did too!

Another great feature of this park is the Atlantic Ocean - yep, it's right here waiting to be explored!  After a couple of days we managed to get up early and head over to see the sun rise.  Since we were at the back of the campground, it was a bit more than I would walk when "in a hurry" to catch the sun - but I'm sure our dogs wouldn't have had an issue doing that walk.

Here's a few photographs from the sunrise.

There are a few areas where it says "No dogs allowed on the beach".  However, we did find other areas that just indicated the dogs had to be on a leash - so we checked out those places late one afternoon and let the dogs have some fun just enjoying being in the sand and checking out what the water was.  Abby has been to the beach a few times in the past, but I think this was the first time for our little girls, Rue and Ollie.

Abby didn't appear to really want to get wet, so as the waves came in, she came further onshore.

Rue and Ollie seemed to enjoy the beach sand, but unfortunately we couldn't let them run free.  

What I liked about the campground and park:

1. It was shady!  Lots of beautiful Florida landscaping here
2. The dogs had two areas to walk to when we were at the campground - the lake or the nearby playground areas could be easily reached from our campsite
3. The trails! I wish we had more time to explore those
4. The beach
5. Full hookups

What I didn't like about the campground and park:

1. Ticks - there were a lot of these and I'm sure it was because it was such a wooded area - We did see one armadillo and Jim saw one raccoon after dark (thankfully the dogs were already inside!) - either way, be prepared because they are plentiful and the freeze the week before didn't contain these little pests
2. Low flying helicopters - the active military base provided for a lot of low flying helicopters over the campground and unfortunately the day we were coming home was the same day a military helicopter crashed into a plane in Washington, D.C. 

This park also has several full bath houses with showers and restrooms.  The heat was wonderful in them!  As it was a little chilly in the mornings and evenings.  There is also a laundry room and some visitor parking.

This park and campground is run by the City of Jacksonville.  They do accept reservations online.  Google "Hanna park campground" and you'll be able to find it.

Hope you enjoyed seeing a little about our camping trip to this part of Florida.  I will do another post soon on our visit to Big Talbot Island State Park.