Travel dates: April 1-8, 2018
Jekyll Island Campground is the only game in town if you want to stay on the island in your RV. So it’s always nice to see a place like that do their best to make your stay pleasant, even though they could probably keep the place full even if they didn’t bother. There are a number of well regarded campgrounds a short drive from Jekyll, but we really wanted the experience of being on the island and able to jump on our bikes and go anywhere, and we were really happy with our experience here.
The campground is on land owned by the state (as is all of Jekyll) and run by the Jekyll Island Authority. So it’s a state park….sort of…but it’s not part of the Georgia State Park system. Which means no discounts for those with state park memberships.
Booking and Arrival
The trickiest part of staying at Jekyll Island Campground is getting a site there. This was our third attempt at finding open dates. Our first two were in winter, close to the holidays, though, and that seems to be the toughest time to get reservations because most of the sites are taken up by monthly residents who come for the winter. That sounds lovely. Someday I want to winter on Jekyll Island. But until I can do that, it’s a little frustrating how hard it is to come for just New Year’s week. Ah well.
We finally met with success booking for our spring break…but even then we booked a full year in advance…and we still did a Sunday to Sunday reservation because the Saturday night wasn’t available. So. Book early! While we were there we booked again for next spring break after confirming that New Year’s week wasn’t a possibility (they actually did have one back-in site available, but we didn’t love the site, so we passed on that).
They have an online reservation system now that appears to be working. Back when we booked you had to call and then you almost always had to leave a message (we saw why when we were there; the poor people working in the office/store seem to be on the phone doing reservations pretty much constantly).
When you arrive, you don’t have to go in to the office to check in; they have camp hosts stationed at the front (with very clear signage about where to pull your RV up) to find you on the list and guide you to your site (necessary: the layout of the campground is a little confusing).
Campsites
All sites except for a few primitive tent sites are full hook-up, and there’s a mix of back-in and pull-throughs. We had pull through site G24 and were pretty happy with it.
Most of the sites are pretty closely spaced….not terrible (and the campground’s very wooded, so there’s a bit of a sense of separation because of all the trees), but definitely not a big public campground feel. We were happy enough with our pull-through, though some of them are more spacious. Many of the back in sites are the kind that back up to another site, and I wouldn’t have been thrilled to get one of those.
Sites are dirt; each has a picnic table and a fire ring (our fire ring was in kind of rough shape, and we had to kind of create a cleared out area in the dirt for it so that we wouldn’t be worried about all the pine straw going up in flames. Other sites’ fire rings looked better). One thing you’re going to have to deal with no matter what site you get is bugs. We encountered lots of swarming, biting tiny black flies and we found tons of ticks on the dogs after a walk through the woods one day. Next time we’ll come prepared with tick preventative for the dogs and a more robust selection of bug spray for us.
Amenities and Activities
Not a whole lot going on here as far as amenities. There is a basketball court and a pickle ball court, and a monkey swing hanging from a tree that might or might not be for public use? There’s also a small bird sanctuary in the tent area; you can sit on benches outside and….look for birds. But there’s no pool or playground or anything like that. There is a whiteboard on the outside of the community room for activities, but none were listed while we were there. Word is there are a lot of organized activities (potlucks and whatnot) when the seasonal people are there in winter, and there’s a nice community building for events like that.
We didn’t spend a lot of time in the bathhouses, but they seemed clean and adequate, if a bit dated. We did use the laundry room and found it well equipped (machines take credit cards, which is always handy).
The camp store offers a good selection of RVing and grocery items and souvenirs. And lots of choices for bug spray.
Local Area
This is really why you’re here. Jekyll Island is pretty small, so there’s no place on the island that’s particularly inconvenient, but we thought the campground was especially well situated. It’s a short walk or bike ride from Driftwood Beach:
(almost all the beaches on Jekyll are dog-friendly year round, by the way, which is an awesome and hard to find feature for pet owners).
It’s also close to the Clam Creek Picnic area and Horton House. The bike path is directly across from the campground entrance, and that will take you pretty much anywhere else on the island you want to go. It’s about 4 miles to the Historic District, where much of the action is, and we made that round trip ride twice during the week. This was probably our favorite thing about Jekyll…we absolutely loved being able to jump on our bikes and go anywhere we wanted.
Read more about everything else we did on Jekyll here.
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