Escambia River & Conecuh National Forest
Biloxi, MS to Florala, AL | Escambia River State Wildlife Management Area | Camping at Mystic Springs Campground | Conecuh National Forest | Open Pond Recreation Area | January 2024
If you have ever looked into van life, you might have noticed that the majority of people who live in vans tend to favor the West side of the US over the East. While there are probably many reasons for this, it mainly is because there’s so much more public land where you can camp for free. We also prefer the West to the East, but at this point in our life work is pulling us out East much more often, and going West is saved for time off. We’ve come to accept this as a fair trade for being able to live the way we do, and have made it our goal to make the most of every trip out East. Which is how we found ourselves here, a week and a half in to a trip to the Gulf Coast, on our 9th drive in just over a year between the Midwest and North Carolina.
One thing that I see all over is van lifers claiming that living in a van on the East Coast is all just sleeping in Walmart and Cracker Barrel parking lots, and today I’m here to break that stereotype and proudly say that after spending the majority of our past year out East, we still have yet to spend the night in a parking lot. We do occasionally pay for campsites which is something some try to avoid, but we think it’s worth it to be out of the city and enjoying nature. We’ve managed to do well with our rule of sticking to sites that are $20 or less, mostly in national forest campgrounds, never in RV parks or KOAs. State park campgrounds out East tend to be the most expensive public place to stay and are our last resort.
On our entire 2.5 week road trip to the Gulf Coast and eventually North Carolina, we ended up only paying for camping on 3 nights (Fort Pillow in TN, Pendleton Recreation Area in AR, and Conecuh NF in AL) and we found great places to camp throughout this entire trip — we would happily return to camp in any of these places again, if we found ourselves returning to any of these areas. The days that I’m sharing about in this post were especially nice and were a great example of how camping out East can be free or cheap, and can be out in nature! (Of course, I must mention that this was in January — I can’t imagine we’d have such a great time camping here in the heat of the summer!)
After waiting out one more storm in DeSoto National Forest outside of Biloxi, MS, we were ready to continue our drive East. We had debated using hotel points and spending a few days around Mobile, AL, but since most sites and beaches near Mobile Bay and along the coast were currently closed, we changed our minds and instead took a Northern route around the city and entered into Florida for our first time since February of 2016.
For tonight’s campsite, we found a free spot in Mystic Campground right along the Escambia River. All we had to do was go online and reserve a site — we felt good knowing in advance how busy it would be and that there was a site waiting for us. When we arrived, we got out of the van and found that for the first time on this vacation, the air was truly warm. We changed into short sleeves and flip flops and took Charlotte for a walk to the river. The campsites here were decently sized, with shelters and picnic tables at each site. There isn’t much to do here, but we had good cell service so we were able to get work done.
It was around this day that we officially decided to scrap what remaining plans we had for our roadtrip, which was going to include driving Northeast across Georgia and seeing lots of historic sites, then maybe spending some time in the Southern Appalachians before making our way to Wilmington, NC. Looking ahead at the forecast, we saw that the bitter cold was making its way South, and it seemed that the best way to avoid it would be staying South in the Florida panhandle, continuing East to the Atlantic coast, then driving up the coast to Wilmington. We easily found some places that we were interested in visiting, pieced together the remainder of the trip, and were especially excited to revisit some other favorite spots and a place we used to call home!
With that decision made, we found another campsite about and hour and a half East of where we were in Florida for the following night. This one was in Conecuh National Forest just across the border in Alabama, at Open Pond Recreation Area. The campsite came with a small fee of $8, but we were happy to pay that when we learned there were free hot showers available here (or was it a free campsite with $8 showers? Either way, a great deal!) We picked a spot and set up the van, took turns showering and watching Charlotte, then set out for a long walk around the pond.
There were quite a few other people camping here (it was a Saturday, so that was sort of expected) but most were in the RV section and it was pretty quiet on our side of the campground. Our walk took us both along the lakeside and through the woods. There were some people out fishing on the water, but we were all alone on the trail. After our walk, we relaxed at the campsite for the rest of the evening — another beautiful day, which left us feeling thankful for this life, for warmer weather, and that we had found more places we enjoy out East!
