A few weeks ago, I shared five campgrounds that stood out to us for reasons that went beyond having a place to park the RV.
The article, “America’s Best RV Resort Campgrounds: Five Places That Turn a Stop Into a Story,” took us across the Southwest and reinforced something Vicky and I have learned during our travels: sometimes the campground really does become part of the destination.
This time, we’re turning toward the Southeast.
And these five couldn’t be much more different from one another.
One puts you within reach of America’s oldest continuously inhabited European-established city. Another sits beneath a massive Georgia landmark. One gives you live oaks, Spanish moss and a beach covered with weathered trees. Then Louisiana throws in a little Cajun personality before we finish near the beaches of Myrtle Beach.
That is what makes a list like this interesting to us.
We don’t necessarily want five versions of the same campground.
We want five places capable of giving us five different stories.
Ocean Grove RV Resort — St. Augustine, Florida
There are times when location matters more than almost anything else a campground can offer.
Ocean Grove RV Resort is just a few blocks from St. Augustine Beach and roughly five miles south of historic St. Augustine. That makes it the kind of campground where you can spend your morning walking along the Atlantic, your afternoon wandering through centuries of history and still be back at the RV before the evening gets away from you.
St. Augustine is the real attraction for us.
St. George Street, the old buildings, museums and fortifications give you plenty to explore, but this isn’t a destination where we would want to rush from one attraction to another. It seems better suited to wandering for a while, finding something interesting around the next corner and occasionally forgetting what time it is.
Then you have the beach.
Having history and the Atlantic Ocean within the same camping trip gives Ocean Grove an advantage that can’t really be manufactured with another campground amenity.
That doesn’t mean the amenities aren’t nice.
The resort offers full-hookup RV sites, including paved and marsh-view options, along with a swimming pool and hot tub, pickleball, bocce ball, basketball, a playground and a private saltwater fishing dock. There’s even a restaurant and bar at the campground, along with live music on Friday nights.
For those of us pulling a large fifth-wheel, the combination of spacious sites and a location that reduces how much driving we have to do after getting settled is particularly appealing.
Park the RV.
Unhook the truck.
And then go explore.
That is our kind of campground.
Stone Mountain Campground — Stone Mountain, Georgia
There is something different about camping inside the place you’ve come to see.
Stone Mountain Park Campground sits within the roughly 3,200-acre Stone Mountain Park, just outside Atlanta. With more than 400 RV, pop-up and tent sites, plus yurts, safari tents and rental RVs, this is not a small campground tucked quietly into the woods.
But once you’re settled among the trees, Atlanta can seem farther away than it actually is.
And then there is Stone Mountain itself.
You don’t exactly overlook a granite mountain rising above the surrounding landscape.
For travelers who enjoy getting out of the truck once the RV is parked, there are hiking trails and lake recreation, along with seasonal attractions and events throughout the park. Depending upon when you visit and what is operating, the park can easily occupy more than a day.
The location also creates an interesting choice.
You can treat the campground as your destination and spend your time exploring Stone Mountain Park, or use it as a base for venturing into Atlanta.
Personally, we’d probably give the mountain its day first.
One of the mistakes we’ve learned not to make is parking somewhere interesting and then immediately driving somewhere else because a bigger attraction happens to be nearby.
Sometimes the thing right outside your camper door deserves your attention.
Jekyll Island Campground — Jekyll Island, Georgia
I have to admit, Jekyll Island is one of those names that automatically catches my attention.
Maybe that’s because it brings to mind Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The island, thankfully, has an entirely different story.
Camping on Jekyll Island is available at Jekyll Island Campground, where more than 200 sites sit beneath a canopy of live oaks.
And those trees alone change the feeling of the place.
If you’ve traveled through coastal Georgia, you know the sight: enormous twisting oak limbs with Spanish moss hanging overhead. You can drive past them in a few seconds, but camping beneath them gives you time to appreciate just how much character they add to the landscape.
This is also one campground where it helps to understand what you’re booking.
Camping directly on the beach isn’t permitted. The campground offers RV sites with hookups along with primitive tent camping, but you won’t be backing the fifth-wheel onto the sand and opening the door to the Atlantic.
That’s okay.
Because nearby is Driftwood Beach.
The weathered trunks and branches scattered along the shoreline create a landscape unlike the beaches most of us picture when someone says “Georgia coast.” Sunrise and sunset can transform those old trees into silhouettes, and I suspect this is one of those places where we would take far more photographs than we originally intended.
The island is also made for exploring at a slower pace.
Miles of bicycle paths wind around Jekyll Island, while tidal marshes, kayaking, wildlife and birdwatching give you reasons to spend time outdoors. Then, almost as a counterpoint to all that nature, there is the historic district and the island’s museums.
This is not the campground I’d choose if the goal were nonstop entertainment.
I’d choose it because I wanted the opposite.
Camp Margaritaville RV Resort — Breaux Bridge, Louisiana
Then there is Louisiana.
And Louisiana rarely seems interested in doing anything quietly.
Camp Margaritaville RV Resort Breaux Bridge takes the idea of an RV resort seriously. With more than 400 RV sites, luxury cabins, multiple swimming pools, a hot tub, pickleball courts, restaurants, bars and water attractions, you could arrive, park the RV and find plenty to do without leaving the property.
But that would miss half the reason for being here.
Breaux Bridge puts you in Cajun country.
And if we’ve traveled all the way to Louisiana, we’re going to want to taste Louisiana.
The area is known for Cajun food, swamp country and zydeco music, and nearby Lafayette opens even more possibilities. This is where the resort atmosphere can work particularly well: spend part of the day out exploring and then return to a campground where there is still something happening.
Live music?
We’re listening.
Good Cajun cooking?
We’re interested.
A swimming pool after a hot Louisiana afternoon?
Now you’re making sense.
This is probably the most social campground among our five choices, and that is exactly why it belongs here. Not every camping trip needs to involve sitting quietly beneath a pine tree.
Sometimes you want a little music coming from somewhere.
Sun Outdoors Myrtle Beach — South Carolina
Our final stop takes us to another part of the Southeast where water plays a starring role.
Myrtle Beach.
Sun Outdoors Myrtle Beach gives RV travelers access to one of the East Coast’s best-known beach destinations while still allowing us to come home at night to our own bed.
And yes, after a full day away from the campground, I consider our fifth-wheel home.
The resort sits among loblolly pines and offers the kind of amenities that can be especially useful when families are traveling together. Pools, recreation and organized activities mean not everyone has to agree on what to do every minute of the day.
Meanwhile, Myrtle Beach is close enough to provide the rest.
There are beaches, the boardwalk, golf, restaurants and plenty of entertainment. You can make the trip as busy as you want.
Or not.
That last part matters.
One of the advantages of RV travel is that we don’t have to spend every waking minute being tourists simply because we’ve traveled somewhere. There is nothing wrong with returning to the campground early, putting our feet up and deciding tomorrow will be another day.
In fact, some of our best camping memories have happened after we were supposedly finished doing something.
Around the Campfire
When we start talking about campgrounds like these, a few questions usually come up.
Are these campgrounds destinations themselves, or simply places to stay?
A little of both, depending on which one you choose. Camp Margaritaville leans heavily toward being a destination resort, while Jekyll Island Campground appeals more because of the island surrounding it. Ocean Grove works particularly well as a base for St. Augustine and the beach, while Stone Mountain puts you right inside the attraction you’ve come to explore. Sun Outdoors gives you the amenities of a resort while keeping Myrtle Beach within reach.
Would we stay at these campgrounds with a large fifth-wheel?
That is something we would verify before making any reservation. “Big-rig friendly” and friendly to your particular big rig are not necessarily the same thing. With a long fifth-wheel, we look beyond the advertised site length and consider road width, turns, trees, tow-vehicle parking and how easily we can get in and back out again.
When is the best time to visit the Southeast?
That depends on your tolerance for heat, humidity and crowds. Coastal Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina can become hot and humid during summer, while spring and fall often provide more comfortable exploring weather. We also pay attention to hurricane season when making coastal travel plans and keep some flexibility in our schedule.
Would we reserve ahead?
For these five, yes—especially during holidays, school breaks, festivals and popular beach seasons. Jekyll Island and St. Augustine in particular are not places where I would want to arrive with a large RV and simply hope something suitable is available.
Five Campgrounds, Five Different Journeys
What I like most about putting these five together is that there isn’t really a winner.
How would you compare sitting beneath Spanish moss on Jekyll Island with listening to Cajun music in Louisiana?
Or walking the old streets of St. Augustine with hiking Stone Mountain?
You don’t.
That’s the point.
A good campground doesn’t always need the biggest swimming pool, the longest list of amenities or the fanciest patio site. Sometimes what makes a campground special is what happens after you leave your campsite.
Other times, it is what makes you want to stay right there.
We’ve learned that RV travel becomes much more interesting when the campground isn’t treated simply as the place where the fifth-wheel happens to be parked.
It becomes part of the journey.
Final Thoughts
When we bought an RV, the idea was never simply to move our bed from one state to another.
We wanted to see things.
We wanted to experience places we had only read about, follow roads simply because we wondered where they went and occasionally discover something we hadn’t planned on seeing at all.
These five Southeastern campgrounds offer five very different opportunities to do exactly that.
Ocean Grove puts history and the Florida coast within reach. Stone Mountain lets us camp where there is already something worth exploring. Jekyll Island slows things down beneath those wonderful old oak trees. Camp Margaritaville reminds us that camping is allowed to be noisy and fun. And Myrtle Beach gives us another chance to combine campground life with the ocean.
Which would I choose?
That’s the wrong question.
The better question might be:
Which one should we visit first?
After all, we’re not trying to get there first.
We’re trying to enjoy getting there.
Until our next journey together,
The Cooper Shortcut Camping Journey Trio 😊 PlusOne
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