Gulf Islands National Seashore is a 150-mile stretch of seashore that runs from Cat Island in Mississippi to Santa Rosa Island in Florida. It is the longest stretch of federally protected seashore in the United States. This famous coastline, also referred to as the Emerald Coast, gets its name from the bright blue-green waters that flow over the powdery white beach sand.
Since it’s part of the National Park Service, there is a $20 per vehicle fee to enter Gulf Islands National Seashore. However, if you purchase an $80 annual America the Beautiful park pass like we did, you can get into all National Parks, National Monuments, National Seashores and any other federal recreation sites for free. Annual passes can be purchased online at NPS.gov, at National Parks, and at some other federal recreation areas. This is definitely the way to go if you plan to see more than two federal recreation sites in a year as most entrance fees are between $20 to $30 per vehicle. The annual pass can have two adult’s names listed on it, so you only need one annual pass per couple and it will cover everyone traveling in your vehicle.
There are two campgrounds in Gulf Islands National Seashore – one located in the Mississippi bayou called Davis Bayou Campground and one on Florida’s emerald coast called Fort Pickens Campground. Since we wanted the Emerald Coast beach experience we had our sights set on the Fort Pickens Campground on the Florida side. Because of its popularity this campground books up months ahead of time, so when we first tried to book it, it was completely full. However, we didn’t want to give up so we left the dates open in our trip planner in hopes of getting a cancellation later on. Fast forward a few weeks and after checking the reservations online every few days we were able to snag a cancellation!
One thing we learned is if you really want to stay at a certain campground, be persistent and keep checking back for cancellations. Cancellations most often happen between 1 and 10 days prior to the reserved dates when people realize they can no longer come due to a conflict, health, weather, etc. Also, if you have an RV that doesn’t require extensive effort to setup and teardown, search for campsite openings with availability for one night. In our case, we wanted to stay for four nights, so we were able to reserve one night at one site and three nights at another site (within the same campground). If we had only searched for sites with four nights available it would have said there was zero availability for our dates. While not ideal, we don’t mind doing this when it’s our only option to get into a sought after campground.
Florida’s Gulf Islands National Seashore did not disappoint! It topped the list as our favorite beach in Florida due to the soft white sand, emerald green water, wind ripples on the beach and lack of commercialization that so many other Florida beach areas have. We were there at beginning of March, so it was too cold for swimming, but we walked for hours on the beach collecting shells, laying out and watching the wildlife. We saw jellyfish, stingray, great blue heron and even a pod of dolphins! At night we were graced by several amazing sunsets that lit up the sky in all directions. This is definitely a place we are already planning to going back to!
