Southern Fla recommendations

[HollywoodGT]

Looking to get away maybe for a few weeks in late December. Any recommendation in the keys area or southern Fla. Actually anywhere down south to relax and do some sight seeing?

Thank you in advance

[theSane]

Grandma always loved Ohio Key.

[Sevans]

Curry Hammock State Park in Marathon. Halfway between Key Large and Key West.

[creativepart]

Surprised no one else has mentioned how every available square foot of RV space in the Keys is usually booked a full year in advance. And, much of it is between $100 and $150 a night.

This year "could" be different because of Covid. There is a lot of talk about it being empty. But I've seen dozens of posts saying that they are going this year specifically because they heard it would be different this year.

CALL AHEAD! I know we tried a few years ago and every Florida SP south of Tampa was pre-booked with nothing available.

For example: I just checked Curry Hammock State Park as mentioned above and there is zero availability all December.

So, yeah... there's great places to stay there. Just make your reservations today for December 2021.

[Morich]

Agree with the above as we did some looking at reservations and found none for what we wanted. One way to test the water without dealing with waiting to talk to somebody, is to look at the state parks reservations system. Many now use the same reservation system and it is a bit of a train wreck with so many shifts and changes due to covid but , with some "learning curve" you can drag out the info as well as they can and that lets you play the dates and length of stay to try to get something along the lines of what you want.
But there is also a point to keep in mind in some states where things are not totally shut down but the parks employees are not doing anything in person. Our last trip, we found the rowdies were becoming aware that the ranger, etc. were not doing their normal patrols and things were getting way too out of control in Northern Mississippi COE parks. The pavilions for large crowds were roped off, so the groups were going to the campsites to have group meetings like scouts, weddings, and such.
That left ten cars and thirty people showing up on a site limited to 6-8 but no place to park and nobody to tell them to leave! Since there was nobody at the entrance booth, I had the feeling it was just pretty well open season and we headed back home as we certainly did not want to get into any of the "Karen" situations where we would be the out of towners!

[DCMac]

Christmas - New Year @ South Padre...again.

[Journey39n]

Florida can be very crowded, perhaps not this year.

But here is South Texas, there is lots of room in the parks.

[HappiHenri]

We spent the entire winter 2018-2019 traveling throughout FL. Have heard that this year it has been largely less congested as many Canadians who might normally come down will not due to virus.

Per your questions:
We got into the Keys just by calling and finding space available due to last minute cancellations. Very expensive to just be crammed into another RV park. The most affordable places to stay in the keys - and some of the nicest - are the State Parks. Just keep trying as reservations are canceled / changed every day and spots do open up.

For other areas -
Great campground in Everglades N.P.. We stayed at Flamingo CG and it has some of the largest sites ever found. However - we found out that winter is their dry season / off season, so not nearly as much wildlife around there to be seen. (Though you must see the Ahinga Trail up near the main entrance station)

Spent a few weeks staying at Monument Lake in the Big Cypress Swamp National Preserve. Price was very low, with good accessibility to local Everglade attractions and only ~45 miles from Naples. Great site right on the lake - though no hookups at all.

Other than that - there are TONS of RV parks all over Florida - from very cheap to very expensive full blown resorts. We had no trouble finding availability wherever we wanted to go. In general I think we liked northern FL best due to all the natural springs and a lot of State Parks.