Florida Caverns RV Resort for a great few nights stay

We spent three nights in March at the Florida Caverns RV Resort at Merritt’s Mill Pond in Marianna, FL. We originally had this booked for the beginning of January, but postponed it so that we could stay in Orlando a bit longer. And good thing we did since this part of Florida got snow mid-January! That was not the case when we were there last weekend. It was sunny and 80+ (oh and substantially windy with tornado watches just north of us!) But we fared fine and had a very enjoyable few days at this RV campground.

This resort is in the small town of Marianna, FL – west of Tallahassee in the panhandle region. It is very close to being at the intersection of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama if you look closely. We probably should have driven the few miles to stand right at that spot actually. What was pretty interesting to us was that after all this time on the road, this was the first campground we’d been to in a new time zone. In fact, we were only a few minutes up the road into the new time zone (causing us to be late for a Zoom meeting the day after we got there). Hey, we are new to switching time zones!

How We Found It

Our original plan for leaving Florida was to head straight across the panhandle, then across into New Orleans, and over into Texas. When searching for campgrounds across that route, we didn’t find too many Thousand Trails campgrounds where we could stay for free. The next resort is usually to look at Good Sam since we have a membership for that too. And that is how we found the Florida Caverns RV Resort. For a good price, we were able to book 3 nights here (and change the reservation when we decided to postpone to March with no problems).

The images showed a pond with crystal clear water, kayaking, docks, and paved sites. Looked great for us! We’d been looking forward to it since we booked it.

We were also intrigued by the name of the campground: Florida Caverns RV Resort. We wanted to find out what these Florida Caverns were. We were able to go get a tour of these on our second day. Read up on that here and see the beautiful photos!

The Campground

Upon arriving at the campground, there was a small check-in office where we were given a welcome packet, and met by staff in a golf cart to guide us to our site, which was very easy to get to.

We loved the campground we were at before this (Thousand Trails Orlando), but we had neighbors everywhere, and our view was other campers. When we arrived at our paved site at the Florida Caverns, we were in awe at the view. It’s so amazing to have this many windows and see water!

You just can’t beat a campsite with a view of something besides other campers!

All of these sites were on concrete slabs that were spacious and well taken care of. This was our first time moving our 43 ft. camper vs. our old 29 ft. camper, so arriving and finding such a big spacious place to pull in and out of was great. There were many fifth wheels and motorhomes here and all seemed to have no problem navigating through the campground.

There were some other sites that weren’t paved and were smaller, but they seemed to be empty when we were there. Perhaps smaller campers like vans or popups are used for these.

We were quite happy with our site looking out at the water and enjoyed the view every morning and night.

Amenities

This RV Resort had many of the same amenities that most RV parks had, like full hook-up sites with 30/50/100 AMP available. Everything worked great and we had excellent water pressure inside the camper.

The pool was clean and fully functional, yet cold to the touch and we did not use it. But we could see other campers utilizing it. We chose to sit by the pond instead of by the pool at this location, but would definitely use it if we wanted to swim!

Another amenity was the rec room, which is pretty common at the campground now. This one was very nice looking with full couches, a TV, a pool table and games. A great place to spend some downtime. We were also told that this is the safe place to go if the storm got bad on the stormy night (good to know!).

A side perk that we did not know about until going into the store — there is a Gulf Station in front of the resort. We went in there to grab something and the store staff told us that since we were staying at the campground, the fountain drinks were free for us. Good to know and a great little perk if you stay there!

The Docks

We did not have to worry about our girls sitting inside saying they were bored or staring at their screens. They spent almost every waking minute out on the docks!

These docks lined the side of the pond right across from our site. The girls spent their time fishing from the dock (not catching anything) and watching turtles. Talk about a science lesson in itself! Look at this little turtle they helped cross the road to safety!

If they weren’t crossing the road, they were sunbathing on the logs in the water.

We love that the girls are so into wildlife and are able to see so much of it everywhere they go!

The Storm

The last night we were there was when there were tornado warnings spanning from Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. We were in the very southern part of the warning so just had wind gusts and some thunderstorms throughout the night. We were lucky to be low enough to not get hit by it. This area got hit hard by it a year ago someone told us.

With the storm there was one night that was not quite the beautiful sunset we had the other nights, but we’ll take it after a couple of beautiful days and nights. We’d recommend this campground if you find yourself in the panhandle area.

A beautiful view like this is hard to pass up!