Thursday, April 26, 2012

Bulow Plantation RV Park in Flagler Beach, FL and Daytona Beach

This is one of the Florida Encore parks in the Max Pass membership of the Thousand Trails system. It is on Old Kings Road South in Flagler Beach. We stayed here for three days as a stopover before we headed to South Carolina. The literature for this park calls it a "Premier RV Resort".  We'll let you judge by the accompanying photos. If you are wanting an overnight destination, this would be ok. If you are thinking of staying longer, think again! In our humble opinion, this park is in severe disrepair and definitely showing its age. Everything about it is old, rusty, falling apart, and not very pretty. The entrance/exit to and from the park was VERY narrow and almost impossible to navigate with our 40 foot Tiffin and the car in tow. We highly recommend unhooking your car before coming in the entrance should you decide to stay there and not hooking up till you are OUT of the park. It was difficult pulling in and we barely missed scraping a mailbox and running over the curb on our way out.

This is the clubhouse. Looks like they gave up trying to repair the roof.
How hard would it be to slap a couple of cheap electrical face plates on the outlets in the bathrooms? Rusty mirrors, soap scum on the shower handles. We know for a fact they clean the bathrooms daily basis, but they still look bad!


Sites are mostly grass and dirt. There are some good things about it. It could be a beautiful park with all the huge, mossy live oaks. There is plenty of space between sites. Some of the sites have concrete patios, although very tiny. The rear of the park is filled with ancient trailers that have been made into more permanent trailer homes. They look terrible. There are some new park models at the very back of the park.  Our site was wonderfully shaded, which we liked. They allow any make and model of trailer or RV to stay in this park, which is great, because not all parks allow that. Electric is dated and only 30 amp, not sure if there's any 50 amp in the park. But we didn't have any troubles with the service while we were here. AT & T phones were a little spotty, three bars but our side of the calls were cutting in and out when we made calls. The mi-fi had two bars. We seemed to get kicked off more than normal here in this park on the mi-fi.

They have a 60 foot pool which looked nice. Free cable TV, which Eldy appreciated...they have a 24 hour laundry which is in serious need of an update, but the machines worked fine. They have firewood for sale but the park was under a county wide burning ban. There is a little grocery store with beer and wine and RV supplies, but we never saw it. The "waterfront" RV and tent sites are either on a canal or small pond that has litter in it. There are 25 rental cabins, but they are in need of repair as well.

But here's a great thing...it's 10 minutes to Flager Beach, and you're on the Atlantic Ocean! Not a bad beach, but not a lot of sand, it's a narrow beach. The town of Flagler Beach is a small fishing town, there's not much there.

After checking out Flagler Beach, we decided to head down to Daytona Beach, about 25 miles from Flagler Beach. Eldo wanted Sparky to see how you can park your car on the beach. So we did, cost us 5.00 but that's not bad. It was a very cloudy-with-a-chance-of-rain kind of day, so we didn't stay too long....
But Sparky got to ride her bike on the beach--it was a good workout even if the sand was packed!
Not too many people at Daytona Beach today, just a few shell searchers with not very many shells to find....
And Eldo just HAD to have some ice cream even if it was 3.50 a bar! (Now, Sparky, c'mon, you did, too!) Yup! I did.....See you tomorrow...maybe in St. Augustine, if it's not raining too hard....

6 comments:

  1. Jeannie, Bulow Plantation “was” a truly beautiful park not so long ago. I think new owners and different priorities explain what you appropriately documented. We were through there just last year and came away with the same opinion of park conditions and with the feeling that something important has been lost (at least for now). From your pictures, it appears conditions are as they were a year ago with nothing being accomplished to correct the obvious deficiencies.

    As for Flagler Beach and the adjacent vicinity, it has always been one of our favorites because it was not bursting with tourists and it had the feel of “old” Florida before all of the development. We particularly enjoyed the very good locally owned restaurants; the farmers market; and of course the beach itself with its great fishing, and its miles of pristine and relatively undisturbed environment.

    John and Ellen
    connectedtothevinephotography.blogspot.com

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  2. Oh my goodness...what is with that clubhouse. You mean they can't see how awful that looks? Don't get how they cannot see how much difference a little upkeep would make.
    YUMMMMMY...ice cream. Count me in! Enjoy your weekend.

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  3. Yeah, Bulow resort had it's issues, but we liked the location. We loved Flagler beach because it was one of the few beaches where there is no building between the road and the beach. We got some wonderful sunrise photos. There are 50 amp sites. We were at site 302 which was 50 amp. I agree about hooking up after you leave. We hit the curb going out and nearly coming in. I guess it's an old park and made for smaller rv's. It definitely could be updated, but we liked the location...and price.

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  4. For a few days not too bad, after all you are in your own house, and if the location works.
    We have seen a few "premier" resorts that are not even worth ten dollars a night, but the location works fro us.

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  5. I know you said it was part of your membership park deal.. but how much do they charge for the average tourist stopping in for a one night stay?

    I would be sorely disappointed if I saw conditions like that after paying my fees... ouch!

    *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
    Karen and Steve
    (Our Blog) RVing: Small House... BIG Backyard
    http://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com

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  6. Wonder why 1000 Trails continues to have this park in their system? Good for you for giving an honest appraisal.

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