W.P. Franklin Locks and COE Campground

This year we planned ahead a little and made reservations at a few of the hard to get into Corps of Engineers parks and a Florida State Park thats also hard to get into. Our first stop was at the W.P.Franklin Corps of Engineer Locks on the Caloosahatchee River near Fort Myers. There are only 30 or sites as well as some docks for those traveling along the waterways, but all are situated right on the rivers edge as you can see our site below. Yes....that is the Goldbrick flag (new having been replaced after the fire) flying again.

The COE parks are really nice with all the amenities and well taken care of. They also accept the Golden Age Pass offered to anyone 62 or over that gives you a 50% discount on the camping fee. This particular park is really an island with a causeway out to the 30 sites. Paved roads, gravel campsite areas...better than most high scale Motorhome Resorts.

Below is the view from our campsite looking out at the pier with the locks beyond. The pier is used for fishing by a lot of people. The water on the Gulf side is brackash and has tidal fluctuations, while the upstream side is freshwater. Fishing is good with some catching large mullet with snook, jacks, tilapia and sand bream all available. The water activity with fish jumping or being chased by larger fish with egrets and eagles everywhere... this is truly a wonderfull and peacefull campground.

We have had wonderful weather with just one day with a short rain shower. Wed did have some fog that was really kind of erie but neat. Below was a picture I took that morning of the pier which usually has a few fishermen trying to catch a snook.

There are some of us however that have actually caught a snook! Problem was it was undersize. The DNR down here is trying to preserve the snook fishery by limiting the size of keepable fish to betwee 28" and 33" and also limiting the season. The fish below which was released was 24" long. It was the first I have ever caught and having been treated to some fresh snook last year, I am anxious to catch more.

Our campsite at night. The campground provides a protected table and sitting having a beer with the wind calming down at night is about as good as it gets.

 

We had Thanksgiving all by ourselves, although I did try to make reservations in Labelle at a nice resturant only to be told they were closed. The manager that answered the phone at that resturant however did invite us to her house for Thanksgiving when we said we were from out o town. We thanked her but choose to go buy a small chicken and we fixed it for our supper in the motorhome. Thats' Marge below about to enjoy the dinner

 

We did take the boat out and did some exploring and a little fishing. We did not see any fish or catch anything at all but did see lots of unusual sites including the Camel grazing at the river side. This guy had to be at least 8' tall and he was just plan big. Needless to say we were quite surprised to see him

 

This is a picture of our campsite up close. As you can see the view is spectacular.

 

As I mentioned earlier we tried to plan things for staying at some of the unique areas here in florida and we are moving today to another Corps of Engineer park up stream at another lock on this waterway called the Ortona South Campground and Locks. We stayed briefly here last year but plan to stay the next two weeks there.