My wife and I spent January 20-21, 2015, camping at Oscar Scherer State Park in Nokomis, Florida. We had hoped to stay for 4 or 5 days, but I was making the reservations only 2 or 3 weeks in advance, and I was only able to get 2 days at this very popular Florida State Park. Fortunately we were there for a visit with my wife’s brother and his family, and he and his wife kindly offered us their hospitality, so we availed ourselves of their generosity for a few days. That allowed us to not only enjoy their company, but also to visit some of the areas highlights such as the Venice Rookery and Caspersen Beach. More will be (or has been) posted on those, but this report is about camping at Oscar Scherer State Park…

Location / Name: Oscar Scherer State Park, Nokomis, Florida
Date: 1/20 & 1/21/2015

Site: Site 80, back-in. There are some pull-thru sites near the west end of the campground. The sites and site driveway are sand.  It is somewhat tight in the roads, but a side road allowed me to get a more straight shot back in to the campsite, making back-in easier. It would have been easily doable without the access road, especially with our sub-16’ T@b, but the extra access for this particular site made it easier. Most of the sites have a lot of understory growth (mostly saw palmetto) between the sites, making for really good privacy. Most sites are also pretty deep (some are not) so you can get well back off of the road. At this site (80), however, it looks like the driveway catches runoff from much of the road when it rains hard, so if you’ll be here during a heavy rain, the east side of the site (the driver’s side backing in) will have water running thru it. You’ll want to position so you don’t have your tent or RV access in the drainage area. If you’re small enough, you can position over on the east side of the campsite, but then your electric line will run across the drainage area. We chose to run the T@b by hand cross-ways in the site so the door was facing the back of the site.

Access: I didn’t notice any height clearance issues, and there were big rigs throughout the campground. However, the campground road is somewhat narrow, so you’ll need to travel cautiously if you’re in a wide or particularly long rig. There were plenty of big rigs in the campground, but those might want to choose a site that is not near the ends to reduce the amount of distance you travel on the campground roads, and the moderately tight turns at the ends. The main road to the park and within the campground is paved (with speed bumps) but all site driveway/pads are packed sand. (I did not check ADA-compliant sites, which may have concrete pads.)

Electric:  20/30/50 amp service on a pedestal on the driver’s side (back-in) of the site. Well-located toward the back half of our site.

Water: Water is available, but on a shared pedestal between two campsites, and in our case, the water pedestal was really in the neighbor site. Pressure seemed good; I used a pressure-reducer, but due to the location, simply used it to fill our 5-gallon on-board fresh tank, and then moved the trailer to where I wanted it in the site. With my 25’ hose, I had to position the trailer very near the back and east edge of the campsite to reach the tank from the hose bib to fill the tank, and then after filling my water tank, moved the trailer to where I wanted it. Since the water was on the opposite side of the site from the electric (for this site at least) my 25’ hose would not reach both water and allow connection to electric.  I highly recommend a 50’ hose in this park if you need to be connected to water. Even with that, you might be restricted in how you position your RV.

Bathhouse:  Access to the bathhouse was near the road on one side, and via a sand path on the other, plus there was a concrete ADA-compliant parking space right at the bathhouse.  The bathhouse itself was old but clean. Several showers with decent-sized changing area. There was no curtain between the shower and the changing area, so there was some splash onto the floor of the changing area. However, the showers themselves were better-positioned than at Gold Head Branch, so the floors were reasonably dry for dressing. The  water was hot, and drainage good. 

Sewer: No sewerage at campsites.  The dump station is located on the south side of the campground near the exit. For those camping in the western half of the campground, you need to drive past the exit road into the eastern half, and take the first cross-road on the one-way road to get to the entrance of the station. The dumpstation was easy to use.

Cell Phone Service: Excellent, 3 or 4 bar 3G and 4G Verizon service. Wifi available at the nature center at Lake Osprey.

Trash disposal:  Dumpsters for trash (2) and recyclables (1) at the intersection of the campground access road and the main road; definitely not in easy walking distance of our campsite. Recyclable dumpster was brimming full – but this was on Monday of a long holiday weekend; I hear that local schools had a 4-day weekend. The dumpsters were emptied the next day.

Cost:  I paid $29.12 per night with tax. This was nearly 50% more than at Gold Head Branch State Park, probably due to the higher popularity of the park, which is very desirably located. Senior discount is only for Florida residents, so it didn’t apply to us.

General description of campground:
Holiday weekend in southern Florida in the winter – the campground was full. We wanted to stay longer; when I was making reservations, this site was the only one with several days available – it had 6. After Cindy and I worked thru our specific plans and decided 4 nights was what we wanted (Sun – Wed), I came back to the reservation system an hour or less (I think) later and Sunday was taken, Wed and Thu were gone as well. So I reserved Mon and Tue. Count on it being busy in the winter; you’ll need to make reservations well in advance. This is a very nice campground in a very nice region of Florida.

General description of park/area:
This is a very nice park; it is famous as being the main home of the Florida Scrub Jay (which we unfortunately didn’t get to see while there.) It’s located just a few miles north of Venice (which is about 50 miles south of Tampa) on US 41. Venice beaches are famous for their shark’s teeth. There is a picnic area on South Creek which has large live oak trees, and also is the launch point for canoes and kayaks which can be rented at the office at the park entrance. There is another picnic area at the end of the main park road (campground is to the right – south – across the creek about 2/3 of the way back the main road) which has a nature center with classes, wifi, and activities. There is a short trail around Lake Osprey at this picnic area, as well as restrooms.

We were hoping to find the Florida Scrub Jay, but came up empty on that front. We did see some birds we commonly see such as sparrows, cardinals, robins, and blue jays. We also saw some warblers as well as a red-bellied woodpecker. I suspect that this park can be good for birding, aside from the scrub jay.

There are a number of miles of other trails in the park; I am told by locals that these are great trails, one of which interconnects with a local rails-to-trails bicycle path. I expect that at various times during the year, this park can be a great place for wildflowers. There were a few blooming while we were there, including dune sunflowers, the evening primrose show below, and fruiting beautyberries were abundant.  We also saw a lot of butterflies, among the more interesting were the Zebra Heliconian, shown above. I hope to get back down there and spend some more time in this park; definitely a worthwhile destination in south Florida.