Oscar Scherer Camping Trip

Osprey, Florida: After almost a year hiatus from camping, we pulled the gear back out for a weekend camping trip at Oscar Scherer State Park. Since this was the first trip in a while, we stayed close to home to home to make sure we could work the kinks out of our gear and set-up before embarking on longer adventures.

Oscar Scherer is a good choice for us because of its close proximity to the house. It makes for a quick and easy weekend trip. This is actually our third camping trip here.

While this was not out first camping trip, it felt like it. It has been a little while and our first trying to fit the gear in a car rather than an SUV. I am glad we didn’t bring the dogs because I don’t think we would have had enough room. Despite not having room for the dogs, the 2017 Hyundai Elantra fit more gear than I had expected. We were able to pack all of our regular camping gear and still comfortably seat our family of 3.

Since we did not have the dogs, we were assigned a campsite along the South River. The site we had was great. It was shaded, had a buffer from neighboring campsites, close to the bathrooms and of course a waterfront view.

We quickly went to work building the campsite. I love our tent, it is so easy to set up. We have a Coleman Instant Tent and like the description on the package, it truly does go up in minutes. We had our camp set up pretty quickly and then we went out to explore the park briefly before the sun went down. We also had to make a shopping run to replace a few items that no longer work.

There are two things I have yet to master with our camping trips, cooking and building a fire. The first is probably on purpose. As much fun as it might be preparing food at your campsite, I actually enjoy trying to places. So each camping trip is a chance to try new local eateries. I am actually trying to convince my wife into helping contribute a food critic feature to the site to share our dining experiences.

But we put the try new restaurant thing on the back burner for dinner tonight because Red Lobster was featuring Endless Shrimp. Our one time a year to gorge ourselves with shrimp. I look forward to Endless Shrimp each year and since it was almost over and there was a Red Lobster within a 15 minute drive from the campground, we decided to have it for dinner. The Endless Shrimp options this year included two new flavors, Korean BBQ and Parmesan Peppercorn. The Korean BBQ was amazing and it is a shame it will only be around for the promotion. Our waiter for the evening was David and he provided awesome service, some of the best service I have had in a long time.

 After dinner, we headed to Wal-Mart to pick up a few items that did not work in our camping kit, mainly lanterns and flashlights. We decided to go with an LED rechargeable lantern in lieu of our battery powered unit, hopefully it will work as well. While looking down the camping aisle, my wife found a firestarter gel to help with problem number two, my inability to build a campfire.

Once back at the campground, I built our fire and with the help of the firestarter gel it actually worked. So we spent the evening sitting around the fire before retiring to the tent for the evening. 

When morning arrived, we packed up our site and headed out to look for wildlife. The animals were pretty quiet at Oscar Scherer so we decided to have breakfast and then head to Myakka River State Park.

For breakfast, we have been watching a little local restaurant called Anita’s. However when we got there, we learned they were closed on Sundays so we had to come up with an alternative. We ended up at the Nokomis Breakfast House. The Nokomis Breakfast House was a cozy little place with a great breakfast. The portions were large and filling. It sucked we weren’t going home because I would have loved to take back leftover as I was not able to eat half the meal.

With full stomachs, we headed to Myakka River State Park to walk off the big breakfast and see some wildlife. The water levels along the river has come down and there were gators and wading birds everywhere. You can read more about the wildlife we encountered by reading my wildlife report here or see the photos on the Into the Wild page. After taking a run through the park we headed home to wrap up another great outdoor adventure.

While this was a last minute, spur of the moment idea, we managed to make the most of it. The trip was enjoyable and camping at Oscar Scherer did not disappoint.