Oscar Scherer State Park

This park is located on the Gulf coast (west) of Florida in Sarasota. It's a beautiful area with a lot of beautiful beaches nearby. The campground is located right in the middle of civilization so there are plenty of restaurants, and grocery stores very close. It’s a very popular campground primarily due to the location and close proximity to the beaches. We liked the park but we had a very bad experience with the rangers at the park. They made us wait to enter a vacant spot because they had to “clean” it. We weren’t able to check in until 3:30pm. A few of them had bad attitudes and it affected our view of the park.



We stayed there in April of 2003. We had a great time but had a few bad experiences with the campground staff and never went back. Hopefully things have changed. It's an older park and the sites can be a bit small. The sites we liked best are: 51, 54, 48, 47, 49, 45,56,62, 58. The sites cost $24.42 per night.

There are 15 miles of trails through Florida "Scrub" and you WILL see the beautiful Florida Scrub Jay, especially if you put a peanut on top of your hat!

Hawk

This was our pet squirrel, Stumpy. Notice no tail!

One night after dark we kept hearing a very loud bird making an unusual noise..and lots of it. We finally were able to spot him with the help of a flash light. He was on the ground right in front of our campsite. He sang for a long time before he finally went to bed. It was a Screech Owl. We found him, or another like him the next morning and were able to get a photo from a good distance as he was high up in a tree by the bath house.

My tradition is to buy some cut flowers to bring while we are camping. I can’t have flowers at home because the cats can’t seem to stay out of them. These are some that I found for this trip. They lasted over 2 weeks and were the prettiest I ever had.

Reed Bingham State Park-Adel, Georgia

We made a short 2 night camping trip to Reed Bingham SP in early March. We had made day trips there but this was the first camping trip. We LOVED it. There was a lot of wildlife which is always important to us. You cannot reserve specific campsites in Georgia, but we checked in on a Sunday so we felt we would be able to get a good site. The camphost that checked us in pointed us in the right direction. We ended up with a very nice drive-thru site.

There is a lake but the campsites are not on the lake. This is fine with us as we have camped on a few lakes that were noisy due to airboats and motorboats. We prefer peaceful, quiet campsites. The Little River is nearby which would be a nice place to kayak or canoe or boat. It had was a dark water river with high banks. There were places to get out and stretch your legs. You can put in at the lake at the park. The camp host was nice enough to show us a Bald Eagle nest with 2 youngsters. We couldn't get very close and they were at the top of a very high tree, but with my trusty Olympus digital camera with it's great zoom, I was able to get a few good photos. You can see one baby to the left of the adult. There were 2 babies in the nest and both parents were feeding them. We have seen a lot of eagles but we never get tired of looking at them.

There were nice trails which were marked well. We saw a lot of wildlife on the trails, which is unusual. We usually see most of the wildlife on the road that leads around the park! We made a hike along the river and saw a small herd of deer walking out into the water. We wondered if they were intending to cross the river. It was unusual behavor, or at least not what we have normally seen. I was unable to get any good photos of them. The park has a large lake and a nice boat ramp. We spotted this poor Blue Bird that was extremely upset that there was another bird in his territory. Of course the other bird was his reflection in the mirror.

We saw a few Turkey vultures there. We have heard they winter there and in January there are hundreds of them. Some people don't like them, but we do. They eat carrion and not little baby birds and other animals, so we like them!

The lake made for some pretty sunsets.

On our hikes we found a lot of very pretty flowers.

One early morning walk was foggy and it made for interesting photos around the lake. We saw a pair of Canadian geese which appeared to be sitting on a nest. We also did some Geo-caching there and found a cache in the park. Geo-caching is basically treasure hunting with a GPS. It's a fun sport which we just discovered.