We woke up New Years morning from our NyQuil hangover in Arcadia, FL at the bus rally.
That evening, Fat Point Brewery in nearby Punta Gorda had invited the rally to move to their parking lot for beer tasting.
Since we hadn’t been able to find reservations until the 2nd, we had decided we’d likely overnight somewhere anyway – it might as well be at a brewery!
While fun to join up with all of the buses and the beer yummy, the parking lot was a tad tight – and I have to say, it was one of our more miserable overnights.
Not only were we still fighting our crud, it was a bit too hot (yes, we realize most the rest of the country has the opposite problem) and a neighbor was hosting a campfire creating lots of smoke. Capping it off was a nearby business starting work at 6am, creating loud mechanical noises right out our window.
We were more than happy to get on the road in the morning to our next stay..
Oscar Scherer State Park – Osprey, FL
State parks in Florida tend to book up way in advance for the winter. But because they make cancellations so easy and only charge a nominal cancellation fee – if you keep an eye out, you can often score some great cancellations.
And that’s what we’ve been doing.
When I spotted an 11-night (11-nights!!) reservation come open in the first of January nearby Sarasota – we were all over it.
At check-in, the ranger warned us that buses like our had gotten stuck with the tight turns before and we should scope it out in advance. It turned out to be no problem at all for our 35′ nimble girl and skilled driver, and we got settled in our sweet, luscious, private feeling pull through spot (site 104).
Since we hit Florida in mid-November we had been in pretty much non-stop social and family mode. We were both looking forward to some time on our own, kicking our crud out the door and doing some massive catch up post holidays.
And that’s pretty much what we did.
Oscar Scherer State Park provided an excellent base location for us – hiking trails out our door, the Legacy Bike Trail behind the park (a Rails to Trails project), Siesta Key and Nokomis Beach just minutes away and even a Trader Joes down the road.
11-nights went by quickly. There was lots of content created, major breaking stories covered and a special webinar hosted for our members at RVMobileInternet to help them through it.
In our few moments to ourselves, we hit the trails multiple times (even filming a video version of our 2016 Favorite Campgrounds), hit the beach, watched Kiki play in the bushes and did a minimal amount of exploring the area.
We did take a day to head over to the east coast of Florida for an afternoon with our boat broker to tour some contenders for our Great Loop adventures.
Not an overly exciting stop but that’s exactly what we wanted. Minimal excitement.
And it was perfect. We were a bit sad to leave such a beautiful and conveniently located park.
What’s Up Next?
This week we’ll be popping into the Florida RV SuperShow in Tampa – an event we’ve never been to before. We figured since we’re around, we might as well check out what all the fuss is about. As we have no clue what to expect, we’re not planning any meetups. But if you see us strolling around, please do say hi!
Later this week, we’ll be relocating down to Ft. Myers for Looper-Palooza to connect with others exploring the Great Loop.
We’ve snagged some reservations in the area that we’ll be moving amongst for the next few weeks. But everything is subject to change based on the boat hunt. Which is now expanding to the entire east coast now that we’ve narrowed down the model we want.
So hopefully you stopped by the Tervis Tumbler factory just North of the park. Also if you can plan out far enough try staying at Rainbow Springs State Park and do some 72 degree river fun.
We actually skipped the Tervis outlet store – more than stocked up 🙂
We appreciate your dedication to this website and to the education of us on the road. As a full-timer 365 days on the road, working along the way, so much of what you share is very helpful. At present we are between jobs, waiting to complete repairs, and then will return to work part time here in Arizona. Thank you BOTH for all you do to help us!!!
Nice pics from Oscar Scherer. I’m very impressed that you are able to pick up cancellations in Florida State parks. How in the world do you do that without spending every second on Reserve America. Sorry we missed you. We just pulled into site 50 with our 35’er today. I saw on RVillage that you’d left just 3 days ago.