Silver River State Park

Time to go camping! The CurbCrusher’s spent the weekend before St. Patty’s day at Silver River State Park. The park is located just east of Ocala, Florida, a short trip up the Turnpike and I-75 from our home base in Orlando. The state park is very near the “Old Florida” Silver Springs attraction on State Road 35 just south of State Road 40. The worst part about going to this park is driving on SR40 through Ocala from I-75 over to SR 35. There’s a bunch of lights, and a bunch of traffic, so it seems to take as long to get to the east side of Ocala as it does to get from Orlando to the SR 40 exit on I-75. We avoided this on the return trip by taking SR35 South to County Road 464. Then west on CR464 to I-75. It may not have shortened the length of the trip, but it certainly improved the mood of the driver.

This is a great state park campground. It has about 60 sites that are all gravel, with paved roads throughout the park. A good number of the sites are pull-thru, and they are big pull-thru sites (both wide and long). Even the back-in sites are good sized, and the roads are wide enough that you shouldn’t have a problem backing into any of the back-in sites. All the sites have 20 & 30 Amp service and water. The bath houses are fairly new, and in good shape, but are located at the back of the loops as opposed to in the center of each loop. There are fire rings located at the campsites also. One nice feature of the park is that it has two dump stations located on the way out, and they are located so that a line can form and not completely block the exit.

The park is a good sized piece of land, located along what else, the Silver River. There is a canoe launch, but be warned that it is a pretty good distance from the parking lot to the canoe launch point, if you have wheels for your canoe bring them. There are a number of trails in the park that allow walking or biking. CurbCrusher and Lady CurbCrusher got out and biked most of the trails on Saturday. There is also a small museum that covers the archaeological, palentological, and recent history of the area. There is a $2.00 per person admission fee for the museum.

All in all a good weekend. Pictures of the trip are here.


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