Oscar Sherer State Park

Arrived at Oscar Scherer State Park two hours too soon. Three o’clock is check-in time. So we drove down Highway 41 a few miles and then over to Nokomis Beach. This is charming strip of sandy beach along the gulf. It is a barrier island, a narrow strip of land between the gulf and the ICW with the mainland on the other side of the ICW. The island has only one road and dead ends after a quarter of a mile in either direction with the beach in the middle section. On either side of the public beach area, running north and south, are to be found private homes and small motels or rental accommodations. There are parking lots on both sides of the road, the beach side for autos only, and on the ICW side for RV’s, campers and the like. The camping site is studded with shade tress, very civilized. One can park here all day until midnight. There is a small children’s playground on this side of the road. We parked beside a cabbage palm tree where we could have a good view of the ICW and the scenery on the other side of the waterway. Margot made a quick sketch of the seafood restaurant using her newest medium, colored markers with opaque poster paint on top. Whenever a boat wished to go through the bridge, the bridge master set the signal to warn car traffic of the impending bridge opening. This signal was a heads up for me to the boat passing through. Only large power yachts passed through that day. I was hoping to see a sailboat, since that’s my thing. Having sold my own sailboat last April, I’m now a mere looker. I may be looking for a boat soon.

ICW at Nokomis Beach


Oscar Scherer Stat Park is not huge, only about 1600 acres. South Creek runs through the park. Some of it you can canoe on, that part that leads out of the park and on to the gulf, past developed area.

Rail Trail


A railroad trail also runs through the park. This trail was once a railroad track, now a biking and walking trail that extends from Sarasota to Venice, about 35 miles in length. A few bridges over swamps have yet to be built to complete the project, expected sometime later this year. People living in Venice can then commute to busy Sarasota by bike, and stay healthy. We rode on this trail over to the crossroads where Publix Food Store is located, about three miles from our campsite. On the trail, we came across this gopher turtle, sunbathing on the edge. These turtles live in the park, make boroughs deep in the ground sometimes as long as twelve feet. This is their home, but also, they accommodate other creatures as well. Rodents, snakes, raccoons and such like creatures find these cool boroughs quite comfortable places to hang out in. Sort of like a commune. The gopher turtle is maybe the guru, keeps everyone in line.
Gopher Turtle

Oscar Scherer is the home of the scrub jay. Get up early in the morning and walk the three-mile trail through scrub oaks to catch glimpses of this colorful jay that lives only in this park of all the east coast. They are otherwise found in the southwest portion of the country where there are more scrub oaks. They make their homes in these low-lying trees, which sometimes seem more like bushes. We found one scrub oak that was rather evenly symmetrical and round like a beach umbrella and stood about fourteen feet high. We were just in time to spot a scrub jay flitting into the branches. The tree made a sweet shady home for what seemed to be a single dwelling for a jay family. We peeked through the branches and spotted high up out of harm’s way a nest for laying eggs and raising a brood. Down towards the bottom of the tree, the scrub jay, whose home this was, could be seen standing on a cross branch having a meal. He [or she] had an acorn in his beak and was bashing it against a gnarly elbow of the same branch upon which he stood. We heard the crack…crack…crack of his travail, and quietly watched while he finally cracked open the nut and commenced eating. He was totally absorbed in his work and paid not the slightest attention to us, probably was unaware of our presence. We tried to see if there were any eggs or tiny chirpers in the nest. From our angle of view on the ground, it appeared to be empty.

Scrub Jay

Two lakes are in the park. To see the larger one requires a two or three mile hike depending on which way you go. This body of water has the unimaginative name of Large Lake, whereas the smaller one, very near to the creek and the nature center, is called Osprey Lake, although, after several visits, not a single osprey was to be seen. Osprey Lake offers a sweetly graceful beach on which to sunbath as well as cool water to wade or swim in. Signs caution swimmers, however, to be on the lookout for alligators who seem to like the lake and think of it as their own. We asked one of the ranger-volunteers at the nature center regarding this danger. He was kind of surprised and asked if we had seen an alligator. Evidently, this was not their time to be around.

Osprey Lake

One trail follows along the creek and is designed to accommodate handicapped and wheel chaired people. It is pleasant half-mile walk that offers information about the flora and fauna by way of speaking boxes along the way. Press a button, and a park ranger’s voice, quite friendly and hospitable, speaks to you as if you were the one person in the whole world he was waiting for to tell you about the wonders of this preservation of old Florida’s wilderness. And to be sure, you can almost believe you are in the middle of no where, as the saying goes, even though, if you listen closely, you can hear the hum of cars speeding down US 41 off in the distance.

Margot with Sout Creek in background

We stayed in Oscar Scherer State Park seven whole days. Over the weekend, a group of people [about 20] camped in the space next to ours. They were three teams of husbands and wives and swarms of kids ranging from infant to middle teens, boys and girls who were not all children of the three couples. I gathered this was a church group by the way they all recited a grace with their morning breakfast. They housed themselves in three large tents. Cooked over the open fire pit the usual stuff. They all stayed up late sitting around the campfire telling jokes and such. After the kids turned in, the elders conducted lively, loud and laughter-filled conversations deep into the night. We didn’t bother trying to fall asleep.

Margot climbing into our Allegro RV

The RV on our other side was occupied by a couple of grandparents from Nova Scotia. Paul and his wife Peg. They were staying for several months, working as volunteers. Their home, Paul told me, was on the bay in Halifax. He was born in this house, which had been built in the early 18th century by his ancestors. He owned a sailboat, which he kept on the dock in front of his home…a Van Stadt, Dutch designed built in Canada, a 21 foot sloop, and very seaworthy. Naturally, we talked about boats and sailing. His people had been fishermen, and he like fishing quite a bit. However, his life work had been that of air traffic controller at the Halifax Airport. He and his wife had brought seven souls into the world. Four live in Alberta, Canada working in the oil industry. He told me, many young people go out there to earn big incomes, saving up to buy property back home. He also told me that when he and his wife discovered what it was they were doing that caused them to have so many kids, they stopped doing it. A joke, I’m sure, he told many times.

In the old days, the land that is now Oscar Scherer State Park belonged to a man whose wife was the daughter of Oscar Scherer. The land, typical hardwood hammock land consisting of scrub oak and slash pines, as well as palmettos, cabbage palm and other kinds of tropical flora – in other words, the usual Florida jungle…this land provided income for the owner who ran it as a turpentine business, hence the name, slash pine. Workers, mostly black people, or in other words, former slaves, using primitive tools, would slash large V’s into the bark of the pine to extract the nectar, which was then boiled in vats and otherwise treated in the process of making turpentine. The owner made a widow if his wife, and she then, before she conked out, bequeathed 1600 acres of her land to the State of Florida for the purpose of preserving something of the old Florida in the face of growing development. She stipulated that the park be named after her father who had owned some kind of a leather factory somewhere in the north. At the nature center, on one of the exterior walls, you can see photos from the old days showing workers slashing pines, working the still that made the turpentine, leading horse drawn wagons through the underbrush on narrow paths, and otherwise looking rather serious [read not jolly] about their work. These workers were dressed similarly in shirts and pants, but in no way appeared to be wearing uniforms with tiny logos over their pockets. McDonalds and other such like franchises had not yet come on the scene.

Slash Pine Canopy

We left Oscar Scherer and his memory around 1 pm on Tuesday, January 16th and made our way to Ft. Myers to visit our friends, Carla and Adai, she from Argentina, he from Cuba. They own a small, Beer, Wine and Tobacco store in a strip mall a block away from the main drag. Their place of business had gotten broken into just a few nights before we arrived. So we came in time to cheer them up.