Bear island primitive campground | Established Campground

January 27th, 2022 by USAbyMinivan

Great value for $10/night. Spacious camp sites, lots of wildlife.
No T-Mobile coverage, but good wifi with my SkyRoam. Bring your own water; none available here.
Lots of interesting birds. Am told to be careful of alligators and bears.
A long gravel road to get here, but it was worth it. Came here on spec coz two other more formal campgrounds were full. Glad I took the chance. Mostly empty it appeared, so had a good choice of campsites. If you like solitude, you might like it here. A great taste of natural Florida.
Find a site you like first, then double back to pay at the station before setting up camp. Cash or check. (Couldn't find any online booking from the place.)
Level campsites with plenty of room for vehicle(s) and tent(s). Picnic table at each site.

March 8th, 2021 by wasabi.mommi

permit was free from the visitor center. nice and pretty campground with picnic tables, fire/grill pits and a pit toilet. not very private from other campers but a nice spot nonetheless

February 25th, 2021 by johnandmandi

Gravel road in was decent, we averaged 35-40 mph, with a couple washboard sections but nothing bad. It does seem the road is being maintained since we came across a small crew improving one section. Campground has two areas. One small loop with one pit toilet and another larger section where the sites were spread along the access road with several pit toilets spaced throughout. We had one bar AT&T but LTE was spotty. I-75 is close by with continuous traffic noise and air planes route nearby. We enjoyed our stay, still $10 per night, just don’t expect only the sounds of nature.

December 2nd, 2020 by barehill

Well we couldn't actually get to this campground the road was so horrendous. We did stay by a bridge St the intersection of CR-837 and CR-839, both dirt roads. This is ~ 8 miles from the Tamiami Trail, Rt41. Up to here and on CR-837 the road is dusty with occasional pot holes. Manageable and the scenery is wonderful. There is a fair amount of traffic, every 1/4 hr till night. Bear Island is an additional 13 miles of dirt road, and back 20 miles to Rt 41. We wanted to try it, the canal with lots of Gators parallels the road and there's lots of birds. But very severe potholing began soon and was sporadic for the next 5 miles. Crawling pot hole to pot hole with our Class A was required and tedious. With a further 8 miles ahead of this, plus the return trip we turned around. Ironically the was a tractor mowing the grass along the ample shoulder. The grass was already short an mowing unnecessary. Maybe he should be replaced with a dump truck with some gravel?

March 10th, 2020 by keenanjessica10

$10 a night. Great spaces with lots of trees, a picnic tables and fire rings. It’s a little further down the road from this spot but the drive is very cool. Down 839 past canals filled with gators!