While we arrived to our destination at Lake Door, which is nestled in the thick wilderness of Ocala National Forest just due north of Altoona in the off-season, we were pretty sure we wouldn’t have any problem finding a nice piece of flat lakeside land to call home for the night and take a nice respite after driving all day. Boy, were we wrong! 

Not only was the access road to Lake Door chained up, preventing us from driving down to the lake, but it was pitch black early that night with not much in the way of street lights to help guide us. Rather than turn back towards Altoona, we decided to pitch camp for the night at Chisholm Trail Campground. 

My first bit of advice (apart from arriving earlier!) is to avoid this place. While it’s technically a ‘campground,’ a place like this makes one really give good hard thought to what really is a campground. Yes, it was outdoors. Sure, there were RV’s (many of which looked like they were permanently anchored to this plot of land). And there was even wafts of smoke from folks that had fires going. But apart from being able to pitch our tent on a piece of land for the night, that’s really where the meaning of ‘campground’ ended for us. 

While we’ll definitely be back to check out Lake Door when in-season, we will most certainly better plan our arrival by securing an adequate campground with bathrooms, grills/ BBQ and other amenities that we’ve come to expect when living out in nature. 

Happy Camping!