Oak Ridge Equestrian Area

In our featured video here on Campendium, we take you to two free campgrounds near Tampa, Florida. One of the campgrounds is the Oak Ridge Equestrian Area. We provide an overview of the area, show dash cam footage of the access road, and give a walking tour of this campground. Verizon cellular service clocked in at 250 Mbps download speed and 4.37 Mbps upload speed. AT&T cellular service clocked in at 154 Mbps download speed and 6.35 Mbps upload speed. T-Mobile cellular service clocked in at 21.5 Mbps download speed and 0.52 Mbps upload speed.

The oakridge equestrian campground is one of two free primitive campsites of Morris Bridge Rd in Hillsborough County. Go to water matters.org to make a reservation and obtain the gate code. Beyond the gate is a .7 mile dirt/gravel road with several small potholes and 3 sizable dips. Go slow and you will do fine. The campsite is a level, grassy clearing shaded with pine trees. There are 5 campsites with fire rings and picnic tables. There is one pavilion and 1 nasty porta potty. SWFWMD is derelict with servicing the jon. I wish they would either service them regularly or just remove them all together. I use the RV toilet but tent campers use the woods, which invites a host of problems if not done correctly. Cell and TV reception are good. Road noise is almost nonexistent. Airplane noise from the Vandenberg Airport at times. It is a 20 minute (1.3 mile) walk to the Publix plaza.

Free permit needed. Easy to make reservations online. Road in is unpaved with big pot holes and some are flooded out. Looks like the road would flood if heavy rains occurred. We made it in by going slow and we drive a Kia Soul. The camp is just a big open field so there isn’t much privacy. Big trees provide shade. Picnic tables and fire rings mark spots. About four other campers when we were there. You can hear some street noise but camp is only about 15 minutes in from road so its kind of expected. It’s summer in Florida so bugs are expected but the no see UMS we’re almost intolerable. But for the price of FREE, I’d say it’s good for a few nights. Lots to do in the area and stores nearby. T-mobile had one or two bars and I was able to use the internet

You have to sign up with the Fl water management website to get the gate access code. The road is a bit rough but go slow and you’ll be fine. There are fire rings, picnic tables a porta-pottie and a fresh water pump. Open camping at the end of the lane, great tree coverage, lots of biking/hiking trails and is a few mins away from gas, pizza and urgent care.

Unless you have a very rugged, extremely off-road friendly setup you cannot use this place.
The road in is a mile or less but it has three extremely large sinkholes with a few inches of water and extremely, extremely bad potholes in general coming in.
We have been to a few of these free Florida campgrounds and the road in this one is by far the worst.
This would have killed our rig so we cancelled our reservations.

Other than that the campground seems nice enough. The Porta-Potty was close to overflowing though and the trees we me would make it a little difficult to turn around.

If this world were fixed we would definitely come back.

We stayed here for two nights. This was our first dry camp adventure with the new travel trailer. Such a beautiful camp and so close to home. We had the grandson's come to spend the day and one night with us. The hiking trail to the river was a great adventure. We will be camping here again and next time we will friends with us, The ATT cell service was 2 bars, which I thought was low considering where the camp is located. The HC accessible portajohn was very clean and stocked during our stay. A pitcher pump is on site for non-potable water.

This is a beautiful area that feels far away from civilization but is very close to conveniences (groceries, gas stations, casual restaurants, coffee shop). The road in is secured by a padlocked gate. Sites are clustered in a small clearing shaded by tall pines. No privacy and no direct sun for solar. Picnic tables and fire pits are available for each site. The entrance to the parking area and the road in have huge potholes and some very low areas that are badly flooded. I would not bring a smaller car back there. Lots of day hikers on weekends. There’s a port-a-potty which was full to overflowing. Non-potable water is available. The parking lot outside the gate is secluded and sketchy at night with random cars parked after hours. Felt we had to look over our shoulder while fumbling with the gate lock in the dark. We wouldn't stay again due to that and the condition of the road.