Santos Trailhead & Campground

The traffic noise (semi trucks, cars racing, volume of traffic, sirens) from US 301 adjacent to campground, and the nearly continuous trains going by on nearby tracks, all night, blowing whistles….. we couldn’t sleep.

Our site #16, was very pretty, and so are 14 and 18. Most sites are open with little to no vegetation for privacy between sites.

We love the Santos trails, but we’ll never camp there again.

Loved this little campground! 25 sites all back in. Lots of space in between sites. Tents and rvs welcome. Dog friendly. Nice bathroom/showers available. We stayed at site 12 and loved it. Perfect for our 34 ft travel trailer and truck. Great for bikers! There’s even a bike rental/sales shop across the street. Publix is 2 miles away and Silver springs State Park is 8 miles away. We will definitely be back!

If you are a mountain biker you already know this is a great campground. But I don't bike and I love it too. Clean park with friendly hosts. Lots of grassy areas. Backs up to Marjorie Carr Greenway where you can walk or do a leisurely bike ride for miles. Florida Trail passes on side of campground too for off road hiking. Lots of restaurants nearby and great antique shops close by too. Great campground for tents or RVs. Lots of shade.

The above rate reflects the nightly rate of $22, plus the reservation fee and taxes averaged over the 2 nights we stayed.
A perfectly fine campground here with fairly large, level sites. Plenty of separation on the exterior row with foliage between most sites - not so much on the interior sites. Decent shade on the outer sites if you come here in summer, which we did. Bath houses have been updated with tile. Didn't use the facilities, but the showers looked roomy and clean. We had no trouble getting a signal here on both Verizon and Consumer Cellular (which uses mostly AT&T towers). Phone and data were fine. Interior roads are certainly large enough to maneuver a good sized rig. Electric and water at each site and a dump station located near the entrance.
Most campers here come for the mountain bicycle trails, though there is also a really good, paved walking/biking trail here as well. Plenty to do in the Ocala area as well. Even though the campground sits just off a major highway (441), we found it to be mostly a non-factor as far as noise is concerned.
One thing all the Florida State Parks which we have stayed at do a really good job at is keeping the camping areas dark at night. The only lighting is around the bath houses. If your site is away from them, you will have total darkness surrounding you at night.

April 6 2021. Class B RV

Pulled into campsite at 4pm. Friendly staff and very clean and updated bathhouse.
Site 18 was very level and private, only downside was the abundance of tussock moth caterpillars and their cocoons over everything, especially the power pedestal. They are slightly poisonous being irritating to the skin. Only bad in April apparently, lucky us.
Easy back in to site, lots of campers are here to bike so watch out for them on the campground roads.
Many trains come through at night nearby and if you’re in a tent or popup you might be woken up several times.
Two bars with ATT cell, and picked up several local tv stations with our antenna.
Clean and well kept campground with convenient dump station.

Santos is at the eastern end of the MHC Greenway and there is a lot to like about all three of the campgrounds (Ross Prairie & Shangri-La being the other two). Santos is all about the trails (fewer horses here for the most part vs. the other two campgrounds) but two huge parks for mountain bikers of all skill levels. An offshoot of the Pine Tree East trail goes to the Santos Bike Shop which is a great resource to have for supplies and repairs. And you can access the linear section of the trails heading west.

Enough about the trails, this is supposed to be a campground review. Two things stand out about this campground vs. the others: the road noise and the poor cell service (AT&T & T-Mobile in my case). Even though this campground is much closer to Ocala than the other two, I immediately noticed significantly slower speeds when I arrived here. At one point I even used the booster. And Hwy 301 is a major 4 lane road, though separated by tall trees, is surprisingly loud at rush hours and during the day. Much better at night which is all that really matters I guess.

Otherwise, this campground has 25 numbered sites (one of the hosts is in 24) with 1-18 on the inner loop which follows the treeline, and 19 - 25 on the outer loop, which has shade trees but is much more open. My guess is that based on older reviews, the sites have been renumbered at some point. There was everything here - from tents, truck campers to vans, class A, B, C. So plenty of room for everyone. Many people were here with bikes to use the trails - the trailhead is just in the next parking lot to the west. There is a central bathhouse, a dump station near the entrance, and 20/30/50 plus water at each site, nearly all of which appeared quite level. Sites 6 & 20 are paved (accessible).

The hosts were very low key, essentially no interaction with them after checking in. Oh, the gates for all 3 of these campgrounds get locked about 6 PM so always call ahead to get the combination if you're arriving late. As for cellular, it was highly variable with download speeds up to 20-30s at points and upload from 1-4 MBPS. This whole side of town was screwy in that department.