Located along the St. Lucie River is that small coastal town of Stuart, FL, known for its historic district and fishing heritage. It is famous for offshore fishing and is often called the “Sailfish Capital of the World”. We’ve visited here a number of times over the years because we enjoy it’s slower pace when compared with many of Florida’s larger and more developed coastal cities.

In 2023, during our stay there we visited the Stuart Heritage Museum located downtown which was quite interesting (see our post A Museum, A Sandsprit and A Marina). While there the volunteer staff recommended a visit to the Historical House of Refuge, built in 1876, one of ten “Houses of Refuge” established along Florida’s coast to help shipwreck survivors (see our post A Historical House of Refuge). Today it is the only remaining House of Refuge in Florida. Highly recommend visits to both places.

During our stay in the area, we stayed at two different campgrounds. The first was at an Army Corps of Engineering (COE) campground, St. Lucie South which is located on the St. Lucie Canal and is part of the 152 mile Okeechobee Waterway that spans South Florida from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. COE parks are managed by the Army Corps of Engineers (federal government) and are often located at some sort of water project like a dam or lock. The St. Lucie lock was built in 1941 for navigation and flood control purposes. To read some interesting facts about this lock, check out this website.

St Lucie South is on the south side of the easternmost lock (of five) on the Okeechobee Waterway. It is very small with only nine RV sites and a handful of boat slips, but quite scenic. For boats traveling westbound this lock has a 12-14 foot lift. For our 4 night stay, we would occupy site RV-7.

There are four more locks along the waterway which passes thru Lake Okeechobee and terminates in Fort Myers on Florida’s west coast. This waterway is an alternative route along the Great Loop and avoids traversing all the way around the Florida keys.

Local boaters also include it in the “Mini Loop” aka “Smuggler’s Run” which loops around the keys. https://passagemaker.com/destinations/florida-mini-loop/

Along the Okeechobee Waterway, the highest water elevation is in the lake itself and the level drops when traveling either east or westbound from the lake toward the Atlantic or the Gulf. The minimum air draft clearance is 49′ at a railroad bridge.
https://www.saj.usace.army.mil/…/44/siteimages/owwmap.pdf

About half of the nine sites at St Lucie South are waterfront. All include a nice concrete pad, firepit, sheltered picnic table, 50/30/20 Amp electric and water (no sewer). All for the extremely reasonable nightly rate of $15. The normal rate is $30, but as seniors over 62 years of age possessing a Lifetime Senior Pass, we get 50% off entrance fees at any federal park or monument including all the National Parks and 50% off the federal campgrounds rates.

It’s fun watching the boats lock thru and interesting to monitor Marine VHF 13 to listen to the conversations with the lock master. We also use an AIS app like Marine Traffic to find out information about the various boats and where they are coming from and going to.

Normally, when the lock is idle, visitors are allowed to walk out onto the lock gates and spillways and cross over to the opposite shore, however during this visit, construction was in progress and all access was blocked. The visitor center was also shutdown during our stay. But from our campsite, we were able to walk over to the water’s edge to watch from a distance the boats going through the lock.

Always on the hunt for a decent breakfast, on our first full morning at St. Lucie, we went to the Galaxy Diner where I had the Quiche of the Day (bacon, spinach, onion and provolone), $15.95 served with home fries while Rob had bacon, eggs and home fries ($12.95). Excellent!

After breakfast we headed to downtown Stuart where we leisurely strolled along the Stuart Riverwalk passing by the Oyster Restoration area and several very popular waterfront restaurants.

If you want to cruise along the waterway there is the Tiki Taxi. For $10 you can ride as long as you want. The only stop they make is at the Tide House Restaurant across the harbor.

Phipps RV Park is a Martin County Park, literally next door to our previous campground at St Lucie South COE, a 2 minute drive.

 

Check out at St. Lucie was at 11:00 a.m. Check in at Phipps was at 3:00 p.m. but luckily our site was empty so we were able to check in early. Phipps has 99 full hookup RV sites and 19 “Adventure Tents”. Among the RV sites, 38 are waterfront on the St Lucie River and 22 are waterfront on an interior lake.

Riverfront sites 1-24 have a concrete pad, all the rest are gravel. Most of the sites and roadways here are big rig friendly. The nightly rate, including taxes and fees, was $67, quite a bit more than the $15 nightly fee at the COE next door.

Overall this is a really nice park with great views from the riverfront sites. It is east of the lock providing direct views of the lock gates from several of the waterfront sites. Note that the sites are laid out a bit oddly in regard to the placement of the hookups, so motorized RV’s may want to pull-in (vs back-in) to certain sites. See our Google Maps review for details: https://maps.app.goo.gl/fGZScqqavXiCDjoD7

For our eight night stay, we had booked waterfront site 13 which had a concrete pad. Waterfront sites 1-36 have an elevated area at the back of the site providing a spectacular view of the river, lock and boat traffic. The pad on 13 had about a 9″ upslope front to back which is fairly steep but was not a problem for our leveling system and all tires remained on the ground. All the utilities worked well.

During our overall 12 day visit in the Stuart area we mostly took it easy during the lead up to the holidays, but we did visit several of our favorite spots. In addition to the downtown area of Stuart and the Riverwalk mentioned above, we also visited Sandsprit Park, and drove through the nearby Banyan Tree Tunnel.

 

One of our favorite restaurants in the area is Berry Fresh Cafe which has five locations in Florida. Several years ago we joined the Barry Fresh Club so we had received two separate emails wishing each of us a Happy Birthday (my birthday is in November and Rob is in December). In honor of our special day, we each received an offer via email to enjoy a free menu item. Buy one breakfast, brunch, or lunch menu item and get a second one free! Woo hoo!

On this particular day I ordered the Nova Salmon Benedict ($18.99) which was cold smoked salmon nestled atop two potato latkes and herbed cream cheese with fried capers served with two poached eggs, diced tomatoes, pickled onions and drizzled with hollandaise sauce! Yum! Rob had the Irish Eggs Benedict, toasted English muffins with homemade corned beef hash, topped with hollandaise sauce ($15.99). The $15.99 was deducted from our check. Awesome!

Since we didn’t need to spend a lot of time sightseeing, we took advantage of the [relatively] long stay to let some mail and packages catch up with us. Rob also worked on a few projects. One was to add a cleaning port to our gray tank so he could pressure wash the inside walls of the tank. The buildup over almost ten years was interfering with the tank level sensors. Sensors are flexible circuit boards external to the tank (Garnet SeeLevel). Another project was to add a Starlink antenna on the roof for backup internet access if needed (cellular internet is significantly less expensive).

And he also replaced our Winegard OTA automatic TV antenna which had failed (again). It had a two year warranty so Winegard sent a new unit at no charge.

At night we would sit outside or take a walk along the water while enjoying a beautiful sunset!