Best Glamping near Edward MacDowell Lake

My first time experiencing a park in the New Hampshire Park system. We went down with a group. Pawtuckaway State Park offers a variety of landscapes, with something to do and see for everyone. The park includes a large family beach on the lake. There are many opportunities for hiking, with trails leading to many special points of interest, including a mountaintop fire tower; an extensive marsh where beavers, deer, and great blue herons may be seen.

The park lines the shore of beautiful Pawtuckaway Lake.  The 192 sites are wooded and many provide views of the lake.  Each campsite has an open fire ring, picnic table, flat areas for a tent, and a parking space. The bathhouses are equipped with running water, flush toilets, and 24 hour showers.  There are no hook-ups at any of the campsites. The park also has a camp store where canoe and kayaks are available, as well as a plublic canoe and kayak launch. Five cabins are available; each sleeps six people, has electricity, and includes a fire ring and picnic table. Pets are not allowed in the campground or beach area of the park.

Wonderful sites that are spacious! Clean, WiFi available, a pond for swimming, playground, free paddle boats :), a recreational hall with a pool table & video games, laundromat. They have lots of fun family activities! We stayed with our parents in their camper for a couple nights and had such a positive experience there! They have 3 separate ponds-one for fishing, one for boating & the larger one is for swimming. Plenty of bathrooms throughout campground and sites are not expensive to reserve. Clean & up-to-date bathrooms with hot showers. Family-oriented with friendly staff. We will be returning, for sure!

Pros- very clean, bathrooms kept up with regularly. Staff is very nice. They offer boat rentals, canoes, paddle boats and kayaks. Store on site and they do activities during the week. Definitely more kids friendly I think. They do have a pool, park, dog park, lake and food trucks visits at times. They have community fires and dances. Pet friendly. Wood available on site.

Cons- loud cars going all night, some lights in your face. Some people tend to fly down the road on golf carts. You can also hear the main road from the open style campsite. No privacy. People will walk threw your tent site. They will talk during the night while doing this, smoking seems to be allowed at pool. No fires between 9am-5pm.

Overall we had a good time.

(As a Tent Camper)

Let me start this off with there are not many campgrounds I would rate this low. There are a lot of little detractors that add up quickly. 

First, one of the pros, we enjoyed their small but nice petting zoo of a few goats and a horse. Their general store was adequate.

Now some of the cons we encountered. 

The other campers were very loud and ruckus, especially in the safari field with the RVs.

The campsites have VERY little to no privacy, we had to hang up tarps in between us and our neighbor or else we would practically be looking straight at each other if we both had a camp fire at the same time. 

Something I've never encountered before, but our fire pit was not the typical tire ring, it was some other type of ring I've never seen before. It was almost as if it was designed to not allow any air flow for the fire. We thought we were going crazy until our neighbors were having an issue too and had to plug in a hair dryer and every 5 minutes turn it on to keep the fire from going out. And our wood was pretty dry too. 

The pools were very lack luster, they are quite small for the amount of guests in the campground. They get crowded way too fast, we had probably a 2 ft bubble around us in the pool and could not move around at all if we wanted too. The kiddie pool which is 2 ft deep was a waste, it is too big with very little amount of kids who actually use it. 

It was the first time we thought we had actually wasted a weekend camping. Would not return.

We took our new to us hybrid camper out for its inaugural trip.

We chose to stay in the wooded loop of the campground and we were very happy with our site, #66. That section has about 12 sites, some big and some on the smaller side. Our site was easy to back into, even more so since no one was in the site across from us. Our site was very spacious, level and included a picnic table, fire ring, and nicely placed hookups for water and electric. We had easy access to trails that went along the river behind some of the sites with a few paths down to the river.

Everyone we encountered was friendly and respectful. There are quiet hours from 10pm-8am that are enforced. We were grateful to not have to hear loud partying going on into the night. There was car noise from nearby Rt 10 on the other side of the river, but nothing you can do about that.

We asked for assistance at the office with our first time using a pumping station at the end of the trip. We were given friendly helpful assistance and some great tips and advice for the future.

This was a nice enjoyable first visit for us. We will definitely be adding it to our list of places to visit again, but likely later in the year when we can enjoy the river and activities a bit more. We did not explore the options for bike, kayak, and canoe rentals but would like to in the future.

Went there this past weekend. Brought our kayaks. I reserved a water front site for that reason. Well worth it. Amazing lake for kayaking, swimming, fishing and exploring. So many little islands and shallow spots to swim around or jump off rocks.

The public beach area is a nightmare, super busy. And we found that there were a few people who didnt respect the quiet hours.  Plus people would drive their cars to the bathrooms at night, in my opinion if you cant walk there, dont go camping. That was a nuisance. A big reason for me only giving 3 stars. Otherwise it's easily a 4 or 5 star.