Best RV Parks & Resorts near Hooksett, NH

Turtle Kraal RV campground is a gated RV campground just outside Alton Bay NH.  Lots of great restaurants, ice cream shops and water activities are nearby!  

The sign was easy to spot, right off the road, GPS leading us right to the entrance.  There is a long approach after you see the sign, and even a sharp turn before you see the gate.  We met the man at the gate (with his incredibly enormous husky) and provided us all the information we needed.  This campground has wifi, good cell signal (AT&T and Verizon), a great pool, is pet friendly and well maintained.  The bathhouse and pool were both very clean, and for as many RV's that were there - that was amazing!  Each site has a firepit and a picnic table - though many sites have additions and build for an extended stay!  

This campground is huge - there is a lower loop and an upper loop with the bathhouse and pool right in the center.  Kids can ride their bikes around both loops, walk the dogs, play cornhole or horseshoes, etc.  Trash is well maintained, with enough dumpsters for the amount of campers they could hold at capacity.  They also have firewood for sale on your way in, so you don't have to chase a campground host or a little golf cart - you can buy what you need on your way back.  This is a very family friendly campground about an hour and a half north of Boston and about the same from the Whites.  A great base-camp for amazing days on Lake Winnipesauke!!

The campground has a gravel area at the sites where the fire ring and picnic tables are. Where we parked our trailer was some gravel sand and dirt. We were at the end of a lane, backing in was fine we are small, 21 feet including tongue, we fit fine. Great site across from a beach, on French Pond I’m guessing is at least 25 acres. Most of the sights are long term. Camp was pretty much full, even then it was quiet. Restroom closed to covid, some campgrounds kept them open and just cleaned more. Well no complaint here we’re self contained. Some areas could use some tidying up. Still I would gladly stay here again.

Winter Island Park Campground: (Scale 1- bad, 5-Very good (70 yr olds in 17’ trailer). I rate primarily based on desire for at least a moderate wilderness type experience w at least some camp site privacy. Overall Rating: 2.5(RV field and hanger spots; 4.5 (Bayside sites). Price 2023: $42 Usage during visit: 100% full because of October celebration in Salem. Site Privacy: None Site Spacing: Very close Site surface: Grass, gravel, and blacktop Reservations: Required Campground Noise: Quiet Road Noise: Not near a major road. Through Traffic in campground: Some traffic down to parking lot. Electric Hookup: Yes Sewer Hookup: No. Dump Station: Yes Potable Water Available: At the site. Generators: I think all trailer sites have electrical hookups. Bathroom: Yes - old. Showers: Yes - old style. Dressing area is not private. Pull Throughs: All are back in. Cell Service (AT&T): Very good. Setting: 3 settings : Open field, Back up to warehouse with ocean view, On blacktop along harbor. Weather: Clear and cool Bugs: None. Solar: Yes Host: Yes. Rig size: Large rigs will fit in many sites. Sites: 12 - 16D along the bayside have a beautiful view of the bay. These sites would be fantastic to be in even though the sites are close together. The sites along the hanger have a water view with a huge parking lot in between. The RV Field area is only good as a convenient spot to visit nearby Salem attractions or Boston (1 hr plus drive through heavy traffic).

We really liked this park! It was clean, very well cared for, supper nice people and a decent price ($43/night) for camping in coastal New England. The park recently added new 50 amp full hook-up sites(some of which are pull-thrus) so there are plenty of options for big-rigs. Half of the park is seasonal campers(which is a lot more cramped and more junked up) and the other half is for transients. The two sides are separated by a tree line where the tent sites are located. The park is in a good location and pretty close to the beach, restaurants, shopping and access to Route 1. You are also just twenty minutes or so to Portsmouth and Newburyport which are some of our favorite New England coastal towns. 

Our site (#124) was one of the new sites which they had just completed. It was a gravel back-in which was plenty long and level. They recently seeded the area so new grass was starting to grow. The roads in the park are fairly narrow and we had to drive over the grass across from our site in order to back in. Lucky for us nobody was parked in that site. We hate driving over grass as our coach can really make some ruts, but we had no choice in this situation. The ground was dry and hard so we didn’t make deep ruts. The park does not have cable and we were not able to get reception on our satellite because of the trees and could not get any over-the-air channels. No television was fine because we enjoyed sitting by a campfire after our long day of exploring. We had a picnic table that was kind of small if you had 4-6 people but fine for just two of us. Our firepit was a light weight portable one which we could move. The older sites had heavy fire rings that were not to be moved. None of the sites have a lot of space between them and I bet this park could feel quite cramped when it was full. We were there in the off-season(May) and didn’t have any neighbors so it was pretty quiet. There are not too many amenities in the park which was fine for us since we really don’t use them. There was a very large playground, horseshoe pits, shuffleboard, basketball, and camp store. This park really cares about appearance and grounds-keeping is top notch. Our site had a nice grassy space with a small garden planted with flowers. The laundry was very nice, clean and had big front-loading machines. Check-in was super easy and fast. All the staff were very nice. 

About 5 miles to the east is Hampton Beach and a little farther is the town of Rye which are worth the drive. There we discovered Ray’s Seafood and Petey’s Summertime Seafood where you can get a great meal right next to the water. After lunch pop over to Wallis Sand Beach for an afternoon relaxing by the sea. We love visiting the Kittery Trading Post(in Maine) which is a good outdoor outfitter and eating at Bob’s Clam Hut.

We really liked this park! It was clean, very well cared for, supper nice people and a decent price($43/night) for camping in coastal New England. The park recently added new 50-amp full hook-up sites (some of which are pull-thrus) so there are plenty of options for big-rigs. Half of the park is seasonal campers (which is a lot more cramped and more junked up) and the other half is for transients. The two sides are separated by a tree line where the tent sites are located. The park is in a good location and pretty close to the beach, restaurants, shopping and access to Route 1. You are also just twenty minutes or so to Portsmouth and Newburyport which are some of our favorite New England coastal towns. 

Our site (#124) was one of the new sites which they had just completed. It was a gravel back-in which was plenty long and level. They recently seeded the area so new grass was starting to grow. The roads in the park are fairly narrow and we had to drive over the grass across from our site in order to back in. Lucky for us nobody was parked in that site. We hate driving over grass as our coach can really make some ruts, but we had no choice in this situation. The ground was dry and hard so we didn’t make deep ruts. The park does not have cable and we were not able to get reception on our satellite because of the trees and could not get any over-the-air channels. No television was fine because we enjoyed sitting by a campfire after our long day of exploring. We had a picnic table that was kind of small if you had 4-6 people but fine for just two of us. Our firepit was a light weight portable one which we could move. The older sites had heavy fire rings that were not to be moved. None of the sites have a lot of space between them and I bet this park could feel quite cramped when it was full. We were there in the off-season (May) and didn’t have any neighbors so it was pretty quiet. 

There are not too many amenities in the park which was fine for us since we really don’t use them. There was a very large playground, horseshoe pits, shuffleboard, basketball, and camp store. This park really cares about appearance and grounds-keeping is top notch. Our site had a nice grassy space with a small garden planted with flowers. The laundry was very nice, clean and had big front-loading machines. Check-in was super easy and fast. All the staff were very nice. 

About 5 miles to the east is Hampton Beach and a little farther is the town of Rye which are worth the drive. There we discovered Ray’s Seafood and Petey’s Summertime Seafood where you can get a great meal right next to the water. After lunch pop over to Wallis Sand Beach for an afternoon relaxing by the sea. We love visiting the Kittery Trading Post (in Maine) which is a good outdoor outfitter and eating at Bob’s Clam Hut.

We wanted somewhere to stay near White Mountain National Park and while Beaver Hollow wasn’t super close it was only a little over 30 minutes away so not too bad. As the description says, this was just an “Ok” campground in our opinion. Here’s the breakdown.

Pros: Super friendly staff! The lady at the front desk was incredibly nice and super helpful. They normally don’t allow anyone to do laundry after the office closes but she was nice enough to keep it open for us and just had us lock the door when we finished. If you have kids they apparently do a hay ride and a little barrel train ride every Saturday. The campground is only about 3 minutes from grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, etc. which is nice. As a side note, I highly recommend checking out Hobbs brewery just up the road if beer/breweries are your thing. They provide a picnic table and a fire ring, always one of our favorite amenities. They have a very nice pool, although we didn’t get a chance to enjoy it, but definitely one of the nicest campground pools we’ve seen.

Cons: Sites are not very large. We were fortunate to have a somewhat decent sized site but the site behind us was so small that their picnic table was practically touching our water and electric hook up area (as you’ll see in pictures) and our sewer was just a couple feet away so that couldn’t have been great for them. A big majority of the sites are taken by full time/seasonal campers and while I have nothing against that it just does tend to make the campground feel more junky and crowded because their sites have so much stuff on them. In relation to that, a lot of the campground did just look very junky. The playground/dog park area was not kept up well at all and again, it just felt crowded most places. Their wi-fi was extremely spotty - as in, one minute you could be streaming with it just fine, the next minute you couldn’t even get online at all. My wife was able to use it for work most the week but it wasn’t strong enough for both of us so I had to use our Verizon jetpack to work off of. But as anyone who camps a lot knows, campground wi-fi is almost never reliable so that wasn’t a complete shock by any means. This is not really a con just a kind of annoying thing - you have to have a key card to get in the campground so you have to make a $20 cash deposit to have that card, but you do get it back when you leave as long as you return the card of course.

Overall: As I’ll say for the 3rd time, it’s just an “Ok” park. Definitely not the worst we’ve stayed in but definitely not the best. It served its purpose of giving us a place to stay for a week to visit NH and that’s about all I’d recommend for anyone else planning to stay here.