This was our first visit here as NH state parks open reservations a year in advance so the good parks and best sites book up earlier than we can plan that far ahead for. Lucked out and booked Fri-Mon with just a couple months in advance. It was an exceptionally hot weekend and the lake was mobbed with day visitors and campers alike. The lake was beautiful—warm and crystal clear, soft sand, with a trail around it. Beach was a 10 minute walk from our site and we were not even half way into the campground. We did drive to the lot one of the late afternoons as our 5 year old gets tired and struggles to keep up on a small single speed bike. I’m not sure if campers can ordinarily park there.

One thing I was disappointed with was that there was a road (depot road) quite close to the outer loop of Area 1. We could see it from our camp site (1-77) through the trees and although not heavily traveled, some cars/trucks were quite loud and would speed by and scare my kids when biking who would think it was someone on the camp road about to hit them. This road doesn’t appear on the site maps, it just shows route 16, which feels deceptive. I would not have booked it if I saw that on the map, I don’t want to hear or see traffic when camping in a state park. I’m glad we were just there 2.5 days days.

We camp in a small r-pod and needed to use the dump station. The latch to the sewer cap was locked closed with a pad lock submerged in a puddle of...I don’t even want to know. I had to go to the registration office to get the key. Thank god I had latex gloves as I literally had to plunge my hand in the puddle to unlock it. I’ve never seen a dump station locked down like that and such a health hazard. Dumpsters were also locked! Had to throw our one bag of trash on the roof. Took our recycling back home as they don’t recycle either. I’m not sure if we will be back next year unless we can get Area 2, which looked really nice when we biked through there to check it out.