Travel dates: June 26-29, 2018
Truth be told, I was a little nervous about campgrounds in Nova Scotia before our trip. For many of our stops, I was able to find a campground with okay reviews, but I couldn’t find many with GREAT reviews. Or I’d find one that sounded good but only had one or two reviews at all. I was worried that we were in for a month of decidedly mediocre campgrounds.
And Dunromin was one of the ones I was most apprehensive about. Reviews mentioned narrow roads, tight sites, and dated amenities. But the only other options I could find in the area seemed to have even more drawbacks, so we booked Dunromin and braced ourselves for a suboptimal experience, reasoning that we were there to see Annapolis Royal, not the campground.
So I’m happy to report that Dunromin ended up far exceeding our (low) expectations. It’s a charming place, with a great location super close to town and a lot to offer in the campground itself.
Booking and Arrival
We were there in late June, so I think we hit the last few days before school got out in Nova Scotia and before the Canada Day crowds set in. The result was that we were off all by ourselves in a great site, with hardly anyone else around except some seasonals. We had a really short drive from Highbury Gardens to Dunromin, and no issues with the drive or finding the campground. We booked fairly far in advance, but, of course, would have been fine pulling up without a reservation. I can’t say how crowded things get in the high season. RV site prices range from $36-47CDN, and w/e and sewer sites are available (Nova Scotia campground prices were a welcome change from New England campground prices!)
Campsites
There are well over 100 sites here, as well as several cabins for rent (and a teepee and a “gypsy wagon”). I think most of the complaints I read about tight spots are probably from people who stayed in the grassy sites near the front of the campground, which, while they were mostly empty while we were there, did indeed look like they could feel very cramped were the campground full:
But we had a waterfront W/E site (on Frenchman’s Basin, which flows into the Bay of Fundy) in the A section, and our site was fabulous. We didn’t have many close neighbors, but our site would have been very spacious even if we had. I highly recommend the waterfront sites!
It was VERY windy most of the time we were there, so we didn’t get to take advantage of our lovely site as much as we wanted, but we did open up the toy hauler for the view:
You can also see here, incidentally, how we have the trailer garage set up these days. We took the built in couches out and put in that daybed, which is Milo’s bed at night and a couch for everyone during the day. And then that folding table across from it can be a desk area or kitchen workspace, or we can pull it out and put the chairs on the other side (with the daybed as a bench on one side) for eating or playing games. It’s working really well, although eventually I’d like to build something custom to replace the daybed, maybe something lower and narrower, with built in storage.
Right across from us there were a number of well-kept seasonal sites:
So, basically, if you can get by without sewer, the waterfront sites are the way to go, IMO.
Amenities and Activities
If the upside to just missing the high season at Dunromin was having row A all to ourselves, the downside was just missing out on the start of the packed activities schedule:
Ah well. It looks like a really fun place to be on summer weekends (I don’t know if this is a representative weekend; it was Canada Day weekend, so a pretty big deal).
We did get to take advantage of a bunch of other stuff at the campground, like the fun playground:
And the bathhouses!
The bathhouses were nice enough. Pay showers (very common in Nova Scotia, from what we saw), but super cheap ones.
There’s a well stocked store, with friendly, helpful people working there. Interesting thing about Canada (in our limited experience): very hard to find RV toilet paper. AND no Scott tissue in the grocery stores, which is what we usually use. So we weren’t sure what to buy, but the folks in the store here told us that that brand they carry is what they use in their rental RVs, even though it’s not RV specific, so we went with that (and it didn’t give us any trouble).
Maybe our favorite feature was the super cute onsite restaurant, The Stone Horse Cafe, where we had an awesome breakfast on our last morning.
There’s also a pool, kayak rentals and tours, fishing, and a frisbee golf course.
And there were tons of charming little features–handpainted signs and artwork everywhere–clearly a lot of attention to detail going on here:
Local Area
Dunromin is right next to the charming town of Annapolis Royal. You can, in fact, walk to town from the campground…but we tried this once and found it was a fairly unpleasant walk along a busy road and that parking in Annapolis Royal was fairly easy. We were here three nights and we visited all the sites in Annapolis Royal plus nearby Port Royal National Historic Site and a day trip to Kejikumik National Park. The campground is also close to Digby and other Bay of Fundy sites.
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