Glooscap Campground in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia: Campground Review

Travel dates: June 21-24, 2018

“This campground is the real McCoy,” the guy in the office at Glooscap Campground told us before we went off to find our site. It was part brag and part warning. You won’t find any fancy amenities at Glooscap–no pool, no organized activities….not even much in the way of indoor plumbing (pit toilets and pay showers only). But you do get one of the most spectacular views you’ll ever see, right outside your camper (assuming you book early; more on that later):

This was one of our favorite campgrounds from our trip this summer and a perfect base camp for exploring Parrsboro and the surrounding area.

Booking and Arrival: We plan our big summer trips WAY in advance, so we were a little frustrated to find that we couldn’t book many of the Canadian campgrounds until late winter or spring. But it all worked out okay; we made sure to book National and Provincial parks as soon as we could, but we didn’t have any trouble finding a site anywhere. So we didn’t book Glooscap until early April, and, it turns out, this is early by Nova Scotia standards.

At least that’s what we were told when we checked in….we were assured that we were getting a fabulous site because those sites go to the early bookers. That’s us! Obsessive planning for the win!

Parrsboro is kind of an out of the way little town, so we drove for quite awhile on back roads to get to it. Once you go through the small downtown in Parrsboro, you have a few more miles to go along the water to get to the campground. The road’s fairly hilly and narrow, but we didn’t have any trouble with it. Just make sure you don’t miss your turn, as places to turn around might be few and far between.

Here and elsewhere in Canada, we were surprised by how late campground office stay open, even at public campgrounds and at tiny private ones (I believe Glooscap is a city campground). We were there by around 5:30 or 6, but if I remember right he told us when we called that he’d be there until at least 9.

Rates are $28-32/night (Canadian). Nova Scotia campground prices were a welcome relief after our time in New England!

Campsites:

We were on the last row in the campground and the last spot in the row, which meant we had a gorgeous, unobstructed view of the Bay of Fundy:

Interesting thing about our site: there was another site directly across from it, and that one stayed empty the whole time we were there. As far as I can tell, there’s no way they could book trailers in both sites at the same time; the row dead ends into the Bay of Fundy right past those two sites, so we had to pull into the site across from ours in order to back in. I guess they could have put a Class B or something in there once we were there, but even that would have been a little tricky.

Most of the other sites on our row were seasonal sites. It was the beginning of the season, so there was a lot of activity while we were there with everyone making repairs, building decks, and whatnot. All of our seasonal neighbors were very friendly and chatty. I wouldn’t mind so much spending my summers on the Bay of Fundy.

But they save the sites with the best views for transient campers, which is awesome! All the sites are spacious; ours was especially so since we were on the end of the row. We moved our picnic table over to the Bay of Fundy side of the trailer to take full advantage of the space and the view.

All sites are water/electric only, but word is they do have a pump out service available. Or you can just do your dishes outside whilst overlooking the Bay of Fundy:

One cautionary note: we had a really hard time getting level because the gravel on our site was very loose. I think I must have taken this picture in order to illustrate this somehow, because I don’t know why else I would have taken it:

Amenities and Activities:

You don’t get much in the way of amenities with real McCoy campgrounds like this one. As I mentioned, there are pay showers here (we didn’t use them) and pit toilets. There’s no wifi campground wide; there’s supposed to be wifi at the clubhouse, but we didn’t have much luck using it.

There’s a very small playground and an area with some picnic tables.

But the best feature is the private beach adjacent to the campground (I mean, I don’t think it’s really private; as far as I know anyone can go there, but access is from the campground). There’s a walkway in the middle of the campground that leads down to a beautiful rocky beach.

We came down here a couple of times to walk the dogs (as I’ve mentioned before, Fergus the anxious Scottie LOVES rocky beaches):

And one time Ari, Dave, and I brought the dogs down (while the other kids stayed back at the trailer) and ended up walking a long way along the shore to this “tunnel rock” (as we dubbed it). The other kids were very jealous and sad that they hadn’t come once they heard about tunnel rock. Sorry, kids. That’s what you get for picking video games over the beach.

Just be careful about the tide if you go looking for tunnel rock: the Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world, and we were a bit taken aback by how much higher the water got in the time we walking (not terribly long!) Don’t get stranded!

Location and local area:

I’m not even sure how we wound up staying in Parrsboro (I guess this was the most promising campground we found within striking distance of Joggins Fossil Cliffs), but we ended up loving this charming little town. I’ll talk more about things to do in Parrsboro in my next post, but the campground is just a couple of miles out of town. There’s quite a bit to see in Parrsboro itself, and it’s only about 40 minutes from the Unesco World Heritage Site, Joggins Fossil Cliffs (more on that in a later post, too).

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