We were a little surprised by how much we all liked Wakeda Campground, our choice for a base for exploring the New Hampshire coast. I’m not sure why: it has great reviews and I didn’t find any major red flags when reading through them. But we went into our stay there expecting Wakeda to be fine, but nothing special and were, in the end, very pleased by how much we enjoyed our stay there.
Wakeda is huge campground with over 400 sites, and most of them are occupied by seasonal residents, which is maybe why we didn’t know Wakeda by reputation the way we know places like Normandy Farms outside of Boston. Wakeda reminded us of a more rustic version of Normandy Farms, with its well-tended, sprawling grounds and full slate of activities and amenities…but without the high prices. Both campgrounds are also popular resorts that have been around for decades.
Location:
Wakeda is in a rural area a bit inland from the coast, around a 15 minute drive to Hampton Beach, and an easy drive to anywhere on the New Hampshire Coast. It’s only about 10 minutes from Exeter, NH as well. There’s not a ton to do in the immediate area, but there is Smuttynose Brewery about 10 minutes away if you don’t want to go all the way to Hampton Beach for food.
Booking and Arrival:
Rates in 2021 ranged from $45 to $59/night, which is super reasonable for a private east coast campground, particularly one with lots of amenities and a nice location. They also include up to 3 kids with that rate instead of 2 like most campgrounds.
The drive to the campground was uncomplicated. You check in at the office right by the road (during Covid they meet you outside to complete the process), and then there’s a LONG road up to where the campsites are.
Campsites:
The few negative reviews I read mostly complained about narrow road and/or difficult to get into sites, so we picked our site carefully, with much squinting at the campground map. We ended up in full hook up back in site x23; we chose it because it looked to be right be a wide spot in the road, so easy to back into (and it was) but it ended up, as a bonus, being adjacent to a huge open field, so we had a ton of space to hang out in:
If you look at the map, you’ll see that the vast majority of sites are reserved for seasonal residents, so you don’t have a ton to choose from. If you have a larger trailer, I can definitely recommend our site, and the couple of sites nearby also looked pretty easy to navigate. For the biggest rigs, they have a few very spacious pull-throughs that would work well.
As you can see in the photo above, there are also some very rustic camping cabins available.
Here’s another shot of our site, where you can see the very long driveway and also site x21 next door (which was empty most of the time we were there).
Near our site there was a row of water/electric sites and no hook up sites that were in a more wooded area and looked like they would be tricky with a bigger rig.
The campground is huge, and we enjoyed walking around and checking out all the different areas and, in some cases, the nicely decorated seasonal sites:
Activities and Amenities:
There were fewer things open and happening than usual thanks to covid, but there was still a ton to do at Wakeda! There was an ice cream social happening one evening, and there were a ton of people there. They were even selling “pup cups” that were just plain vanilla ice cream. Fiesta the beagle was very happy about this.
They had some yard games out that evening, like corn hole and oversized Connect 4. And there’s a nice, big playground right by the camp store and mini golf course, although I don’t seem to have a picture of it. Here’s Connect 4 and the Gameroom, which wasn’t open last summer:
We played miniature golf:
The store sells coffee in addition to ice cream, along with a selection of other snacks and souvenir type stuff. The upstairs was closed, but I gather that it’s an activities type building when it’s open. Apparently I really liked the store; I took a bunch of pictures of it. It’s pretty!
There’s also a huge dog park that we took Fiesta to check out. She had a lot of fun at Wakeda (she gets to have more fun than the terriers because she doesn’t go crazy around other dogs so she’s fit to be out in public. But the terriers got lots of walks; don’t worry!)
The bathhouses were a little on the rustic side, with not especially nice pay showers. At least the one near us wasn’t super nice; I have below what appears to be a picture of a bathhouse farther afield and it seems more polished. Anyway, though, pay showers, so be forewarned.
Next up: onward to the mountains!
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