With the desire to go camping for at least one night this summer (and not allowing setting up the tent in the backyard to count) I was happy to head to Salisbury Beach State Reservation Campground.
Totally easy, convenient, inexpensive and fun. We were there in less than an hour, had paid the $22 camping fee ahead of time, checked in at the entrance, and then easily found our little site. We were only there for a night. Next time I’ll absolutely shoot for 3 nights. While most people had RVs or trailers….we traveled light with just our tents. We set up our tents, popped open our camp chairs, set up a volleyball net, and got our bearings straight. I was thrilled to discover that our little plot was equidistant from the beach (like 100 yards) and the little store, restrooms, and showers (like 100 yards). Super convenient.
We got there at 1:00….which was check-in time for new campers. After setting up and just hanging out (which mostly involved watching the boys climb our little tree, flip an empty water bottle end over end to see if they could get it to stand, and play “shut the box”….the simple life!)… we walked to the beach to fly kites and check out the tidal pools.
We ventured into Salisbury for some pizza and arcade fun. While there we took in a bit of the Saturday night concert on the beach. When the boys had exhausted themselves by playing about $40 worth of Harpoon Lagoon (ironically almost twice as much as it cost to actually camp) we went back to our campsite and watched the fireworks before calling it a night.
We slept soundly until 7:00 a.m., had a light breakfast, and then went fishing on the beach. While the much bigger and busier Salisbury Beach was easily accessible and not far away, I was happy to find that our campsite had access to the very end of the Merrimack River and was quiet and serene.
We packed up our gear and were headed back towards Rockport early in the afternoon. Now that we’ve learned the lay-out, taken a little test drive, and gotten our camping feet wet, we’ll definitely go longer next time.
CHECK OUT SALISBURY BEACH STATE RESERVATION AND CAMP GROUND HERE
Good Morning Gloucester 
Great place on the other side from plum island and can wave across Ipswich bay at lanes Cove break wall and Halibut point did you reel in anything and great shots even the officer’s on horseback now that would be a great duty…
School be starting back up soon – all adventures would make for some very good classroom time lessons too student projects etc!! ! 🙂
🙂 Dave & Kim 🙂
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