Gertrude Goes

Name of Campground: Sandy Beach Family Campground
Date of first visit: July 2019
Length of stay: 2 weeks
Location: Contoocook, NH (just outside of Concord)

On our venture Northward, we decided to make a stop in New Hampshire for a couple of weeks. The path to the campground was alright overall. It took us about 2 hours to traverse between parks, most of that on a proper highway. Our GPS tried to take us over a small (9 ft clearance) covered bridge, but a quick call to the campground helped us avoid this minor problem.

There was a small grocery store about 5 miles away in the small town of Hopkinton, nestled along a very picturesque river. There was a nice post office just up the road in Contoocook. Walmart was a little further drive (maybe 30 minutes) in Concord.

The park itself was set up rather uniquely, but it was a wonderful place to sit outside and enjoy the surroundings. We happened upon a 50 Amp FHU site with plenty of room to spread out and feel comfortable. The park had pay for WiFi, but it was spotty at times, so we raised the cell extender in an effort to hedge our bet on coverage a bit. There was a great little pond on the property where I regularly enjoyed kayaking. here was no parking near the places to put the kayak in, but it wasn't a far walk to get there. (And the new addition of a cart for my kayak made the transition even easier!)

The park doesn't have a pool, but they have a wonderful beach area and swimming in the pond is a favorite activity for those here. We purchased firewood from the park and had more than enough for a fire on multiple nights, as well as some smores (I admit I had trouble keeping mine from being messy).

We met some friends we'd made earlier at a meadery (Moonlight Meadery) in a town about an hour and a half away for a tour and tasting. Kyle had learned of them at the Homebrew Convention in Rhode Island and we were thrilled to be fairly close to their facility. We spent a bit on several meads and then went into town for a nice dinner. Touring was quite wonderful in the area! We went to Mount Washington and rode the train up to the top with my husband's stepmother one day. On our way to the rail station, we went by the Old Man in the Mountain and toured about there. After our train ride, we enjoyed lunch at a great little place at the base of the mountain and then went out to the Trapp Family Lodge as well as the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream facility.

Being so close to Concord, we decided to go out to New Hampshire's capitol and then venture over to Vermont to check out Montpelier. Both had beautiful capitol squares that felt reminiscent of small town Texas for us.

After our two weeks here, we left and ventured onto our next location in Maine.

Below are some of the pictures from our time in the area.

Concord

Covered bridge in Hopkinton

Montpelier Capitol building

Train at Mount Washington

Top of Mount Washington

Kayak launch spot at Sandy Beach Campground

Gertrude all tucking in to her spot at Sandy Beach

Swimming area at Sandy Beach

Great time kayaking!

S'mores can be so messy!

Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont

I've decided to deviate from my original plan of just going in order of the parks we've visited and jump to more present day adventures.

First time visiting: June-July 2019
Length of stay: 3 weeks
Name of park: Gateway to Cape Cod RV Campground (Thousand Trails Park)
Location: Rochester, MA

We've recently come from three weeks in Eastern Massachusetts. We haven't stayed this long in one Thousand Trails park since our journeys began, but due to some other events happening we decided to this time.

When we first headed there, out GPS took us through Vermont into a route that Kyle wished we'd not chosen. There were a lot of climbs and Gertrude was yelling at us on more than one occasion as she charged up the hills/mountains. He would give me a look (at more than one point) as we passed the entrance or sign for a ski lodge in the area. Eventually we arrived at the campground. They are surrounded by multiple cranberry bogs in the area (something we had never seen in real life before). There had been quite a bit of rain in the area over the previous few days so there was quite a bit of puddling throughout he campground. We were directed to a FHU site that would accommodate Gertrude and told if we weren't satisfied we were free to move to a different site the next day. We decided the site suited us quite well and that is where we stayed put for the duration of our time there. It is pretty much a sandy campground overall, with some nice tree coverage. The roads aren't too difficult to navigate. The area we were in was mostly pull-through sites and from what I recall was fairly level. We were at the end of a row and the drainage seemed to be great for our site! Others weren't so lucky in other areas of our same section. We were fairly close to the main activity center, pool, laundry, on-site store, and an on-site snack shack (Admiral Snack Bar). There was a small pond on the other end of the park that I was informed is fed by the cranberry bogs in the area mostly. It wasn't suitable for swimming at all, but was alright for kayaking and I'm told is nice for fishing.

The first night we decided to try out a little snack shack we'd heard about just up the road from the campground called The Robins Nest. We shared a seafood platter that had a cod filet, shrimp, scallops, and clams (all lightly fried) on a bed of french fries served with a small helping of coleslaw, tarter sauce, and cocktail sauce. It was plenty of food for the both of us and VERY reasonably priced! They also had 84 flavors of frozen treats to choose from, but we didn't try that out THAT night. So if you are in the area, I HIGHLY recommend stopping by!

We settled back in and started our lengthy stay. We figured since we were going to be there for longer, we'd set up the hammock and make ourselves truly at home. We posted on FB that we'd be here and another member in the campground stopped by and invited me to join a FB group for connecting with friends in the Thousand Trails campgrounds. She and he husband were going to be playing cards later in the week and invited us to join them. Kyle was headed off to a Homebrew Convention in Rhode Island with his brother the latter part of the week, but I was all in for games!

While he was away learning all about brews and such with his brother, I was meeting new friends and taking the kayak out on the small pond in the area. We met another couple the evening he returned and I ended up going out during the week and kayaking with them at a nearby beach. We also got to babysit their sweet pup while they went out adventuring since Kyle was going to be home working anyway. We ended up playing games with them on a couple of different nights also and adding to our growing list of traveling friends!

We were there for the 4th of July and ended up booking a whale watching trip with fireworks in the harbor upon the return in Provincetown (P-town), MA. That next weekend we found a close by town with a ~4 mile bike path to ride (Phoenix Bike Trail in Fairhaven, MA). It wasn't a particularly easy path, but not TOO bad, and I managed to finish the whole trip (little did I know what I was in for in another couple of weeks...ha!). That day I ended up riding for 10 miles total. We finished up that weekend by just going to drive around Newport, RI and to a casino in Connecticut our friends had recommended.

The next week we had more friends arriving that we'd met in previous campgrounds that we were looking forward to connecting with again. We got together with both of the other couples and taught them to play Hand & Foot. After one night of playing we ended up coming to the rescue of a mother and son who had accidentally been locked out of their camper. With some quick thinking we managed to help them get back in without her husband having to drive ~2 hours to bring the spare key from home. We also got another opportunity to do some dog sitting for some friends while they ventured off during the week. This kind of helps to cure our craving for a furry companion of our own and we just liked having a pup around to play with and tend to for the day.

The last weekend we were there we decided to make the trek out to Martha's Vineyard and take our bikes onto the ferry. We got there in the morning and saw two other cars being turned away from the parking lot. To our surprise the gentleman told us if we were taking bikes, to go on in! We could either take the bike path to the ferry (~4 miles) or get on a bike bus (bike rack on the front of the bus) to get to the ferry. We decided to mount up and ride down there. After all, I'd done 10 miles the weekend before, this would be a snap! It was a wonderful path that was very well shielded from traffic and not too busy. We got to the ferry, bought our tickets, and boarded the ferry to the island. We got there and scouted out a popular path that took us along a beach area. There was some areas that were heavily trafficked with cares, but mostly nice bike paths of the main roadway. I was given a few opportunities to turn back and wait in a populated area for Kyle to finish biking and return to me, but I pressed on. I took quite a few "rests" and walked the bike up several hills that I encountered, but I never fully gave up! And by the end of the day, we'd biked 24.71 MILES over 2.5 hours total time riding!! The next day was moving day and so we came home, went for a dip in the pool, I did some laundry, and we called it a night. We weren't just overly impressed with Martha's Vineyard overall, really. We can say we've been, but mostly it provided an interesting place to bike around. (Truthfully, we felt we could have found a similar experience in another town without having to pay $25/person to take us and our bikes on a ferry to an island.)

Overall I really enjoyed this campground. It was close to several areas to explore. We would definitely stay here again, if we were to be in the area again. It was quite a drive to get out to Cape Cod proper, but that is mostly due to congestion on the bridge going to the Cape. Even that though, was doable overall. We had our fair share of seafood and even stopped at The Robins Nest on more than one occasion for ice cream or an easy meal.

Below are several pictures from our stay and our adventures...