Hastings Campground, White Mountains, Maine - August 2014

This August, we had a great (but far too short) camping trip up to Hastings Campground in the White Mountains. While most of the White Mountains are in New Hampshire, this was part of the little bit that jogs into Maine.

 Without entirely realizing it, I picked the best campsite in the whole campground. The site was level, backed up onto the river (which I knew about), was extremely private and still had a few trees for shade. The campground hosts had raked the site flat between visitors, so when we arrived on a freshly raked site, we knew it was going to be a good campground!

 

To the right, you can hardly see a bit of the next campsite. You could occasionally glimpse people moving through the trees but couldn't see anybody clearly enough to stare at each other. We heard a little bit of chatter, but there's enough trees to make everybody feel pretty private.

 

 Nice shade in the campground, though the blue tarp helped to keep caterpillar doodies from landing on our dinner table all the time. Although most meals we seemed to eat inside, just out of laziness and lighting. We forgot to bring a lantern, so once it hit about 8pm, it was too dark to see the table outside. Oops! Note for future, bring a lantern for the table!

 

 A nice fire going one night at the campsite!

 

 There were no neighbors on the other side, and we'd cancelled the reservation we had at camp site #18, so that was empty as well. But even the two sites that seemed to be connected (#18 and 19) were diagonally across from each other and far enough apart and with enough brush between them that you could not see who was there.


 There was plenty of room to put the tent as well as the truck camper.

 

Truck camper setup:

 

Behind the campsite was a pair of walkways that led to the stream. From the campsite you could barely hear the gurgle of the stream because it was far away. 

  

 Deeper into the woods from the campsite:

 

But you could tell that when the stream is full of water, it takes up more than its fair share of the land.

 Once at the stream, you could see it was quite large. We were there when the water was probably at its lowest, so you can imagine what this might look like during spring floods.

 

Looking the other direction. We didn't see much in the way of fish, but the water was cold and about a foot deep.

 

 Most of the stream was on the bank farthest away from the campsites. The whole place was secluded and there was little chance of running into even another camper. Several mornings, some of us stripped naked with the biodegradable camp soap and lathered up in the icy cold stream.

 

The whole campground was filled with ripe raspberry bushes. (One of my few favorite fruits!) Nearly every campsite had their own private collection of fresh raspberries. At first I thought it was only in one spot and thought it was only polite not to take them all in order to share them with neighboring campers. But then we realized that the less-used campsites and the road into the campground were overflowing with raspberries.

 

They did warn us when we first arrived that there was a bear sighted in the campground and to be especially aware of leaving things out. We always keep a clean campground, especially living in bear country like we do at home, but we made double-sure to pack everything away. One mistake could be your last. You don't want to come home and find your camper mauled because you left a window open and a bear smelled cookies on your RV table.

 

Husband and friend Jess took full advantage of the raspberries. GULP GULP GULP.

 

I loaded up my home-made bandana with raspberries galore. I could have picked for hours but I gave up. Of course the biggest ones were the ones just out of reach, either across a ditch or too high up or too much in the pricker bushes.

  

 The whole campground was peaceful and quiet. The hosts told us that it's one of the most quiet and least party spots. Great for us. We were afraid that being close to the road (as shown on the map) would prove noisy. We did hear cars now and again but the road is a very small road and it's only open part of the year when there is no snow, so people are not used to traveling through it. If you are driving there, you are specifically going to a campground. Past about 5pm or so, there didn't seem to be any through traffic and with only a half dozen campers in the campground, there wasn't much noise at all. I did notice that sites right next to the road could hear the road much more loudly. Our campsite was so far away from the road we could hardly hear anyone at all.

Our site, site #19.

 Site 20, next to our site, after the prior campers moved out. Very nice site as well. If #19 isn't available, #20 is a very close second.

 Another view of our site:

 Site #21:

 Site #21:

 Site #24:

 We didn't get a chance to wander around to the other side of the campground much. The closest pit toilet was in the direction of the 20's and with no other campers around, that's where we spent most of our time wandering. 


 I can't wait to make another trip back. We hadn't left when we were planning next year's vacation to this same campground.

 

Jess setting her marshmallows on fire.

  

 A nice quiet campfire. Husband had to fix up the fire ring a little bit though. He found some rocks from the stream bed and took a shovel and bucket back to the stream and picked up some sand to make a flat place for the fire. It was a little too deep and far from the grill, so nothing would cook.

 

 Toasting marshmallows on the fire...

 Hot coals sizzling with heat.