Eva H.
Yelp
This was probably the worst campground I've ever been to and pretty much ruined my trip to Baxter State Park. There were no staff to be found at night (I walked around for 20 minutes looking.) The only instruction is to call a phone number, but there's no service unless you drive for 10-15 minutes (for all carriers - NEOC knows that and has directions on how to drive to service, although if you have AT&T you have to go all the way to town which is 15-20 minutes). Since that's the case, this campground really needs a better option such as a walkie talkie or something in order to reach staff in an emergency or late at night. This seems like a major safety issue.
Quiet hours are at 10:30pm, but they aren't enforced. People were yelling, playing music, and even driving trucks around (for fun) until 5am++. There were multiple bachelor parties the weekend that we stayed.
The next day I learned there is an area marked "private" where the guides live, and they're supposed to enforce quiet hours. Well, that group was playing music and howling at the moon at 11:30pm.
The overall vibe was like a Maine Jersey Shore. If you want an experience in nature, go elsewhere. Some examples from our neighbors: the girls next to us decided to leave their SUV running for 2 hours until 10:30pm just to charge their phones. A group of 4 guys arrived at 11pm and left their Cadillac Escalade (seriously) running for 20 minutes while unloading and yelling to each other, then decided to play with fire + lighter fluid. The craziest example is that one group kept the party going until 5AM! They were still speaking in full voices and even yelling at times. I finally got up to ask them to whisper around 3:30AM although they didn't whisper for long.
There is a staffperson onsite in the morning, I believe her name was Linda. She was very helpful and kind, and agreed that what we experienced was Not Okay. She offered us a different spot by the water, although when we went to investigate there was a group of 5+ guys next door playing music, so we didn't think it was worth spending 2 hours packing and unpacking our stuff again while on vacation and decided not to move. The second night was slightly better for noise, a group was yelling until 1:30AM instead of 5AM.
Other details to note:
- Check in is 3pm and check out is 10am which seems excessive for a campsite. Most others I go to are 11am/1pm.
- You cannot choose your own campsite. This is a huge bummer and there's a big difference between the campsites by the water with lots of space, vs my area (campsite 17) that had 6 campsites VERY close together and was about 20-30 feet from the main parking area where the generators and all the rafting trips are loaded up. It was noisy pretty much all the time.
- Speaking of generators, according to the rules sheet these are run 3 hours a day I think. An updated sheet by the lodge had them running 7 hours a day. In reality they ran them even longer on the first day, until 9pm. I appreciate the ability to shower but these are so, so loud. The second night they didn't even run, which my friend and I jokingly called the "bropocalypse" because there were big groups of guys walking over to the lodge that couldn't figure out why there was no water. Oh remember our characters from before, the neighbor girls idling their car? Despite the showers being locked they decided to shower in the sink meant to get drinking water for HALF AN HOUR, and ran the entire camp out of water. We had brought enough that we were fine, but these people were seriously awful humans. They even laughed about it to my friend who was trying to get water to do dishes! Again, no staff around for any type of enforcement.
I'm giving this review an extra star because I thought the staffperson I interacted with was really nice. But it sounds like management has cut down staffing so much that this camp is like the Wild West.
Just stay at Baxter State Park. Change your dates, book farther out, do what it takes.
