Nickerson State Park

| Not for Class A or 5ers

By user-5075828... on 2019-08-09. Stayed 2019-08-01 to 2019-08-02

This place was built for tent campers and smaller travel trailers. They do have some sites wide and deep enough for Class A rigs such as ours at 36 feet, but the roads are fairly narrow and curvy. I encourage you to unhook and drive your tow vehicle to the site for a reconnaissance trip before attempting to go in with your full rig, We stayed in Area 1 and I especially caution against staying in that area because of the poorly designed entry and exit. You are going down a two-lane road and then you have to make a 90-degree left turn through what is probably a 12-foot wide steel gate with strong steel barrier arms trailing back into the camping area. If that goes ok, then you have to immediately execute another 90-degree turn onto one of the paths to the actual campsites. Don t choose the 1st of the two gates next to each other, because they elected to save one of the trees near the right side of the opening as you are entering. That means you don t even get the full 12 feet in width! The roads on the loops to the campsite are narrow and not all the trees have been recently trimmed to allow a 12-foot tall vehicle such as ours to pass with touching. There isn t a problem with big limbs that would prevent you from going through, but rather with smaller green limbs touching and potentially scraping or getting caught-up with your vehicle as you go by. We had problems backing into our site because the tent campers across the road from our site had parked one of their cars, with a large bike rack with a least one bike on it, almost exactly in front of the entrance to our site. I went to ask if they could move the car for a few minutes while we backed it, but no one was home in either of the two tents. We ended-up just driving in front ways which worked ok because there were no hookups to worry with. The site was not generally level, but the deepest part was fairly level and our levelers had no problems in getting us level there. Parked this way, there was plenty of room for the toad to park behind the rig. The park is very beautiful and the many large kettle ponds were amazing. My dog got a good swim and lots of folks were having a good time with kayaks, canoes and stand-up paddle boards. The pond was very clear and some people even brought some snorkeling gear and seemed to be having a good time with it. The park staff was friendly and not bothersome. My only complaint was they refused to give me any kind of comparison or recommendation between the two walk-up sites they had available. They did give me an entrance pass for my toad, so I could unhook and go look at both sites before committing. We did go look at the site in Area 1, but my reconnaissance unfortunately was inadequate to reveal all the problems I later encountered. In particular, I assumed that the entrances were properly designed, which I now strongly contest. I wish we had gone and looked at the site in Area 4, before choosing, We did later look at it and found Area 4 and that site far preferable. That mistake is on me and I accept full responsibility for my laziness. I m guessing Area 4 may have been built later and accordingly had better designed and engineered roads, sites and entrances. The other reason I recommend against this area is that typical Class A camping is largely incompatible with tent and small trailer camping styles when no electricity is provided on site. The others are happily enjoying the quiet of nature and are happy with the prevailing outdoor temperature. My partner likes living in 74 degree indoor comfort. As I walked my dog, I realized that ours was the only generator I could hear running. Even though park rules said we could run our generator, except during quiet hours from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., we were being bad neighbors. I turned off the generator, opened windows and my partner dealt with the low 80s outdoor temperature after I promised 74 degrees by 9:00 p.m. and 65 degrees during most of the night according to the Weather Channel forecast for Brewster, MA. We never got anywhere 74 degrees all night, even with all windows open and our vent fans on. We did finally get down to 78 just before sunrise. I m completely unable to understand why Brewster was at 65 degrees a couple of miles away. In summary, this place was built for tent campers and smaller travel trailers. Don t go in there with your nice shiny new Class A or 5th wheel, especially not if you re going to run your generator a lot.