The Best in Tent Camping: New England: A Guide for Car Campers Who Hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos (Best Tent Camping) [Paperback]

Lafe Low (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2005 | Series: Best Tent Camping

If you subscribe to the opinion that televisions, Japanese lanterns, and electric guitars are not essential camping equipment, The Best in Tent Camping should be your constant companion. The Best in Tent Camping: New England is a guidebook for tent campers who like quiet, scenic, and serene campsites. It's the perfect resource if you blanch at the thought of pitching a tent on a concrete slab, trying to sleep through the blare of another camper's boombox, or waking to find your tent surrounded by a convoy of RVs. Painstakingly selected from hundreds of campgrounds, this book guides you to the quietest, most beautiful, most secure, and best-managed campgrounds in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Each campground profile provides essential details on facilities, reservations, fees, and restrictions, as well as an accurate, easy-to-read map making the campground a snap to locate.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

If you subscribe to the opinion that televisions, Japanese lanterns, and electric guitars are not essential camping equipment, The Best in Tent Camping: New England should be your constant companion.

Each campground profile includes:
Detailed campground maps
Key information such as fees, restrictions, and dates of operation
Driving directions to the campgrounds
Ratings for beauty, privacy, spaciousness, quiet, security, and cleanliness

The Best in Tent Camping: New England guides you to the quietest, most beautiful, most secure, and best-managed campgrounds in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

About the Author

Lafe Low is a lifelong New Englander. He has spent his life camping, skiing, biking, hiking, and paddling his way throughout the People's Republic of New England. He is the former editor of Explore New England and Outdoor Adventure magazines. He currently lives in the Boston area and works at CXO Media to help finance his funhog lifestyle.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Menasha Ridge Press; 2nd edition (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0897326229
• ISBN-13: 978-0897326223
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,407,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent resource for tenters, June 27, 2006

By 

Stephen Bradt (Nashua NH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best in Tent Camping: New England: A Guide for Car Campers Who Hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos (Best Tent Camping) (Paperback)

Anyone with a favorite campground knows the ritual of driving around with a map, circling the prime sites for future visits while crossing out those that don't make the grade. "The Best in Tent Camping: New England" basically does the same but for top parks across New England, taking much of the guesswork out of finding not only a great campground but also the best possible campsite.

I've consulted my own well-thumbed first edition of this book (published 2002) before camping in 6-8 state parks around New England, and I've seldom been disappointed. The book really helps make the most of my all-too-limited camping time: In addition to maximizing my enjoyment of classic spots like Acadia National Park and Vermont's Green Mountains, I've discovered some wonderful and unforgettable parts of New England that are well off the beaten path.

I've generally found the ratings to be fairly accurate, although I think the cleanliness rankings should give somewhat more weight to the condition of bathrooms and showers (where available) along with the state of the sites and grounds. I've stayed in some parks with five stars where the bathroom facilities were pristine, and in others where I honestly wouldn't feel comfortable showering without donning flip-flops.

The previous reviewer's complaint struck a chord, since I just camped at Lamoine State Park last week (site 62, formerly site 48 -- which was indeed Rockefeller-worthy). I know firsthand that the sites in both Lamoine and Smugglers Notch State Park in Vermont have been renumbered since the book's original publication, and several other parks I've visited have gained new facilities that remain unmentioned in the revised edition. While some inaccuracies or omissions are entirely forgivable (parks are by no means static, after all), what's less forgivable is that a lot of the outdated information made it into the book's second edition. It's disappointing that nobody actually revisited the parks before slapping a new cover on what is basically the same content.

In the grand scheme of things, though, these shortcomings are minor. "The Best in Tent Camping: New England" is a winner, infinitely more useful than most other campground guides in giving a real flavor for state parks and other campgrounds. Every New England camper who's eager to try new venues should have a copy.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Could use a bit of fact-checking or editing, June 11, 2007

By 

Reader "mjm_99" (Boston MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best in Tent Camping: New England: A Guide for Car Campers Who Hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos (Best Tent Camping) (Paperback)

This book is really the only one of its kind, so it may be an OK resource to start. However, it is somewhat poorly designed, with the TOC, list of campgrounds, and unlabeled map all on separate pages, so you are flipping around and around trying to see which campgrounds are near your desired destination and what page they are on. There is an error on the map as well, with two locations labeled "12".
Unfortunately, one of the most lovingly-described campgrounds, Orr's Island, is in fact an RV-only no tents allowed campground. I recommend doing research after getting a "feel" from this book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book Of Its Kind!, August 7, 2007

By 

roadtripper (boston, ma) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Best in Tent Camping: New England: A Guide for Car Campers Who Hate RVs, Concrete Slabs, and Loud Portable Stereos (Best Tent Camping) (Paperback)

Ok folks, let's clear up some things. First of all, campground "site" numbers change all the time, so of course you should check the authors site numbers to the latest site map on the campground's website (almost all of the campgrounds in the book have site maps available online). It is hardly the authors fault if site numbers have changed.

I've used the book to pick out 7 different campgrounds so far, and I've been extremely pleased with the authors inclusion of the campground in the first place, as well as their opinion of the best sites in the campground. Also, I am yet to see any conflicting site numbers as described by other reviews @ these 7 campgrounds.

Combine this book with Foghorn's "Camping New England" and you'll know 90% of the best campsites in New England.