White Lake NH

May 27- May 30 2017

White Lake NH state park is a 200 site camping and recreation park located in Tamworth NH which is about one hour from our house. I chose this trip early in the season to test out all of the RV systems. The state park offers no water, no electric and no sewer hook ups so we would be relying on the RV for our support. The weather forecast was for highs in the 60’s and lows in the 40’s.

My wife and I loaded up the camper with food, water, fuel, propane. We brought along chairs, a screen house, fans, DVD player, cards, clothes, bedding and kitchen supplies.

We arrived at White Lake around noontime to a empty parking lot at the registration/store building. This is the first weekend the park was open for camping. I grabbed two large bags of camp wood for $6 each and proceeded to check in with our reservation. The girl at the desk gave me a paper hanger for my mirror for site number 1-13. The park has three camping sections, a large beach, two stores, a dump station, bath houses, and water spigots scattered about every couple of hundred feet. We proceeded to the gate to enter the park and were immediately flagged in. The park beach and recreation area is open to the public from 8 am to 7 pm for a daily use fee of $5.

The road into the park was paved but after a few turns it turned to dirt and small branches were dragging on both sides and the roof of the RV . There was no scratches damage. I pulled straight into our site staying to the left and allowing room for the slide outs. The site was very roomy and private. It was 30 feet wide and 45 feet deep with at least 45 feet of buffer to the beginning of the neighbors site. The site had a large picnic table and fire pit at the far end. The site was very clean and surprising level for such a heavily wooded park.

I set up the screen house right away as the mosquitoes were trying to carry us away. My wife sprayed some bug spray around and that seemed to keep the majority of them at bay. We enjoyed the screen house and how quiet the park was. I finished the set up by leveling the RV, turning on the propane, the hot water heater and the fridge. We struggled to keep the fire going with the wet wood we purchased, but with a lot of small sticks and my wife’s tending we enjoyed a nice fire. When we retired for the evening I expected we would need to run the heat at some point. I woke around 3 am and the temp in the RV was about 45 degrees. Other than having to use the RV engine instead of the generator to bring the temperature back to a reasonable level we enjoyed a restful night.

We invited my oldest son, his wife and their family to spend day 2 with us at the campsite. We had a great time sitting around the fire. Sometime during the day I noticed that the refrigerator was no longer working and that the lights were growing dim. The battery had run down, so I started the generator to give it a charge. The three grand children stayed over night at the camper, while the parents opted for a more comfortable night at home. While preparing for bed the lights in the camper suddenly turned off. The battery had once again gone dead. Since it was late we decided to turn the battery switch to off and wait till a reasonable time to charge the battery with the generator. I again used the RV engine to heat the camper in the middle of the night. In the morning we enjoyed some breakfast and the girls parents returned before noon.