Winding River Campground

On the Squamscott River in Exeter, New Hampshire—in Rockingham County on the southern New Hampshire Seacoast where the tidal Squamscott River's current, Hampton Beach's 3-mile Atlantic shore, the Phillips Exeter Academy's campus architecture, and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard's colonial maritime heritage create the Seacoast community that the Exeter-Hampton-Portsmouth corridor has built into southern New Hampshire's most complete outdoor and cultural landscape—Winding River Campground, a Modern America Campgrounds property, provides full hookup RV sites with 30 and 50-amp service, water and electric sites, six riverfront cabins, a pool with a grotto water slide, a hot tub, the Outlaw Grille restaurant, a gem mining sluice, an arcade, two playgrounds, a bounce pillow, a boat ramp, canoe and kayak rentals on the Squamscott River, a golf cart drive-in theater, live music, planned activities, horseshoes, basketball, laundry, and propane service in a campground whose Squamscott River location and resort-style social amenities create the full-week Seacoast base camp that the Hampton Beach and Portsmouth combination makes genuinely productive. Pool with grotto slide. A boat ramp and river. Outlaw Grille on-site. The 30 and 50-amp full hookup sites and the water-and-electric positions, each with a private fire ring and picnic table, accommodate the Class A and the tent camper alongside the six riverfront cabins whose Squamscott River setting creates the most desirable position in the campground. The pool's grotto water slide creates the resort's most visually distinctive feature in the afternoon water activity peak, and the adjacent hot tub provides the evening transition to the quieter relaxation that the fire ring and the Outlaw Grille's riverside dining complement. The gem mining sluice, arcade, two playgrounds, and bounce pillow create the family daytime activity for the non-pool morning, and the golf cart drive-in theater's evening screenings and the live music events create the social calendar that the planned activities coordinate. The Squamscott River boat ramp, canoe and kayak rentals, and riverfront cabin positions make the tidal river the campground's natural amenity—the downstream paddle toward Great Bay and the upstream current toward Exeter's Phillips Academy create two distinctly different paddle experiences from the same launch. Exeter sits in Rockingham County on the Squamscott River, in the colonial community where the New Hampshire Provincial Congress met before the Revolution, where the Phillips Exeter Academy—the largest private high school endowment in the world—occupies the Georgian campus whose alumni include Daniel Webster, Gore Vidal, and the Aga Khan, and where the Exeter River's connection to the Squamscott and the Great Bay Estuary creates the tidal ecosystem that the New Hampshire Coastal Program manages as the state's most ecologically significant marine watershed. Hampton Beach, 15 miles southeast on US-1, provides the 3-mile Atlantic barrier beach that New Hampshire's only oceanfront community maintains with the Hampton Beach State Park's swimming, the seasonal boardwalk entertainments, and the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom's summer concert calendar. Portsmouth, 15 miles northeast, provides the Prescott Park waterfront arts festival, the Strawbery Banke Museum in the colonial Puddle Dock neighborhood, and the Market Street restaurant corridor that ranks among New England's best dining for a city under 25,000. Winding River Campground operates seasonally through the Seacoast summer and early fall, with the Memorial Day through Columbus Day window covering the Hampton Beach season and the Squamscott River's warmest paddling conditions, and the September and October shoulder season providing the fall foliage on the Rockingham County river corridor and the uncrowded Portsmouth experience that summer visitors don't know exists. Reserve your site or cabin at Winding River and let the grotto pool, the Squamscott boat launch, and the Outlaw Grille make the Exeter Seacoast camp the southern New Hampshire riverside stay that the Hampton-Portsmouth corridor deserves.