My wife and I really enjoy camping. It is one of our favorite was to take a break from the every day. We try to find a campground that looks nice and scenic. Often staying at state parks. And we try to pick a campsite within the campground that seems at least a little more removed from the other campsites so we can have more privacy and more nature.

This year we didn’t have quite as much freedom in choice because we decided to take our camping trip around the 4th of July holiday weekend. When we started looking for places to camp a lot of places were already full for the time we wanted to be there. Usually we avoid the holidays so everything is less busy wherever we plan to be. But this year we decided to try something different.

We really enjoyed a past visit to New Hampshire and decided we would like to go back there again. Last time we camped in the mountains. This time we camped in the southern more coastal region of New Hampshire.

Our campground was at Bear Brook State Park. One of the reasons we decided to camp here is because it looked like a very scenic park with lots of trails for potential hiking trips. And it seemed to be a large park. Turns out it is New Hampshire’s largest state park.

Often during our camping trips we like to use it as a way to explore the area. We don’t necessarily spend a lot of time at the campground itself other than to sleep. And usually the majority of our exploration is centered around nature areas and hiking. And I usually take thousands of photos during our adventures.

We thought that was likely what we would do during this trip as well, but we really hadn’t planned anything concrete despite doing research about the area.

Turns out the weather would be really hot most days discouraging us from doing too much hiking and nature explorations. Most of the trip centered around exploring more urban landscapes and finding great places to eat. We explored cities and towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, including Boston where we went to the aquarium and then wandered around town for a bit.

One of the main things we liked about the campground where we were staying was the nearby pond with a two mile hiking trail loop that started and ended at the campground. We thought this would be perfect for a regular convenient hike whenever we wanted to stretch our legs. One of the first things we did was go for a hike on this loop. The trail itself was beautiful and scenic. However, it was full of swarms of mosquitoes and other biting bugs. I don’t normally mind some bugs on a hike, but this was a bit overwhelming and it made it hard to enjoy the hike. Unfortunately that turned us off from exploring any of the other trails at the park.

We tried driving around the area looking for other hikes to check out, but without much research into that we had limited success finding nice hikes to take. But we did find a beautiful park in Manchester, New Hampshire called Livingston Park. There was a beautiful well groomed trail that encircled a pond. The pond loop also appeared to have other trails that branched off to potentially explore, but we never ended up making it back there to explore those trails.

We ended up finding another beautiful park through random chance and googling. We found Odiome State Park on New Hampshire’s Atlantic coast. Did you know New Hampshire had a coastline? I did not. This was a relatively small but beautiful park. We had more wildlife sightings (if you don’t count chipmunks) and I took more photos here than the rest of the trip put together.

The landscape in the park is rapidly shifting from grasslands to woodlands to rocky shoreline. And even the shoreline changes dramatically over just a few miles walk. Starting at one end with large angular blocks of stone along the coast and shrinking down to smaller and smaller stones.

I was happy to see the Common Eiders just off the shoreline swimming through the tides. I have seen these types of birds on only a few occasions because we don’t have them where I live in New York. But this sighting was even more special because there were female birds with their young chicks, and I had never seen baby Eiders before. It was really fun to watch and photograph the baby birds as they navigated the waves while swimming. One tiny Eider chick was standing on a rock with their mama surrounded by ocean with increasingly large waves threatening to wash the baby off the rock. And I thought for sure the small bird would never be able to stay on the rock. But the waves never succeeded at dislodging the tiny bird form its perch.

I was able to get more photographs of Killdeer than I ever have before. The Killdeer must have been nesting nearby. They were performing a behavior where they pretend to be injured and unable to fly as they walk along the shore with wings and trails spread awkwardly to lead predators away from the nest. I had never been able to get as close or observe this behavior for as long as we were able to hear.

Watching the Killdeer lead me to finding a tiny Spotted Sandpiper hiding among the large rock outcropping leading out into the ocean. These tiny birds are hard to spot and disappear easily behind any undulation in the terrain or other objects along a shoreline. I like the sense of scale you get with this photo of a Spotted Sandpiper standing among the stones.

Then as a bit of cuteness overload as we were making our way back to the car this Eastern Cottontail Rabbit was sprawled out in a clearing its not a care in the world. The rabbit didn’t even seem to mind our presence as they laid there for quite a while as the trail lead us closer and closer to their position.

As always I find places to fall in love with on our trips. I really need to get back to New Hampshire again sooner than it took us to return this time. But, hopefully the temperature will be cooler and there will be fewer bugs.

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