Top 5 things to do in New Hampshire while dropping your child off at camp

I have been operating summer camps in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire since 2008 and one of the fun parts of my job is helping our camp families with the logistics of camp drop-off and pick-up…seriously I love this stuff!

Way back before advanced NAV systems on our phones and in our cars ‘logistics’ meant providing step by step directions to camp from wherever a family was driving from. Finding camp is now the easy part but beyond getting here there is so much more that I often help families out with.

The Lakes Region of NH is centrally located in our state just about 2 hours north of Boston and 4 hours north of New York City. Within the Lakes Region are…tons of lakes!…as well as access to mountains, fun towns and small cities, rivers, shopping and more. From hotels and restaurants to adventures and leisure activities here are the top 5 things that I recommend during a quick trip to NH for camp.

1. Get out on the lake!

   • What trip to NH in the summer would be complete without time spent at our gorgeous, pristine lakes? Some families like Lake Winnipesaukee (the ‘big’ lake) for its variety of hotels, restaurants, boat rentals and general wild vibe. From big hotels in Meredith or Laconia to AirBnBs in Moultonborough, Wolfeboro and Alton there are choices and price points for any visitor. You can do anything on Winni including rent a boat or a jetski to navigate the thousands of acres of water, hop on a guided scuba dive to explore a wreck, post up at a beach bar for food, drinks and people watching or just relax on the shore and soak up the sun. If the big lake isn’t your thing (it’s definitely not mine) head to a smaller water body like Newfound, Crescent, Squam, Winnisquam, Bow or Merrymeeting where the pace is slower. On smaller lakes there is more of an opportunity to enjoy watersports like waterskiing, wakeboarding and wakesurfing or non-motorized options like Stand Up Paddleboarding, kayaking and canoeing. Basically there is a lake in NH for whatever you and your family are into and wherever you choose will let you unplug and relax just steps from crystal clear water.

2. Hit the mountains for some hiking!

   • Just up the road from the Lakes Region are the White Mountains, a range that spans the central/north portion of the state and encompasses dozens of peaks. Some are easily summited in a couple of hours while others may involve multi-day treks. A great jumping off point for some hiking exploration is North Conway, NH, our adventure hub. A solid itinerary here for a few days could include hiking one of our 4,000 footers, floating the Saco River, hitching a ride to the top of the notch on the Cannon Aerial Tram, driving the famously windy and scenic Kancamangus Highway and enjoying a beverage at a local brewery. Cheers!

3. Chill out near the ocean.

   • NH is a small state but we boast some amazing oceanfront. Stay in Portsmouth, NH (options range from cheap and adjacent to central and nice to über fancy), a super walkable historic seaside town with endless restaurants, shops, bars and entertainment options. From Portsmouth you can surf some waves, head out to sea to catch a fish, stroll through an early colonial village or just post up at the beach and take it all in!

4. Bike!

   • Wherever you are staying in NH you are always a stone’s throw away from some epic biking. We have everything from gentle rolling rail trails to leg burning single track to gravity defying downhill biking. Mountain biking is a terrific way to take in some nature while also getting your heart going (and earning a stop for some ice cream later on).

5. Stay in our ‘big’ city

   • If getting outdoors isn’t your thing don’t worry, we have a couple ‘cities’ too! Just an hour from camp is Manchester, NH, where you can take in some culture, do a bit of sales tax free shopping, catch a baseball game or a concert and enjoy a little night life on Elm St.

Hopefully this little list helps you out in your NH trip plans so that it’s not just your camper having fun this summer!

-Evan

2023 season recap

We are happy to report that the 2023 summer (our 12th season!) was the best one yet and it is all because of our amazing campers and the greatest staff in camp history. We witnessed wild watersports progression with campers achieving so many of their goals while also thoroughly enjoying swim parties, rope swing breaks, intense games on the field, SUP voyages and countless meals, snacks and desserts. I hope that all of our campers went home tired and happy with new skills and lasting friendships.

After years of running at capacity our goal for 2023 was to slow it all down. Having a full camp is great but the hustle and pressure to give everyone enough time behind the boat meant always watching the clock. This summer we aimed for 16-18 campers each week instead of 20 and it made a massive difference in our program with campers and coaches not only getting more time behind the boats but also more flexibility to do other stuff like pull ten campers at once for over an hour, surf bowls, extended swim breaks, bonus beach time and, maybe, occasionally sleeping in on a rainy morning.

Here are some fun stats from our 12th season:

• 8 weeks of camp from mid-June to mid-August.

• 81.875% full (131 spaces filled out of 160 with 118 unique campers)

• Campers stayed an average of 1.1 weeks at camp

• Average number of campers each week was 16.375

• Campers were 73% boys and 27% girls

• Average camper age was 13.55

• 48% new campers and 52% returners

• Campers chose to wakeboard 40%, wakesurf 50%, waterski 10%

• Campers came from 10 states (CT, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA and TX) as well as Italy and Mexico

• 6 coaches, 1 chef and 1 director

• Average coach age was 20.33

• 3,200 delicious meals served by Chef Cher

• 55 five-gallon buckets of non-meat food scraps diverted from the landfill and fed to our local pigs

• About 175 hours of private lessons on our boats and client boats

• 1 retired Sunday River chairlift won at auction for charity (our winning bid was $800)

• 9,040 pictures and videos uploaded and shared with our camp families

• 21,000 visitors to www.watermonkeycamp.com in the past year (18,000 unique) spent an average of 82 seconds on the site and engaged 36,000 page views

• Winterizing our property took 20 gallons of antifreeze

• 577 hours logged on our two boats plus 23 hours on loaner boats after our new boat blew and engine!

• Our boats had 15 motor oil changes, 2 transmission fluid changes and 1 blown engine

• 3,636.269 gallons of premium marine fuel burned by our boats producing roughly 32.27 metric tons of CO2 (71,132 pounds). We offset this pollution through a donation to CoolEffect.org which has been our charity of choice for over 10 years for carbon offsets.

• We have now offset roughly 410 metric tons of CO2 since 2012!

Before we wrap this up here is a little gift…a Fall Recipe from Chef Cher.

We have some big plans for camp in 2024 and we sincerely hope to see you next summer!

Always feel free to email, call, text, message, write or visit to say hello.

-Evan

2022 season recap

The 2022 season, our 11th summer, was epic. We had so much fun working with our campers in their watersports progression. It was also equally rewarding to see the campers...returning and new...grow as individuals and as a group in the camp setting. Add to that nearly perfect weather and a dream staff and we could not be happier with how things went.

Here are some fun stats!

• 95.71% full (134 spaces filled out of 140 with 121 unique campers)

• Campers stayed an average of 1.11 weeks at camp

• Average number of campers each week was 19.14

• Campers were 67% boys and 33% girls

• Average camper age was 13.68 years old

• 46% new campers and 54% returners

• Campers chose to wakeboard 45%, wakesurf 45%, waterski 10%

• Campers came from 12 states (CT, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI and TX) as well as Canada and Italy

• 1 new camp game (beach kadima foursquare)

• 6 coaches, 1 chef and 1 director

• Average coach age was 20

• 3,950 meals served by Chef Cher

• 75 five-gallon buckets of non-meat scraps fed to local hungry pigs to divert food waste from the landfill

• 10 day campers joined 3 coaches for a week of fun on Lake Sunapee

• 17,428 unique visitors to www.watermonkeycamp.com

• 7,706 photos and videos uploaded and shared with camp families

• We clocked 514 hours on 3 boats…Maverick (Marley), Iceman and Bob (thanks Wheelan family for letting us have Bob back for a week while Maverick was in the shop)

• Our boats had 18 motor oil changes, 1 transmission oil change, 1 blown water pump and 1 blown engine (yikes)

• 2,997.878 gallons of premium gas burned producing roughly 27.196 metric tons of CO2 which we offset with contributions to the Society For The Protection of New Hampshire Forests and CoolEffect.org . Our contributions this year will offset about 75 metric tons of CO2 with the extra going towards camper travel to and from camp!

• We have now offset around 375 metric tons of CO2 since 2012!

And as a parting gift…here is a great fall recipe from Chef Cher: Apple Cider Muffins

We sincerely hope to see all of our campers back here in 2023 and to welcome many more fresh faces to the camp family.

Always feel free to email, call, write, DM, text or stop by to say hello!

Evan

Down to the wire!

Things have been crazy here at camp! We have had so many projects come together just as our staff and campers are about to arrive.

First, let’s rewind to fall ‘21 when we lifted, leveled and built new footings for all of our cabins.

It was a major project and we are so lucky that a super experienced carpenter/contractor tackled it. He first calculated what height the cabin should be at and then, with a laser level, figured out how much each part of the cabin needed to be lifted. This had to happen slowly because of the age of the cabins and how long they have had to settle. If he had lifted them too quickly the wood frames could have broken!

With the cabins raised and leveled, he next dug four foot deep holes and poured new concrete footings which he attached to the building with new, craftsman quality wood trusses. That meant not only a lot of digging and pouring new concrete but also removing the old footings which were mostly cinder blocks. All said and done I moved and stacked four pallets of cinder blocks!

I definitely put my truck to work this offseason! I have brought 20 loads of demolition debris to our dump since August of '21! I probably should have rented a big dumpster but that’s what work trucks are for, right?

With the cabins newly level and on solid footing for the first time in decades it was time to tackle the big goal of the offseason, new bathrooms in every cabin. The existing ones were dark, soggy and, truthfully, a bit gross. My goal with the new bathrooms was to create bright, durable and easy to clean spaces for our campers and guests. I was not great at capturing pictures of the whole process but we ripped out all of the old fixtures, cut out and removed all of the walls up to about 34” and then removed the entire floor, subfloor and joists. Our amazing contractor, Trevor, then rebuilt the rooms from the joists up to the ceiling.

The project was super complicated because each bathroom is different so pretty much every floor, piece of trim and plumbing upgrade was custom. They came out so great, though, and we could not be happier to show our campers!

Of course what would a camp project be without some unexpected issues? As we tore apart the bathrooms we found some leaks in the old roof on one of the cabins. With a new roof definitely not in the budget, camp director and master of absolutely no trades, Evan, hopped to action to lay some rolled asphalt roofing over the bad section of roof. A few weeks later we found some leaky areas on another cabin and, in a driving rainstorm, I again climbed up to patch a spot and save the new bathroom!

Interspersed with the other large projects I also wrapped up the renovated dock for our boats. After installing the new floats I also replaced a few broken planks with new trex decking.

And it is awesome to have a dock that is floating again!

As if all of that was not enough, I also rebuilt all of the mulch beds and landscaping around the cabins! It was a long-overdue project and the cabins now look fantastic. I surrounded each cabin with new river stone to help with drainage and also to secure the new lattice from animals looking to make a home. I then dug up all of the old mulch and dirt, uncovered stones to build new rock boundaries and then filled it all in with natural mulch from locally-felled trees.

And seriously, lastly, cabin 5 received all new windows! The old ones were barely functional and the new windows will let in more light while also functioning better (actually opening and closing).

Whew. That was a lot. As we begin our staff training week it is so satisfying to see the camp looking better than ever.

-Evan

Project Complete!

One of my two major projects this season was to completely replace all of the floats on camp’s massive dock. Over the past few seasons I have noticed that the dock had a tendency to…sink so it was time to do some work!

Our dock is three pieces that make a roughly 40’ by 30’ ‘T’ shape. One piece gets pulled up on shore for the winter and the other two pieces live up on the hill behind our local marina. Here they were in December:

The first step was sourcing plastic floats that were roughly the same size as the existing ones. With the ongoing supply chain issues in all sectors this proved slightly difficult but I managed to find some great ones from a dock supply company in Florida. I won’t shock you with how much new plastic floats cost!

The next step was to remove the old floats. They were HEAVY, mostly fully of water, and all of the bolts were rusted permanently in place. Ratchets worked on some bolts but some required cutting, prying or just general banging until they broke free. I used a hydraulic jack to lift the dock frame section by section and slide the old floats out to make room for the new ones.

My work pictures end there because it got too involved to measure, drill and bolt in the new floats with stainless steel hardware. At the end I replaced nine floats using 36 sets of bolts, lock nuts and washers. Drilling the aluminum dock ate up three specialty drill bits. I tore open eight of my ten knuckles fighting with rusty bolts. In all it took around 30 man-hours to get it done from start to finish!

Many thanks to my dad, Wayne, a retired physician who also happens to be super helpful with projects like these and is willing to work for free!

Here is the view from the worksite on top of the hill! Our marina stores hundreds of boats on the hill in super organized lines that stretch for miles!

Check back soon as we complete our other major project this spring…all new bathrooms for each cabin!