Retirement Dreams: Assateague Island National Seashore and Assateague State Park

We just spent six days on Assateauge Island, Maryland. We spent three days in Assateague Island National Seashore, and three days in Assateauge State Park. We dry camped in both parks, so finally got a good chance to run our new Champion generator.

The National Park was great with the exception of having LOTS of flies and mosquitoes. The flies are particularly bad because the wild horses come right through your campsite, and leave lots of pony droppings. We stayed in the bayside area, on C40, and the campsite was great - nice and roomy, with a good view of the bay.

Ponies right on our campsite!

Wild pony on the bay right across from our campsite

C40 on the bayside campground Assateague Island National Seashore

The bayside campground is great if you kayak or canoe. They have rentals, and if you bring your own boat, there are lots of places to launch it from.

Campsite J2 in Assateague State Park

We stayed on Loop J in Assateague State Park, because this year it's the only loop in the campground that accepts pets. Next year is a different story, and they are providing certain campsites for pets in the electric H Loop. In fact, we will be staying there next year for two weeks in September.

Our campsite in J Loop was nice and spacious, and it was a short walk to the beach path. It was great being so close to the beach. and we got plenty of walks in, as well as just sitting on the beach. I actually got into the water one day. The weather was great the first day, lots of wind and rain the second day, and the third day was sunny but cooler.

The beach off of J Loop Assateague State Park, Maryland

Our first time out with the generator was a little rocky. The electric starter ran great for the first couple of times, then went totally dead. Bob started it up by hand, but it kept cutting out and stopping for no reason at all. He called up Champion, and they told him to fill the oil all the way up to the top, and that it was stalling because the generator "thought that the oil was low". He did that, and it ran fine once he manually started it up. As far as the electric starter, apparently the battery is no good and we need to replace it. Once it started up, the generator did a great job, and we had no trouble running everything off of it, including the air conditioner.

We really enjoyed Assateague. We usually went to Chincoteague Island, but Toms Cove where we always stayed was getting really expensive. The nice thing about Assateague is that the National Park gives anyone with the Golden Age Passport a 50% discount, and the State park also gives a 50% discount on weekdays if you buy Maryland's Golden Age Passport (only $10.00). It was much cheaper for us to camp here than it would have been at a private campground. I liked the campsites better anyhow - you're not packed together like you are in many of the private parks. All in all it we had a great time, and we were very pleased with our first dry camping experience.