Elk Neck State Park, Elk Neck, MD

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Sunday, June 15 (Father’s Day) -Elk Neck State Park, North East, MD –

We left Greenbelt and arrived here around noon after driving around Baltimore. It was a Sunday and the drive was great. We also took route 295 (Baltimore-DC Expressway) to Baltimore and it was a pretty drive and it took about the same amount of time as 95 but it’s goes by a number of NPS sites along the way. When we arrived At Elk Neck State Park our site was not ready so we drove around this big park checking out the other loops and the park store. At 1 we were able to move into our site and hookup. Nice facilities! We are planning to ride our bikes, walk around and go swimming before we have dinner. It’s a nice day and hopefully it will be tomorrow when we have our longest drive of the whole trip. It definitely is cooler today than it has been.

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There are 268 campsites in quite a few loops. Over 2000 acres! We stayed in the North East loop  site 14 which was good with shade in the afternoon with full hookups because we wanted to dump the last night of our camping trip before we drive back to Rhode Island the next day. They have two other loops with just electricity (these are not as private as most of the other loops). They also have about 5 other loops without any utilities. These loops are pretty, private and some of them (Miles & Elk) have some sites looking out from the cliffs looking down on the river. At the state park one can boat, fish, swim on the western shore, bird-watching, canoeing, and hunt in season. It really is a beautiful state park on an inlet between the North East River, Elk River and the Chesapeake Bay– there was a nice breeze from the rivers considering that the temperature was in the 90’s we did not have on our air conditioner. If you are over 62 from any state and stay at a Maryland State Park Sunday through Thursday you get 50% your camping fee. You can make reservations but on weekends you must reserve two nights!have the air conditioner on.

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There is a park store with a little restaurant attached and behind it is a trail that goes to a lake where one can catch some Bass. There are a number of other trails to hike in the park – one goes down to the Elk Island lighthouse. The trails go through forests, wetlands, marshes.  The roads are a little hilly to ride your bikes but it can be done! Nice park and plan to return.

Planning to get up around 3 am to leave tomorrow morning to get over the GW bridge before 7 and head home!