Cumberland Bay State Park Campground

NYS's most northeastern state campground sits right on the shores of beautiful Lake Champlain. Our site #119 (formerly #47) was the perfect place to spend a week in late September (our 2nd time in 2 yrs). With the summer bustle gone, the beach is huge and very wide, well maintained (you can see tracks from the grooming machine) and at your doorstep just down over a sea wall and concrete sidewalk! While its too cold in this neck of the woods for swimming, but the beach is beautiful for walks, sunrise and sunsets, building sand castles (our grandsons fav), and for watching many kite surfers. NOTE- in the Fall or early spring you could get some pretty strong winds coming off the lake. We also have only stayed here so far in mid to late September and it has been quiet and peaceful. I suspect in summer months with more families with small kids it could be a little bit more noisy and hectic.

SITES: This 100 loop is dry camping, very limited # of sites in the 300 loop (best site is 313)-300 loop does have electric but these book out solid immediately when available. Most sites in the 100 loop are sandy soil and do require some leveling on your part- then there is decent lawn surrounding each site. There are trees for shade at most sites but do not impede backing in or slides if you have them. The spacing is decent but not as large and private as most other NYS campgrounds we visit. With our site we had about 18 feet to next rig on our streetside and a good 40 feet of width on our curbside. We did have to do some significant front to back leveling on our site #119. Be sure to have plenty of leveling blocks with you! The beauty of this site is it is located at the bend in the roadway and very easy to back into and then pull straight out when leaving. It is also nice and close to the bath house should you prefer to use the lav facilities rather than your own onboard lav. The sites closer to the road and to the north of the check in area are geared more towards smaller campers and tenters and are mostly on lawn. Some are open with no shade but the further north you go on that side it gets into all trees and some sites may be gravel. Roadways in the campground are mixed paved and gravel. There is a new bath house atop a small rise in the northern campsite sections which is equally as modern, clean and well kept as the main bath house by the lakeside. There is no boat launch or access that we could see. There is a day use beach and picnic area on the other side with their own beach access areas and there was no issues with non campers coming into the campground area that we saw.

FACILITIES: The campground has excellent campground facility buildings despite most sites being dry camping. A very modern bath house is only about 4 years old and boasts excellent large and super clean bathrooms, showers with doors and individual changing areas. The laundry facilities are excellent, modern and well maintained and in the same place as the main bath house. A very nice modern playground is right next door so you can do laundry while tending to little ones at the playground easily. Again, playground is very new as the park had some upgrades about 4 yrs ago to its facility buildings. The two lane dump station is one of the very best laid out and maintained we have seen at any state park in NY or northeast for that matter- plenty of space to get in, we have never had to wait to dump and the equipment is in excellent condition. The park check in office is small, they do sell wood if needed. NYS has very strict rules on firewood so ck that if coming from beyond 50 miles.
NOTE: if you are not traveling with full fresh water tanks then the easiest fresh water fill is at the dump station area. It is not very well marked so look for it, just a plain spigot on a post. Otherwise there is also another fresh water fill spigot just past the dump station and on the lawn on the right before the campsites start. We had to use our Water Bandit attachment there though as it is not threaded to handle a hose connection.

LOCATION AND THINGS TO DO IN THE AREA: As for location, of course, being on the shores of Lake Champlain with expansive views of the Vermont Green Mountains across the lake is a gem enough, but a somewhat hidden gem is the City of Plattsburgh itself. This is a college town (state university) and that helps to enable it to have some great cafes, many ethnic and unique restaurants and kitchy shops including two terrific, affordable group antique shops. Their farmers market in downtown is great. Also there are some excellent museums especially with naval history. The Battle of Plattsburg in the War of 1812 features prominently and the Kent-DeLord House and Martime museums should be on your list to visit in season. Also handy is the fact that Interstate RT 87-The Adirondack Northway is a beautiful highway and the main route between Albany and Montreal Canada- the campground is literally 10 minutes off the highway making access very easy. Right off the highway are several large shopping malls and plazas with big box, groceries, hardware, camping gear and more. A great restaurant is The Butcher Block Restaurant on the west side of the highway (cousin to the Log Jam Restaurant in Lake George). If you are looking for day trips while staying at Cumberland Bay, Montreal is only about 1 hour north (not including crossing time) and the WILD Center, Adirondack Experience and the Ferry over to VT "Champlain Islands" and VT to Church Street in Burlington VT are all great trips! Our grandsons (8 and 6) loved the ice cream truck who came through the campground in the late afternoons too! I am giving the location a 4 star simply because as with most of the Adirondack and northern NY area you are not close to a lot of major attractions but you are close to great hiking, boating, and as listed above.

We love this campground very much and 2022 will mark the 3rd yr in a row we will be camping here. This time we have booked 2 weeks in August to avail ourselves and our visiting grandsons to swimming. I have recently noticed that NYS appears to have made some changes to their pricing of sites. The base fee has always been $15 per night for the dry camp sites, but now I see they have added extra amenity fees for things like "waterfront" so rates on this campsite may be higher in future. There are only I believe 7 waterfront/beach front sites- so book early to get them as they are high in demand.

We camp in our 32 foot travel trailer, no slides.