Maidstone State Park – Tuesday Tour Guide

Sunday was our first time visiting Maidstone State Park. We went for a potluck with a group of friends, and it was a great chance to explore our area more!

The park was about an hour away from Littleton (which is really nothing up here in the North Country, especially to my Texan husband). It was a very pleasant drive traveling further north in New Hampshire, and then the park was just across the Connecticut River in Vermont.

Maidstone Lake is a 796 acre glacial lake.  The water depths vary greatly.  A lot of it is shallow, but I was told that the water gets as deep as 122 feet in spots.  I was also told that this was the second cleanest lake in Vermont, and the water was amazingly clear.

Maidstone State Park is the most remote State Park in Vermont, and to get there we had to drive on a dirt/gravel road for about five miles. Along the road, there were a lot of wood carvings in the shapes of different animals.  The kids really enjoyed pointing out the different animal carvings that they saw.

When we arrived at the Day Use Area, we paid our entrance fee and went ahead to the parking area.  Our friend group had rented the park’s Picnic Pavilion, so we had a discounted entry rate.  The normal entry rate is not that much though ($4 for adults and $2 for kids over 3).

From the parking area, we found the beach easily, but had to look a little harder to find the Picnic Pavilion.  It was tucked away through the woods and gave our group a lot of privacy and the feeling of having our own separate area.

The beach area was sandy and clear.  Even on a Sunday in August, it was not very busy.  I swam out with the kids and lake bottom was sandy and clean all the way out to some floating buoys.  The buoys marking the swimming area were out far enough that the water was over my head, but the water does not get deep quickly in that area.  Saoirse had a large area where she could splash and play in the water, but still touch the ground.

There were bathrooms and changing stalls behind the beach area, which was very convenient.  The park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938 and upgraded in the 1970’s.  The bathrooms definitely seemed to be part of the 1970’s upgrade.  There was no running water inside the bathrooms by the beach (although apparently the camping areas do have running water in their bathrooms), but there was a water spigot outside that kids were using to rinse off.  The bathrooms were very clean and the changing stalls had benches and hooks to make changing easier (especially with young kids).

The kids had a blast playing in the water all day.  The water was a little chilly, but not bad at all for New England lake water.  I did eventually have to force Saoirse out of the water when she started shivering.  Even without swimming the kids had so much fun playing in the sand, exploring the woods, having a picnic with friends and going out on our friend’s boat.

Maidstone State Park was gorgeous and we had a lot of fun exploring it. We only checked out the Day Use Area, but they also have extensive hiking trails and campsites that would be a lot of fun to check out sometime.

If you want to know more about the park or the lake, check out the Vermont State Parks page here:  https://vtstateparks.com/maidstone.html

Note: I shared this post to a blog link-up called Our World Tuesday. If you want to see posts from other bloggers about their areas, go check it out here!