Camping at Glimmerglass

We spent Saturday night camping at Glimmerglass State Park with folks from our church. I had never been to Glimmerglass–or Cooperstown at all, for that matter–so it was a new adventure.

I wasn’t actually psyched about it. I’m getting lazier as the summer wears on, and the prospect of packing up the car for a long ride was daunting. But we’d wimped out and skipped it last year, and I thought to myself–repeatedly–that we’d been sort of lame-o for not going. Plus the girls love to camp. So I sucked it up, bargaining that it would be fun once we got there.

And indeed it was. In fact, we didn’t even have to pack too much, because dinner was provided, so we threw the makings for s’mores, some granola and protein bars, and a few beers in the cooler and we were good to go.

We camped along the Beaver Pond Loop, which is described as “primitive camping.” What, exactly, is primitive camping? Well, this:

And, alas, these:

That’s okay. We can handle it. Other sections of the park include bathrooms and hot showers, which is pretty luxurious. For our large group, it was excellent because we were able to take over an entire area of our own. There were also two groovy warming huts which some of our friends enjoyed.


Talk about luxury camping!

These were by Beaver Pond, where there’s ice skating in the winter. For summertime, there was catch-and-release fishing. Not my cuppa, but the kids enjoyed it. Cute W decided that we absolutely must come back this winter for a tubing and skating extravaganza. I’m in.

The rest of the site was lovely, with plenty of space and the cushiest, most level grass it’s ever been my pleasure to sleep on. No, really. It was delightful.

It was a not-too-far walk over to the beach on Otsego Lake. I was too busy chitchatting in the water to take pictures, but there’s one here.  Actually, you could even bike or drive over to the lake if you were feeling super-lazy. There was plenty of space, and you’re allowed to canoe or kayak as well. There was plenty of vegetation to try to slow you down, but the arching lakeside trees made it well worth the rowing effort.

There were nature trails right from our campsite, with deer and other nature.

Orange Salamander

The group camping made life easy. After some beach swimming, we headed back to camp where our delightful leader led crafts. If you can believe it, this is the first lanyard that I’ve ever made:

There was a delightful smorgasbord, with our friend who’d shopped confessing that she’d shopped hungry, so there was a ton of food. Yummy, yummy Cedar’s Spinach Dip.  And of course, s’mores.

We even made a keen profit. The next day when I was unpacking, I found that, although we’d brought along a package of 6 Hershey Bars to contribute for s’mores, we somehow managed to come home with 11 Hershey Bars. You’ve got to love the chaos of someone trying to hide the chocolates when sugar-buzzed children are requesting thirds.

On Sunday we packed up and went to the Farmers’ Museum, which you’ll hear about later.

Oh, and while I was looking up links, I found this groovy little Camping This Weekend section, where you can type in a landmark and it will list available nearby campsites. Seemed like a perfect tool for any other procrastinating campers out there.

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *