Delaware Seashore State Park — Attraction in Bethany Beach

We visited on Labor Day weekend. We stayed in the cottages at the north inlet campground Indian river marina. We only visited the beaches on the north side on this trip, although we've stayed at this park multiple times on both sides. Once in tents and other in RV.

The lifesaving station visitor center is an important place to visit to get all the info on the parks as well are local state parks that fall under their perview like Fenwick Island and Holtz Landing. They have info and trails and water conditions. This is where you'd go to get your gift shop items. They also have a live saving station museum you can tour for a cost.

The beaches on Northside were great. We didn't use the bath houses really because we were staying in the cottages not too far away.

There were a lot of surfers. Thinking this was because the hurricane winds were causing large waves. There was one sufer drowning further north over the weekend near rohobeth. It was hard to find a spot for the little kids to play with so many people.

Friday was fine, but high tide Saturday went all the way to dune edges, so there was really no spot for you to set up your chairs and towels. Some people set up on the dunes with the grasses and were destroying them. Some kids were digging them out on purpose. It was hard to keep my mouth shut. We were there for almost 4 hrs and only saw one park ranger come by on a 4 ATV.

Wife and kids did an 11 mile hike from the north inlet coin beach to tower beach at the north end and back. They said it was much harder than they expected because of the number of surf fishermen they had to walk around. The hike up wasn't bad, but the hike back there were many more people with trucks on the beach and loud music and drinking and not really fishing. Kind of ruined what they were hoping would be a nice nature hike on the beach.

Hiking the bridge at night is a must. There were multiple families up there Sunday night when Bethany had Labor Day fireworks and also some location across the bay. You could see both clearly from the bridge.

Only negatives were the number of visitors (which I assumed to be locals) who kept driving up the exit one way only road in the parking lot. Guessing this was to avoid having to pay for entry into the park. One almost hit us as we were leaving the parking lot. Staying on the campgrounds you can enter and leave the parking lot as you please with your parking pass.

We were also packing up in the parking lot when a transformer on a power line blew. It was loud, and we called 911 after we noticed it started a fire. The fire department was quick to be on site and put the fire out, but the worst thing is that we didn't have power in the cottage on a really hot day for almost 7 hrs. The only other negative for the cottages themselves is that when they say to bring linens, that also means pillows and blankets. We only brought sheets and pillowcases. We had to drive to Walmart to buy pillows and blankets.

Overall, we'd probably stay here again. We would probably do our best to avoid Labor Day...

My family has been visiting DSSP campground for over forty years so you could say I have just about seen it all. It all started with camping on the south side way back in the 70’s when there were only 2 electric rows available for campers. Over the years there have been many, many changes, some good, some great and some that are just horrible. It certainly was a great addition to the campground when they added the full 3 point hookup service to the north side, although whoever designed the locations for the water, sewer and electric must have never designed a campground before.

The pros for DSSP campground is obviously the location, right at the inlet with the ocean not very far away. The south side beach is guarded and clean and certainly full in the summer. You can easily fish from the rocks at the inlet or try your hand at surf fishing in the ocean.

Now the cons, the lack of normal everyday maintenance is just abysmal. Now I understand that all of these things may not fall under DNREC responsibilities but as a customer I would just like to see them fixed no matter who’s responsible. The railings along the inlet are so rusted that they are a hazard and have been for years. The sidewalks on the north side are in such bad shape that they cannot be used. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to purchase steel benches and put them near the salt air of the ocean to just rust away? The beach on the north side of the inlet is now almost totally gone since they have probably over a million dollars worth of sand pumping equipment sitting idle on the south side. The beach has just been washed away. There will be nowhere to sit except on the dunes at high tide. Even little things have been totally forgotten about. When they built the north side campground path lights were installed around the park, they haven’t worked for years and I’m sure they were not cheap. It could be as simple as just needing new bulbs but who knows, some are under sand now. Trees were planted but totally forgotten also. When the beach gets hit by a nor’easter it gets strong winds out of the northeast. All that is needed is to install one tree stake and strap per tree to keep it from blowing over and dying ($5.00 from Amazon). It just seems that management just does not care about basic maintenance, they leave it up to the campground hosts to basically run the campground but that has nothing to do with maintenance. I just hope that going forward more effort can be made to provide maintenance that will benefit everyone because this is a wonderful location for a campground, it just needs a...

Very beautiful place with some really awful police that prey on tourists. Watch out driving to the beach to park your car. The very unfriendly police have a speed trap where they hide like cowards down at the bottom of the parking lot for the beach to prey on unsuspecting tourists that bring money into there city and STATE... The speed goes from 55 to 25 on the ramp to the beach and there is only ONE sign at the very beginning of the ramp showing the speed of 25 MPH on the street to the beach. So I get pulled over and the officer asks if I knew the speed and I honestly replied back that the only sign I saw was the 55mph sign so I was doing 38mph. I tell him we are from out of state on our first day of vacation and that we just got here from an 8+ hour drive. Officer asks for my ID and comes back about 10 minutes later and says I’m cutting you a break and hands me a speeding ticket. What a GREAT way to ruin a vacation. I was at fault for speed but based on the whole true story above, cutting me a break would have been giving me a warning. Instead the officer says he’s cutting me a break but really didn’t do anything for us. So, extremely bummed out, we take our dog to the beach after the 15 plus minute holdup only to get approached by several people saying “I saw you pulled over in the parking lot, they are always praying on tourists with that speed trap”. So even the locals know the police are only out to GET PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY TOURISTS and ticket them. What an absolute shame and a terrible image for Delaware Seashore State Park. We loved the place but after driving 1350 miles round trip with no speeding ticket only to be ticketed in the parking lot at Delaware Seashore State Park says a lot. The rude police have the $175 speeding ticket that we paid and I hope they are happy they got our money. In return, we will never return to Delaware Seashore State Park again. What a bad image Delaware Seashore State Park Police... Even the locals know you guys are preying on tourists... You would think being honest to the police officers questions that I mentioned above would give you a tiny bit of leniency and a possible warning. Nope!! Instead they held us up for approximately 20 minutes right before we even had a chance to set foot on the beach for the first time, after driving 9 hours to get there. Hopefully you guys are enjoying our revenue we brought in as tourists... Its the last cent you guys will EVER get of our families hard earned money! Good job scaring away the tourists Delaware Seashore...