Spacious Skies Campgrounds - French Pond — Hotel in Henniker

We have been camping for about 25 years now, this was our second stay at this campground, our first since it changed names (formerly Mile-away). The first stay, 8-9 years ago, was near the beach/ mini golf (now a playground). Only issue was getting our 29 foot camper in and out of the spot near the beach.

We thought about going away this year for 4th of July, long weekend, and remembered this campground. Looked it up and found they had several sites available! We chose one up in the woods, that from the map, appeared to be easy to get into. It was not. The roads have narrow spots, so before we even got to our spot some rocks has rolled into the road, acted like wheel chocks. After surveying the spot, debating if I should go back down and see if there were any other spots available, I devised a plan, with my son walking it to make sure I could make it all the way around the circle (apologies to the person who has flowers planted on the corner). I have been in tight spots before, this was not the worst, but in the top 5. Lots of trees, rock walls, just difficult. The nice folks across the way moved theirs cars so I could swing it a bit wider, and did say "good job" when I finally got it into the site.

Once parked we started to hook up utilities, all were in the back of the site, on the wrong side. I probably should have repositioned the trailer towards the middle of the site. But the large tree in the center of the site would have prevented my awning going out all the way if I put it in the best place for hookups.

Hookups were old. Just a 30 amp plug, no breaker (very careful with what we were running, didn't want to risk tripping a breaker someplace). And we used everything we had, electric extension cord, all our water hose and all 3 sewer hoses connected together. There was a cable TV hookup, we had no wi-fi, no cell service, so hooked it up just to see if it worked, it didn't (don't remember seeing it as an amenity, but figured we would try). There was wi-fi down near the office if we needed it).

First night was interesting, we went down to check out where the bathrooms were and get some firewood. There were police in the camp store, we decided we wouldn't have a campfire that night. When we got back to our site the police were across the way talking to someone. Next couple hours that guy was trying to tow an old car around, that started again first the morning, more car pulling, motorcycle revving, moving a trailer around... Not the campground's fault, just was pretty noisy for a few hours.

The campground was nice. Woman who checked us in was fast and efficient. We had two cars, no problem getting a second parking pass. There were a few activities planned, not overwhelming, free coffee one morning, make a necklace, Saturday morning cartoons. We did play candy bar bingo, guy who ran it seemed nice and friendly. We didn't use pool, it was small, not very deep, and very crowded (for it's size). There is also a beach area, would be appealing if the pulled out weeds. After you got ankle deep it was solid weeds. My wife did bring out a kayak, and said it was nice once she got out past the weeds. There was a little playground for smaller kids, there are two bathhouses we found, both were clean and appeared to be renovated in the recent past (or just maintained well, I don't remember them from my last visit).

Although most of the sites are transient (nightly/ weekly rental), there are some seasonal. Several sites are year round (heated water), and there are several campers that have seen better days. I am not one for lots of campground rules, but broken down vehicles, and broken down trailers with lots of "stuff" on the site do take away from the experience a bit.

We would enjoy going back. Perhaps adding "suggested max length" and updated...

We came here after visiting other Spacious Skies campgrounds. We were anticipating a very nice stay. We booked a "Lakeview" site. It might be "lakeview" in the dead of winter with no foliage. Although we had relayed the size of our camper in advance when we made our reservation, the site we were assigned to might have been large enough for a pop-up camper, but by no means could accommodate our 34'.

The staff member when we checked in was very gracious and friendly. The two other employees we encountered were also much more than we could have asked for. They tried to help us in every way to jockey into that site. The girl was even moving rocks and the guy was giving the best directions to try and move our camper. He was even breaking branches on the trees so that we didn't scratch our truck. No matter how we wiggled, there just wasn't any possibility of getting into that site. We were assisted in backing out of the very tight spot were were in and all of the way to get settled in our new site. The campground needs to control what size camper can manuever into which site from the start. This was July 4th time period. Was I able to get this spot just to get the campground maximised for revenue? The entire trying and manuevering took over an hour. And after a 6 hour trip to get to the campground, we were exhausted.

The guy that helped us took it on himself to go to the office and see if there were anywhere else we could move to. They found a site that had been canceled. It was quite large enough to satisfy our size needs. He and that girl were heros to get us out of a bad situation. In the middle of our troubles, we had heard that the General Manager stopped by, but didn't stay or introduce himself. He's very lucky to have had the most capable staff.

I have to mention the offering of WiFi. Well, a, no. I measured the speed when I would have thought it was the least used time. I saw a high of 29 MBPS. I have had to readdress the WiFi at least 6 times today because I keep dropping the signal It performed very sporadic.

And the excuse that it was the 4th of July doesn't cut it. Times like these are anticipated and planned. The needs of the customer should be paramount. Trust me I know the challenges after having been in the hospitality industry, primarily in destination resort management for 45 years. Plan ahead. For these days, better WiFi is worth an extra $5 per night per site and better support your infrastructure.

The number of stars rewarded was due to the wonderful,...

A nice campground but with a few small issues. We booked a water site many months ago but when we arrived, our site had been moved because apparently we didn't pay an extra fee to lock in our site. A small inconvenience and it may be a more normal practice to charge more money at these "resorts" for your site but in my opinion that's just a money grab and a waste of time and effort on everyone's part, except the campground that just makes more money out of this. So, we didn't get the site we wanted on the water which was not really a water view site at all because of the overgrowth. The site they gave us was next to the office, small and under a huge flood light that we only noticed after dark. When we moved and set up our teardrop at B5 we could periodically smell a horrible stench. The stench was coming from the sewage drain that was not capped but was actually covered by a rock. The rock was not even flat and was the source of the stench as it was letting the sewage stink out and that's why I did not notice (because it was hidden by a rock) while pulling in and setting up. When buying wood I was told it was hard wood and rather expensive at that. $10 for a small bundle $20 for a large bundle. Most other campgrounds charge $6 or $7 for kiln dried, bug free hard wood which $6 or $7 is the usual price because of the kiln work involved. In fact this campgrounds wood was a soft pine which was very wet, some was rotted and bug infested. It did not burn easily because it was so wet. This was not a premium firewood I was paying for. Then, on Saturday afternoon, they totally ran out and had no wood for Saturday night fires. Apparently more was delivered after dark saturday night but too late for us as we were planning on using the fire to test cook foilpack meals. We also found the beach to be unswimable because of overgrowth. This was a key factor for us going to this campground, to be able to have a clean spot to swim. Bathroons - The bathroom closest to the beach was clogged and overflowing and not opened the entire time we were there and the other bathroom by the pavilion had one stall that was closed off and not working. This is supposed to be a premium resort That comes with a premium price to stay there... I cannot recommend staying at this campground and now I will not stay at ANY campground that charges extra money to lock...