Assateague Camping

This isn’t a last minute type of trip, to go camping at Assateague Island. Because of the popularity of the area, campsite reservations must be made 6 months in advance pretty much to the day. The way the national campground works, is that sites become available 6 months ahead of time as a rolling window. Reservations can be made from March 15 through November 15, and from November 16 to March 14 sites are first come first serve.

The campgrounds were pretty nice, but vary widely in size. Pretty much all of them can comfortably support 1 family in a large tent, but multiple tents require careful selection of larger sites. We went with another family, and we booked site B30, which was just barely large enough for both of us.

The benefit of camping during the peak summer weekend season is that the OSV (over sand vehicle) section of the beach where you can drive on has a 145 vehicle limit, and hits that limit early in the morning. And living in Howard County, it’s an almost 3 hour drive to Assateague. So if we need to arrive before 7am, we would need to depart at 4am, which isn’t happening with two kids! So camping from the Friday before and being right next to the beach makes the early morning start much easier.

After a nice evening camping, which included a surprise campsite raid by the wild horses that took a bag of doritos, we got ready the next morning and hit the OSV beach. The benefit of the early start was catching the sunrise on the beach. It was beautiful with the overcast clouds, but clear horizon. Made for some great pictures!

After a great day at the beach, and another nice evening at camp, we headed out on Sunday and after grabbing our traditional All-You-Can-Eat blue crabs at Blu Crabhouse and Raw Bar, we wrapped up the trip and headed home. Another great trip!

Check out more photos in the gallery!