RV Campgrounds in Connecticut: Hookups, Sites, Honest Reviews

Connecticut is a small state with a complicated relationship to its own wilderness. Roughly sixty percent of it is forested now, which sounds impressive until you remember that by 1900 the figure was closer to twenty — the hills had been clear-cut for charcoal, pasture, and the tanning industry, and what we hike through today is essentially second- and third-growth that came back when the sheep economy collapsed. That history matters for RV camping because nearly every campground worth naming sits on land that was either farmed flat or logged bare within living memory; the "woodsy" feel is real, but it is also recent.

The other thing to know up front: Connecticut's state-park system, much of it laid out during the CCC build-out of the 1930s and expanded in the mid-century, was not designed with full hookup RV camping in mind. The state has excellent public campgrounds. It does not, with a few exceptions, have excellent RV campgrounds in the public system. If you want sewer at your site, you are going to a private RV park. I will say this more than once because the marketing copy out there blurs it.

The state-park situation, honestly

The Connecticut DEEP state parks system runs a handful of campgrounds that accept RVs, but "accept" is doing some work in that sentence. Most sites are gravel or dirt pull-ins with no hookups at all; a few parks offer electric only; full hookup is essentially nonexistent on public land here. If you are towing a small trailer and you are comfortable boondocking with a dump station on the way out, this is fine — actually better than fine, because the settings are good and the rates are reasonable.

The parks I would point a first-timer toward: Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison (the largest shoreline campground in the state, named for the Hammonasset, an Algonquian-speaking people whose territory this was before the 1639 land transfers); Rocky Neck State Park in East Lyme, which has a smaller, quieter loop and a genuinely good beach; and Hopeville Pond State Park in Griswold, which sits on what was a mill pond for most of the nineteenth century and feels like it. None of these will give you a sewer hookup. Hammonasset has a dump station and that is the deal.

Up in the northwest, Housatonic Meadows State Park in Sharon is technically RV-accessible but the sites are tight and the river road in is a real consideration for anything over about 25 feet. I have watched a Class C try to back into site 50-something there and it was not joyful. Check current site dimensions on the DEEP reservation portal before you commit.

The private RV parks that actually do full hookup

For genuine full hookup RV camping in Connecticut — water, electric (30/50 amp), and sewer at the site — you are looking almost entirely at private campgrounds, and most of them cluster in the eastern third of the state, in the rolling country between the Thames and the Rhode Island line. This is not an accident. That part of Connecticut was historically Mohegan and Pequot land, became dairy and small-grain farms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and has had the space and the soft topography to support large commercial campgrounds since the family-camping boom of the late 1960s.

Strawberry Park Resort Campground (Preston)

The largest and best-known private RV park in the state. Full hookup sites, a pool complex, live music on summer weekends, and a clientele that is genuinely loyal in a way that surprised me the first time I stayed there. It is not quiet. People call places like this "hidden gems"; this one has hundreds of sites, a paved main road, and a website with a concert calendar — it is not hidden, and that is fine, it is just a different product than a state park loop. Shoulder season (May, late September) is when I would go. Mosquitoes drop, kids are in school, and you can hear the the frogs at night.

Odetah Camping Resort (Bozrah)

Built around a private lake, full hookups available, and a layout that gives you a little more breathing room between sites than Strawberry Park does. The name is borrowed from an Algonquian word for "home place," which is the kind of marketing decision I have feelings about but will leave alone today. Good for families with kids who want to swim and paddle without leaving the property.

Mystic KOA Holiday (North Stonington)

If you want a base for the southeast coast — Mystic Seaport, Stonington Borough, the casinos if that is your thing — this is the obvious pick. Full hookup pull-throughs, the predictable KOA standard of cleanliness and predictability, and a price point that reflects its proximity to a tourist economy. I would not call it scenic. I would call it functional, which is sometimes what you want.

Highland Orchards Resort Park (North Stonington)

Down the road from the KOA, on an actual former orchard. Some of the apple trees are still there. Full hookups, seasonal sites that dominate the layout (a common pattern at CT private parks — be aware that "transient" sites are often a minority).

Wolf's Den Family Campground (East Haddam)

Central Connecticut, on the Salmon River drainage. Full hookup sites, lots of seasonal residents, and the usual pool-and-playground infrastructure. East Haddam itself is worth a wander; the Goodspeed Opera House on the river is a piece of nineteenth-century theater history that has survived improbably long.

The Litchfield Hills and the northwest

If your idea of an RV trip leans toward hiking and trout streams rather than pool parties, the northwest corner is the geography you want, but the trade-off is that full hookup options thin out considerably. The Aaplachian Trail crosses through here — about 50 miles of it traverse Connecticut between Kent and Salisbury — and the corridor of land along the Housatonic is some of the prettiest country in the state, but the campgrounds are small, state-run, and primitive by RV-park standards.

Private options in this corner are limited. Lone Oak Campsites in East Canaan offers full hookups and is the practical choice if you want to base out of the northwest with a larger rig. White Pines Campsites in Barkhamsted is another, smaller, family-run operation closer to the People's State Forest — a name worth knowing, because it was assembled in the 1920s through a deliberate effort to put land into public hands before the timber companies could finish what they had started. Geology in this corner is older and harder than the coastal plain; the schist and gneiss bedrock that gives the hills their shape is part of the same orogenic event that built the rest of the southern Aaplachians, and you can feel it in the steepness of the trail grades.

For day-hike planning out of any northwestern base, AllTrails' Connecticut page is reasonable as a starting point, though I would cross-check distances against the DEEP trail maps, which tend to be more honest about what is actually a trail versus an old woods road. Our own trails section has a few writeups for the Bear Mountain and Bull's Bridge areas.

Things the brochures don't tell you

• Seasonal site dominance. At most Connecticut private RV parks, a majority of sites are leased to seasonal residents. Transient availability on summer weekends is genuinely tight — book well ahead.
• Tree cover and slide-outs. Eastern CT campgrounds were often carved out of mature oak-hickory stands. Beautiful, but measure your clearance and your slide path before you commit to a site.
• Mosquitoes and ticks. The state has a serious tick load (blacklegged and lone star both established now). This is not a gear-list lecture, but it is a reason to favor shoulder season.
• Dump stations at state parks. Most have them, but hours and access vary. Confirm before you arrive on a Sunday afternoon.
• Casino traffic. Southeast CT private parks fill up around event weekends at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Plan accordingly.
• The shoreline is humid. Hammonasset and Rocky Neck in July are not a dry heat (there is no such thing as a dry heat in Connecticut, but coastal humidity is its own category.
• Cell service in the northwest. Spotty. If you work from the road, test before you settle in for a week.

A few words on what to bring (and not)

I am not going to write you a gear list — there are enough of those on the internet, and our gear section is more useful than anything I would extemporize here. What I will say is that Connecticut camping rewards layering more than most people expect; nights in the Litchfield Hills can drop into the forties even in June, and a proper three-season sleeping bag is more useful than a heavier one you will sweat into. If you're tent-camping out of your rig at a state park overflow site, the same logic applies to your tent choice. Cooking outside is pleasant most of the season; a simple two-burner stove is plenty.

Cross-referencing and booking

Connecticut state-park sites are booked through the DEEP system, not Recreation.gov — which trips up out-of-state visitors regularly, because the federal portal is what you use almost everywhere else. Private parks have their own systems, and the better-known ones (Strawberry Park, the KOAs) fill summer weekends months out. For a broader sense of what public lands the state offers beyond camping, our parks overview is a place to start; for day-trip planning around your base, the hiking section covers the major trail systems.

Honest take

If full hookup RV camping is non-negotiable for you, Connecticut is a private-park state, and your best options are concentrated in the eastern third — Strawberry Park if you want the busy resort experience, Odetah for something a little calmer, the Mystic KOA if you want to be near the coast. If you can live without sewer at the site and just want a dump station on the way out, the state parks are a far better experience, and Hammonasset and Rocky Neck are the two I return to. Go in May or September. Pay the extra night to stay through a weekday. The frogs and the light are worth it.