Bigelow Preserve

Round Barn, on the south shore of Flagstaff Lake is our favorite spot to camp. Sites are beautiful and free in Bigelow Preserve, with a fire ring and grill, pit toilets and picnic tables, great beach, access to Avery Peak via the Safford Brook Trail. But it’s first come, first serve. Every trip we’ve made up here, I have stressed about arriving to find there are no available sites. The stakes are higher when you’ve just transported two small children hours north in the car, and this time the stakes were even higher as we were meeting our friends from New York who also had two children with them. My fears had never been realized, until this time. We arrived in the parking lot after some drama with our canoe trailer on the way up and greeted our family friends from away. They were in the area for a mountain bike race at Sugarloaf. There were no sites. Nothing at Round Barn, nothing at the other primitive camping locations that we checked (Kati and I only knew about them because we had observed them from the canoe years before). We decided to go back to Round Barn and at least swim, have a fire and dinner at the public beach. We posted up at the picnic table 20 feet from the water, haunted by all of the “no camping” signs surrounding the area. We considered trying to do it anyway but in the end we’re all rule followers deep down. We found a clearing up in the woods on the other side of the parking lot and set up our tents, which meant no fire or picnic table. We ended up spending the whole weekend at the picnic table by the beach with the fire ring and grill, best spot around, only we had a short walk to our tent each night. Other than sleeping, we spent the whole weekend swimming, paddling, cooking, and eating by the beach. Our friend taught his eight year old daughter to catch crayfish while his six-year-old son and our two girls (3yo and 5yo) built homes for the captured crawdads out of sand, rocks and water on the beach. It's amazing how good weather and great friends make all the difference, even in the face of my worst logistical fear.