Allen and her cousin Laura Ferrigno, along with Allen’s husband Tim and brother Adam, are bringing Wakeda into its third generation. The campground was started in 1965 by Allen and Ferrigno’s grandparents, Charles “Charlie” and Lucille “Jimmie” Savage, and it’s been in family hands ever since.

The heart of the business is the administration building, a tidy red cottage with a “Welcome to Wakeda” sign and an old wishing well flanked by flowers.

Wakeda history

The cousins sat at a picnic table to review Wakeda’s history, and theirs. The camaraderie was easy, with both women finishing each other’s sentences and laughing at each other’s reminiscences.

The property was farmland before the Savages bought the 180 acres, of which the campground occupies 90 acres. “They had friends who said, ‘You should turn this into a campground,’” Ferrigno said. They did, and started with 28 sites, for tents and the earliest primitive trailers.

“It was really, really small,” Ferrigno said.

The campground grew and passed through their parents’ generation, adding a large playground, laundry rooms, showers and RV hookups. They now have 397 sites available, ranging from simple tent camping to sites big enough for 47-foot fifth-wheelers. They also have wooden cabins for campers who roll that way. They can host a camper for a night, a weekend or a week.

And they have seasonal sites, for guests who want to stay the whole summer. The seasonal sites are permanently in place. Many have porches or other additions built on to the trailers. They have screen houses in the yard and patches of real grass. They tend flowers outside the trailers or, in some enterprising cases, they even grow tomatoes. The couples, mostly older, lovingly tend the grounds around their summer homes.

Finding their roles

Ferrigno and Allen began helping out as children. The earliest job for kids was selling firewood, and Ferrigno said, “I ‘graduated’ to cleaning bathrooms.” The boy cousins learned maintenance under Charlie Savage’s guidance. In high school the young women worked in the campground office, and they continued to help out through their college years.

Allen majored in marketing research and traveled for her job. As her two boys approached their teen years, she wanted to be home more. Ferrigno found herself in the event-planning field and her last job was at Harvard Law School, a position she described as “soul-crushing.” They both gravitated back to Wakeda, finding that there was enough work to employ them year-round.

Allen explained, “In the earlier times, when the campground was closed, it was closed. There was no social media, no Internet.” Now their guests can reach them all year round, and the “sheer amount of work” made it feasible for them to join the staff. They came back full-time 10 years ago for Allen and “nine-ish or eight” for Ferrigno.

Allen’s mother, Ferrigno’s mother and an uncle had purchased the campground from their grandparents 23 years ago, and again ran it as a family. The cousins had always talked about taking over the campground themselves. This past December, papers were passed, and the third generation took ownership. Amanda and Tim Allen and Laura Ferrigno run the day-to-day operations, with Adam Allen as a silent partner.

The campground today

Allen took the wheel for a brief tour of the property. She pointed out a field where campers could store their trailers in the off-season, and a garden plot marked off where the “seasonals” can grow their own produce.

There are sites for giant rigs like the 47-foot RVs and sites for tents and small pop-up trailers. The wooden cabins have electricity and real beds, for campers who don’t like roughing it. There are hookups for septic and electricity, and simple sites where one can “just plunk a tent down,” Allen said.

There’s a game room with arcade games, a mini-golf course, and a trading post with the camp store and ice-cream stand. There’s even a Little Free Library for guests who forgot to pack books, she noted. The campground is pet-friendly, and there’s a dog park with some agility equipment, she pointed out.

What the guest won’t find is water. Wakeda has no swimming pool and no swimming hole. But the campground is 10 minutes from the beach, she said, and her guests can get their fill of water there.

What else does Wakeda have? Peace, quiet and pine trees. Their campers love the facility, Allen and Ferrigno said, because it’s a spot to recharge after a full beach day. Parents don’t have to put their children to bed to the sounds of motorcycles and blaring music, and seniors can get a break from the frenetic atmosphere of Hampton Beach.

“They have all that fun, then can relax in the woods,” Ferrigno said. “It’s the best of both worlds.

“It’s part of why they come, generation after generation,” Ferrigno added.

Before the Internet and social media, the Savages did very little advertising. “Most of it was word-of-mouth,” Allen said. “We still got a ton of repeat business.” They reeled off the names of their faithful returnees: the Rices, the Harveys. “The Rices,” Ferrigno said, “have been coming for decades and decades.”

The pandemic, Allen said, was “dicey at the beginning. There were so many regulations.” But that summer regulations eased, and the campground found itself thriving. “Camping,” she said, “was one of the safer things to do.”

“You’re outside, and if you have an RV you have your own kitchen, your own shower,” Ferrigno contributed.

Ferrigno said the campground hosts a significant amount of Canadians each summer. Because of regulations, they were not able to come in 2020 or 2021. “But we didn’t suffer — new guests filled the gap,” she said. “Now our Canadians are back and we and they are so excited!”

Wakeda doesn’t do a lot of scheduled activities. One highlight of the summer is the make-your-own-sundaes every Saturday night. Wakeda offers Christmas in July and a Halloween emphasis over Labor Day weekend, where child guests get to trick-or-treat and the seasonal campers go wild with decorations.

But the rest of the time, they let the pines and the peace speak for themselves.

For more information, visit www.wakedacg.com.