Camp Gateway - Sandy Hook

Great staff!

We stayed here from Wednesday the 5th through Friday the 7th and booked one of the cabins. Overall, the campground itself is beautiful, and the rangers were great, very friendly, attentive, and helpful throughout our stay.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the cabins are worth the roughly $300 per night, especially during the summer. We understood beforehand that the cabins did not have A/C or electricity, but the heat inside was unbearable. Both during the day and throughout the night, the cabin felt like an oven. There was really no relief from the heat, even when trying to sleep.

We tried opening the windows to get some airflow, but several of the windows were in very poor condition and were basically falling apart. The bottom portions of some of the wooden window frames appeared to have significant insect or termite damage, to the point where we had to carefully put parts of the window and frame back together after trying to open them. This made it even more difficult to properly ventilate the cabin.

The other major issue was the amount of insects inside. We encountered spiders, crickets, roaches, and other bugs throughout our stay. Between the extreme heat, the condition of the windows, and the bugs, it became very uncomfortable to sleep or spend much time inside.

For around $300 per night, I expected the cabin to provide a more comfortable and protected camping experience. In our experience, you would probably be better off paying for a regular campsite and bringing your own tent and equipment rather than spending the extra money on one of these cabins.

That being said, the location itself is beautiful, the campground was enjoyable, and the rangers were excellent. With better maintenance, improved ventilation, repairs to the windows, and better protection from insects, the cabins could be a much better experience. As they are currently, I personally wouldn’t recommend paying the extra cost for a cabin during the summer.

This is my go to place! I love to meet my best friend here to enjoy a day at the beach, an afternoon biking, an evening sharing a good meal at Mule Barn Tavern and night of camping under the stars 🌟

Camping at Gateway was a great experience overall — beautiful location, ocean, fishing, BBQ, and plenty of adventure.

But the insects were absolutely insane! 😅 Ticks, cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies, and fleas — we came home covered in bites from head to toe. 🦟🪰

We still had a great time, but definitely come prepared with serious insect repellent and check yourself carefully for ticks. The bugs were by far the biggest downside of the trip.

Very quiet. Love the remoteness. Bathrooms were clean. Process was easy even for a late arrival. Parking was easy and nice it was blocked off for campers with traffic cones (although we did witness non-campers park there who were going across the street to the beach), there were ample carts available to shlep our things from parking to the site.

It is a great place to stay; we had a blast. The beaches are great for fishing and swimming. Next time I would bring a solar shower, but the facilities were very accommodating, and the sites are clean and good sizes.

Good location. Campground is usually full which indicates to me that they need to raise their prices.

So our experience was horrible… we arrived to our site around 3pm and noticed roaches all over… we were having a general conversation with other campers, and they said they were told about the infestation. I had called 2xs a week before and the day before our reservation (inquiring about parking) and at no time was the infestation mentioned to me… We ended up switching to another campsite where we were told it wasn’t as bad. Set up our tents, etc, and within minutes our tents were covered with the roaches. We ended up actually sleeping in our car it was so bad. I do understand summer=bugs but I feel like i definitely should have been informed so I could make the choice to cancel or not. Also, i believe it was last year the campground closed early for the season so i assumed it would be the case if there was an infestation again. We a reservation for 2 nights, slept in the car one night and ended up leaving the next day. We shook our camping gear out as best we could but I was literally finding live roaches in my car 3 days after we left it was that bad. The staff really should make people aware. (I also was told to apply for a refund, which I did and it was denied…)

I was grossly unprepared. I didn’t plan for no showers, I didn’t plan for the car being substantially far away from the campsite, I didn’t realize I would be extremely close to another camper (although she was wonderful) and I was not ready for the bugs. Just read the reviews and the details thoroughly and prepare accordingly. What a beautiful area to be able to explore. Bring your bikes and bug spray!

This was a “first” tent camping trip with my grandkids, and immediately they gathered sticks and dug in the dirt! The carts made gear transport easy, there was cool water in a cooler, and bathrooms! We used the animal lockers to repel critters and my grandkids knew I had a frying pan in the tent if any raccoons desired to pay us a visit. That never happened but we were invaded by the woodland roaches and mosquitoes. Their best and worst memories of camping were “ocean” and “mosquitoes”.

The rangers were helpful and experienced.