Outdoor Adventures,  Travel

Sand and Seagulls at Wallis Sands State Park in Rye, NH

Our kiddos LOVE the beach.  They love playing in the waves and digging in the sand; they love being out in the sun and searching for shells.  Because of this, we have made an effort to get them to the beach more often this year.  However, their dad isn’t a huge fan of crowded beaches, so we have been looking for smaller, but still nice, beaches.  After doing a  little research, we decided to try out Wallis Sands State Park in Rye.

Wallis Sands View

Covid Update – August 2020
New Hampshire State Parks now requires that you make a reservation before visiting a state park. It is super easy to do by visiting the website and really helps to make sure that park experiences are safe and fun!

Wallis Sands State Park

It was mostly cloudy the day we went, and actually raining in most of the state, so we did get to experience the beach on a less crowded day.

Beach view

This was helpful, as the beach is pretty narrow at high tide, however it definitely gets big as the tide goes out.

Wallis Sands low tide

There was a bit of seaweed around the beach, but we’re not sure whether it generally isn’t raked, or whether it just didn’t get raked that day due to the questionable weather.  However, it was great as lava in the volcano we built!

Sand volcano

I do have to say that the seagulls there are CRAZY.  They are super bold and have no fear of people. L actually ate her lunch under her towel because the birds were getting so close; they kept circling and trying to steal our food…

Seagulls

This may in part have been due to the fact that we packed tuna sandwiches for lunch… probably not our best idea to bring tuna to the beach… ha!  So don’t do that.  🙂 Dad ended up being on seagull duty while we ate to keep them away…

seagull chasing

Side note: See those buckets in the picture above? They are collapsable and amazing. We bring them everywhere; they even went on our trip to Grand Cayman! You can read more about them (and our other must-have beach gear) here!

The Wallis Sands State Park has a building with restrooms, showers, and a changing area, as well as a little shop.  There is also ample parking and many picnic tables scattered around the grassy parts.

Wallis Sands State Park

On our way home, we decided to stop and get the “kiddos” some ice cream.  We found a great little place called The Beach Hut which had a bazillion flavors of ice cream; the food smelled pretty yummy, as well!

The Beach Hut

Wallis Sands State Park was a great place to visit and the kids had a blast! They loved the big waves and room to run; we loved the easy parking and changing area. 🙂 We definitely will go back to this beach and enjoy another fun day at the ocean…but we won’t bring tuna!

If you’re curious about other NH beaches, check out our post on Hampton Beach!

I hope that our adventure inspires you to have your own adventure!

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