First Landing State Park 2

We absolutely love camping at First Landing State Park. You have the Chesapeake Bay and beach to walk on and play at and you have the huge gnarled trees to climb in and give you privacy. Camping in Virginia Beach is cheap! It's the best of both worlds. You can rent a camp site for about $35 per night. First Landing State Park also worked out exceptionally well because it was only 5 miles away from our house when we lived in Bradford Cove base housing at JEB Little Creek. It meant we could go camping, but we had the safeguard of knowing that our house and our warm cozy beds were only a few minutes away. This was a great backup plan for the kids and I as first time campers. If you are stationed at NAS Oceana, NS Norfolk, JEB Little Creek or Fort Story, Portsmouth, or Dam Neck you are a quick drive back to your house if you forget something or if someone just can't sleep in the great outdoors. It also worked well for us when our youngest child was less than 2 years old and I knew sleeping in a tent with her would be difficult. She and I would stay at the campsite until bedtime then the two of us would go home while my husband and our other two children would stay at camp.
Rent a Pop Up Camper

If you really want to go camping but you aren't quite ready to sleep in a tent don't fear the answer is here! At JEB Little Creek's MWR you can rent pop up campers for about $100 per weekend. Reserve the pop up camper in advance. You pick up the pop up camper on Friday and return it Monday morning. You will need to have a vehicle with a ball hitch to hook up and tow the camper the 5 miles down the road to First Landing State Park. These pop up campers have a queen size bed and a king sized bed with a small heater and air conditioning unit in it. Bring some fitted sheets to go over the mattresses and place your sleeping bags right on top.Here's a quick tip learned the hard way: don't let kids with sandy feet jump in your beds or you will be sleeping on sand all night! (Thankfully when that happened it was my husband that had to sleep in the sand and not me! We learned quickly!) After our first camping trip to First Landing we moved from the pop up camper to a tent. We even started bringing two tents so that one was a storage tent with all of our things and a closet/dressing room and the second tent was only for sleeping.
The bathrooms are a few steps away from your campsite. The bathrooms are clean and well maintained. There are indoor private showers with hot water too.
When you reserve your campsite make sure you pick a site with electric and water. The water comes out of a pump, but it is handy to have nearby.
There is a great walkway bridge over the dunes to the Chesapeake Bay and beach. Bring shovels, buckets, and a football for some beach fun! We love the beach in the late afternoon and at dusk. It's beautiful at that time of the day. If you want a fun nighttime walk on the beach bring some flashlights and take a night beach walk. Use the flashlights to find white crabs scuttling around on the sand. On one adventurous night walk one of the kids decided to try to keep a crab as a pet so they placed it in their pocket! A few minutes later we hear, I can't find my crab! When we shined a flashlight on the child the crab was crawling right up the front of his sweatshirt!

First Landing State park has so much to offer. We have always rode bikes or walked through the park area South of Shore drive. There is a wider dirt running path covered with a canopy of trees that pretty much goes in a straight line, but there are hiking and biking paths off of that path. Those paths are so cool! it's like you go through different ecosystems. The beginning of a path has tall trees, then it opens up into these low marsh area, then a sandy beach, then more unique wildlife. Many people take their kayaks or jet skis back there. The beach is tiny but would be fun to have a picnic and launch a kayak. You can also go to the North side of Shore Drive and go to the actual beach off the bay. Lots of people go camping in First Landing State Park.