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Rating: 
Summary: the WORST in tent camping
Review: Fool me once shame you.. I gave Laff a few chances to prove me wrong, but his reviews are just utter nonsense. The book itself seems awesome, it's just what you'd want in a camping guide. But Laff must have realized early on that he'd need to sweeten up his descriptions to the fiction of fairy tales to sell books.
I checked out some of the 'best' sites in his book only to be disappointed again and again. For example: he gives Mt. Greylock 5 stars for privacy and spaciousness. I even reserved what was supposedly one of the 'best' campsites there. These campsites were literally 30 feet from one another, on hard packed dirt with not even a separating tree between them. At night, the access road across the river was busy with traffic, lighting up my tent all night with highbeam lights. It was like camping in a undersized, cramped trailer park.
He's consistent in his ratings however, some parks were even worse. The privacy at Beartown was ridiculous. I reserved a spot at the campsite Mr. laff calls 'one of the best in his guide'. This guy must have been a real estate agent: it sounded spectacular, but the reality was horrid. WHY OH WHY do these sites pack people so damn close together? And worse, if they are going to give us a 20x20' plot why are they all abutting each other? Why is there a trail going through my 20' campsite? I could hear half the conversations in this place. And why didn't he mention Otis AFB flies a jet over the park EVERY 10 minutes, 24x7?
Well, I guess no one would buy his book then now would they?
My advice: skip this book. It covers few enough sites that he's brought too much attention to them anyways. The condition of most State parks is bad. They're terribly underfunded and woodland management is expensive. The good news is, there are so few rangers that you can go into any of these parks and camp wherever you'd like. I couldn't even find a ranger at some of these places. The only reason I would suggest buying this book is to know what sites to stay away from.
Rating: 
Summary: Great resource!!!
Review: Lafe Low has put together a concise, thorough and extremely helpful guide to finding quiet tent campgrounds in New England. He even goes to the point of describing individual sites so you know which ones to reserve. He provides details on privacy, facilities and overall beauty as well as which water sports can be practiced in the area. It is a necessary resource for anyone trying to find spots where they won't be overrun by so-called RV "campers". My only suggestion would be more details/broader maps since many of the parks are in out of the way spots that don't get adequate attention on larger maps.
Rating: 
Summary: not so good tent camping
Review: my husband and i have used this book twice for tent camping in Mass. I'm not sure what the author has in mind regarding his idea of privacy but the two different parks we've stayed at, 4 stars for privacy was way off. I don't call 4 stars being able to talk to my neighbors from in front of my campfire less than 30 feet away with hardly any trees/bushes in between sites. His discriptions of the parks in general are accurate. We are very let down by the descriptions of the sites and privacy. We were suppsose to be "on the river" at Mohawk Trail State Forest but we had to walk through the next site to get to the river.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book for New England tent campers!
Review: This is without a doubt the best book on tent camping in New England that we've found (and we've done a lot of looking). We moved to Massachusetts from California, and after we arrived here and started looking for places to camp that would give us the same kind of wilderness-oriented car camping that we loved to do in the West, we started feeling very disappointed -- every guidebook we read seemed oriented toward RVers and people who are looking for a lot of "amenities" (shuffleboard courts, swimming pools, paved paths, etc.) when they go camping. Then this summer we discovered Lafe Low's book, and our camping outlook brightened considerably -- this is a wonderful resource for people who enjoy the same kind of tent camping that we do.One particularly nice feature of this book is that it doesn't just describe each campground in general terms, it also describes in detail the specific campsites at each campground, and gives recommendations for which sites will give tent campers the most privacy, quiet, scenery, etc. This is such helpful information to have when planning a trip -- we used it when going to Harold Park State Forest here in Massachusetts this summer, and we got a beautiful campsite that really suited us. If you tent camp in New England, buy this book -- it's excellent!
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