Sunlight bounced off the shiny tops of the RV trailers parked along the row of wooded campsites that stretch along the Suncook River.

Strolling along the gravel pathway, Suncook River Camp’s new owners Joe and Kim Caprio smiled and waved as a camper drove down the road in a golf cart with his dog perched on the seat next to him.

Leaving behind their jobs in the technology industry, the Caprios jumped at the chance earlier this year to turn their passion for camping into a livelihood. Having camped around the world, they view their Allenstown business as a place to create new experiences for those who want to reconnect with each other or with nature.

“We’re renovating it and making it the kind of campground we’d love to spend time in and our family and our friends want to come up and spend time in,” Joe said. “It’s a great campground for everybody.”

They aim to provide people with a wide variety of options, such as cabins, RVs, campers and campsites to pitch a tent. The campground also features a pool and river access for kayaking or swimming.

“People can experience camping with their kids for the first time without having to buy all the gear, so we’re giving families more access and a consistent, reliable experience so they know what they’re getting when they show up,” Kim said.

The Caprios got married at a summer camp in 2018 and describe that experience of outdoor togetherness as the inspiration to take this leap. This spring, they knew they wanted a career change and started researching campgrounds for sale in New England. When they found Suncook River Camp, which has existed since the 70s under various owners and names, the couple embraced the opportunity and closed the deal on May 1.

The 22-acre “camp” opened for the season on May 15, leaving the Caprios with two weeks to take care of the most pressing maintenance needs while also relocating from Massachusetts to Manchester to be closer to their new business.

“We came in expecting unforeseen challenges,” Joe said. “The surprising thing for us is that we tried to stay under the radar and not do any advertising, not really get booked so we could do home repairs and not feel bad if we had to turn a power tool on. The locals just either knew about the campground, or it’s easy to find on Google, but it’s been busy.”

They jumped into their first season despite receiving advice to remain closed until next year to buy time for renovations.

“We just felt guilty by canceling people’s summer two weeks before it started, so we were kind of pulled into staying open, which meant that we really worked long hours and really hard to try to get as much of the renovation done as we could before everyone got here for the busy summer,” Joe said.

Over the last four months, they’ve put in 12-hour days on a regular basis to get the campground closer to where they want it to be. The Caprios cleaned debris from the river, redid the office, added campers to rent, and built a new store. They’re now working on renovating the bath house, cleaning up some of their four vintage campers, and furnishing platform tents. Around ten part-time staff have pitched in, some doing so in exchange for free camping.

Half of the customers come from the whole season, staying from mid-May to the start of November, and the other half, or “transient campers,” as the Caprios call them, come for weekends or family vacations. Of those campers, about half are local.

New Hampshire resident Daniel Couture moved to the campground for the season after staying last year as well. He said he can tell how much work the couple has done to improve the property.

“Joe and Kim have walked in and made it a beautiful place,” Couture said. “It just keeps getting better and better every day.”

Of the campground’s 66 sites, 45 sit along the river, something that makes the property popular.

“It’s pretty unique for campgrounds in the area,” Kim said. “You might be lucky to have a body of water somewhere on the property, so when we saw this place, we were just beyond excited that so many campers can have access to a water view.”

Joe and Kim enjoy watching customers sip coffee by the river, go out on kayaks, or float down the water on inflatable tubes.

“If you get in the water at one beach and you float down to the second beach, just at the last campsite, it’s less than a five-minute walk,” Joe said. “But the Suncook River moves so slowly it takes just under an hour to float from this beach to that beach.”

Sometimes after a long day of work, the couple takes tubes down the river to unwind and cool off. But their list of to-dos is never far from their minds. In the coming months, they hope to continue adding more infrastructure, work with Eversource to wire the campsites to be able to power larger RVs, replace some tent sites with upscale glamping areas, and improve the landscaping on the property.

Collaborating every day, the Caprios put many of the skills they learned in the technology industry to use.

“We both have sales and marketing backgrounds, so it’s about the customer experience and thinking about what people really want,” Joe said. “How did we stock the camp store? We tried to sit there and say, ‘What’s going to be essentials for a camping trip?’ So we put ourselves in the mindset of the customer and designed the campground and the amenities for the customer.”

The couple, who met at work, hosted large events together in their previous career.

“We laid the foundation for how to work through big, hairy problems together,” Kim said. “Nothing is bigger or hairier than owning a campground. The magnitude of it, the long term of knowing you can’t fix everything in a day but having to build a road map and a plan and have faith in one another that we’ll get there, that has been the biggest challenge business partnership-wise.”

The campground’s proximity to Boston, Nashua, the White Mountains, and all the nature New Hampshire has to offer puts it in an ideal spot for reaching different customers, per Kim. This season alone, Suncook River Camp has seen multiple family reunions and wedding parties.

“It’s cool to have complete strangers come and feel grateful that they got to camp here and say thank you and watch their kids also experience it too,” Kim said.

Suncook River Camp will remain open until November 1, at which point the Caprios hope to do another month of work on the property before winter sets in. The couple now looks forward to crisp fall air and changing leaves along the river. Content with their first summer, they reflect back on how quickly it all happened.

“Sometimes things just pop up in life, and the timing was opportunistic,” Kim said.

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