Discover Delmarva: Salisbury Camping and Adventure Park

WICOMICO COUNTY, Md. — Tucked back into the woods in Wicomico County is the Salisbury Camping and Adventure Park. And its story starts with a real estate listing that stopped Gina Gargue in her tracks, in a project she and her husband, co-owner Jim Yannatelli, took on together.

Gina tells WMDT, “I’m a real estate agent, so I look at properties coming on the market, and I happened to see this one come on the market and looked at it again. I’m like, this is where I went to Girl Scout camp when I was 12 years old.”

“It was just a beautiful place. I was like, yeah, this is fantastic, so let’s do it”, Jim tells us.

The property, once known as Sandy Pines Girl Scout Camp, had sat closed for years by the time Gina and her husband bought it.

“I definitely wanted to keep the campsites, the lodge, all the buildings. There’s no sense in tearing it down. They’re sturdy, they were built well, and they have a lot of history”

Together, the couple didn’t stop at restoring what was already there. They transformed the woods into a playground in the trees. And the feature that truly puts the adventure in Adventure Park, the challenge course.

“We had a 77-year-old woman come and do this, and I have pictures of her zipping through everything. Like, it was nothing.”, Jim says.

And it’s not just an adrenaline rush. Gina say it’s something more.

“It’s exciting for me to see groups of kids here off their devices, playing with each other, interacting, and building each other up. So that’s probably the most rewarding thing that I’ve seen so far. From a closed-up campground to a year-round destination in the making, Salisbury Camping and Adventure Park is just getting started.”