Lights, glitter, and throbbing crowds of the young, tanned, and adventurous make it a nonstop circus, something out of an MTV video, to revel in or abhor as your taste dictates.

Hampton Beach State Park is the most southerly of the four state parks that take up much of New Hampshire's seacoast.

Public parking and bathing facilities here are run in the clean, well-ordered way of state park management. Just north of the state park is the town of Hampton Beach, two streets wide (north along the waterfront, south along the inland street, as far as cars are concerned).

North of Hampton Beach, the state park beaches at Rye Harbor and Wallis Sands are not as bubbly with activity as Hampton, but to some tastes are all the more pleasant for that.

At the state park beaches in New Hampshire, expect to pay a parking fee, which includes use of all facilities.

The drive along US Route 1A north from Hampton Beach is very pretty, winding along the coast past a succession of ever more sumptuous and meticulously maintained summer mansions, still inhabited by the wealthy and powerful of New Hampshire, Maine, and Boston.

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