Dune grass holds the line at Lawrencetown Beach, and the swell stacks behind it. Surf lessons run on that shore if you want someone with you in the water. The night is in the woods at Porters Lake Provincial Park, a freshwater lake off Marine Drive, and the next morning goes back to that shore.
Wooded loops at Porters Lake open off Marine Drive on the way out of Dartmouth, the first Eastern Shore campground on that road. The freshwater beach is inside the campground, still water after a day in the swell, and swimming on the lake is unsupervised. You cook in the loops and walk down to the lake in the evening.
The campground mixes unserviced and walk-in sites with a limited number of hookup pads, so the van needs a drive-in site. Walk-in pads are for tents. Nova Scotia Parks keeps Porters Lake open mid-May through mid-October, and outside that window the campground is closed.
Book the pad first, then the van. If you need more sleeping space than a campervan, look at RVs for rent in Dartmouth.
Nova Scotia Parks cautions swimmers about strong rip tides and currents at Lawrencetown Beach, a year-round hazard. Supervised swimming runs in July and August only.
Martinique Beach is the long white-sand crescent on this same shore, with boardwalks over marsh that holds migratory waterfowl and piping plover. The shore is a protected area, and the boardwalks are how you cross the marsh to the sand. Nova Scotia Parks places the beach 11 km south of Musquodoboit Harbour. You walk the crescent and swim on a wide beach.
Taylor Head Provincial Park
The trail walks a peninsula that thins into the Atlantic, rock and spruce with swell on both sides, and a hiking network runs out the headland. Wind comes off the water on both shores. Southwest of Sheet Harbour, Taylor Head Provincial Park is day-use only and has no campground, which Nova Scotia Parks states on the park page. Plan the headland as a walking day on Marine Drive.
Marine Drive on Highway 7
Marine Drive is Highway 7 along this shore, through Musquodoboit Harbour and on to Sheet Harbour. Lawrencetown, Martinique, and Taylor Head all use this road, so one overnight at Porters Lake covers the days.
Peggy's Cove and the South Shore are the Halifax campervan trip. Dollar Lake and Grand Lake are the inland freshwater nights from Bedford. Cape Breton, Kejimkujik, and the Bay of Fundy are the rest of Nova Scotia.