Shore Hills Campground
553 Wiscasset Road
Boothbay, Maine 04537
Our first stop in Maine was in Boothbay. We drove up from Foxboro, MA and the trip was just under 200 miles. In that stretch we were on 3 different toll roads and spent a total of $19 on tolls. Not near as bad as say driving through Chicago and paying their toll fees. While Maine is working to improve their roads, some of them were pretty rough due to the winters that they get this far north. We never had to slow down due to road conditions though. (That is usually my barometer of how bad the road conditions are).
Shore Hills Campground had about 150 sites, all of which are dirt/gravel. Most of the roads are the same so if it rains, some parts can get pretty muddy. I think that we were in a newer loop, as the sites were a little bigger, and some had wood deck patios next to the parking pads. They have about 20 pull through sites in the loop that are advertised as “No rig too big”, and they are about 100' long. We had a back in site with patio and fire pit. There is also a picnic table on the deck. Not all sites are full hook up though, some closer to the water are W&E only. We paid $53 a night for our site, and even though we stayed for a week, there was no break on the daily fee. One notable issue though, they do not accept any electronic payments. Cash or check only. Even when Diane was making the reservation months in advance, she had to mail them a $53 check. The utilities at the sites worked well and were placed conveniently.
The restroom facilities though older were clean. However they are NOT handicapped accessible. Raised entry's at the doors and narrow doors would be difficult to navigate. Their showers are also pay showers, like .50 for three minutes. They offered WiFi, but our Verizon air card worked OK, but the antenna mast helped quite a bit. They did have a nice big dog yard for off leash dogs, but Heidi doesn’t like dog yards too much. They smell too much like dogs.....
There is a lake at the campground, but the older wooded sites are on quite an incline. I know how steep it really is, as I ran the hill half a dozen times during our stay! It seemed to make sense at first until about half way up the hill my thought changed to “what was I thinking?'.
On the RV side of things, a few issues popped up that I needed to deal with. The seal in the toilet that keeps the water in the top part and the yucky stuff down failed. Not badly yet, so I have a new seal and waste ball in route from Thetford. And the patio awing is acting up again, not wanting to retract every time. So I am still trouble shooting that, and so far my emails with Carefree have not been productive.
The nice part about this campground is that we were only a few miles from Boothbay proper and we made several trips in to various shops, stores, and restaurants. On the recommendation of several friends, I tried Lobster Rolls. But after 3 different sea food places each made a little differently, they never just impressed me all that much. And if you are going to eat them, you should really like them because they are not cheap, running anywhere from $16 to $24 each. We also took a boat tour out to “Egg Island” where Maine is trying to reintroduce Puffins, to the north Atlantic. Diane's blog goes into more detail about these unique sea birds. The tour was $35 a person, and was about 2 !/2 hours long. And we also visited a Botanical Garden in Boothbay to see some of the native plants and trees growing in Maine. A cool way to spend an afternoon. The entry to the Botanical Garden was $16 per person.
From here we head further north into Maine.
