Acadia/Seawall

Via D'Agostino

Seawall Campground is an official national park campground for Acadia, but it’s a good 20-40 minute drive from the main attractions of the park (depending on where you’re going). The only spot it’s close to is the Bass Harbor Lighthouse. It’s dog friendly and has water and bathrooms, but no showers. If you’re bringing a dog, you can sign them up for the Bark Ranger program here! (Metal tags available at the Hull Cove Visitor Center gift shop.)

Ingrid Messbauer

Much more out of the way than Blackwoods Campground— you’ll have to drive to get to Acadia’s main attractions, and the closest town (Southwest Harbor) is not as tourist/camper-oriented as Bar Harbor. Convenient for sunset or sunrise visits to Bass Harbor Lighthouse, and only a 5 minute walk to the Seawall picnic area (great for stargazing and sunrises) or a 15 minute walk to the natural seawall (beautiful at sunset). The campsites are a bit more separated from each other than the ones at Blackwoods, and the amenities are otherwise the same (flush toilets, potable water, and a dumpster, but no showers).

Jordan Olivio

Stayed at Seawall for three nights while in the park recently. Check in was very easy and the rangers were helpful in explaining the campground rules. My site was in the A-loop and was very well maintained. Bathrooms and water were conveniently located to the camp sites and were well kept. It is a bit of a distance from the Bar Harbor side of the park and driving through the Southwest Harbor is slower speeds, but the traffic through was minimal. Exploring the towns on this end was a good experience as they were not as busy as the other side. Even considering that most of my park activities required driving to the other side, I still thoroughly enjoyed staying here.

Johnathan Blake

By far our favorite campground in Acadia. Campsites are clean and spacious. Bathrooms were clean and accessible. But the location is everything. It has close proximity to southern harbors and a short drive from the main park. Amazing picnic area just steps from the campground. Overall it makes the top of our list for recommended campgrounds.

Lauren Hess

While this is the quiet side of the island, I feel there are nicer campgrounds with the same ambiance for the same price. This is about 30 minutes from the more popular Acadia attractions, so we completed the quiet side in 2 days and found ourselves driving 30-60 minutes one way to get to the other attractions. We were super excited about this trip but a lot of factors made us leave early. We had a group of 8 split between two sites. It states you can have two tents at each site, park one car, and are equipped with fire rings and picnic tables. The one site had just enough room to do so. The second site was too small to fit two tents and safety light a fire, so we had to go to the site next door for a fire to keep 8 people warm and cook food for 8. There was no way to have two tents, the fire, a picnic table, and park…check the sites carefully I did and it still wasn’t accurate enough. We chose our loop/sites purposely for the characteristics, including flushing toilets and sinks. Upon arrival we were informed that the bathrooms in our loop were being renovated so we had porta-pots throughout the loop…so no flushing toilets or sinks, which we needed. The other loop wasn’t walkable enough to have 8 people walk back and forth, especially in a rush. Luckily (or unluckily for us) the toilet was right out front of our site…convenient-ish for 8 people but our part of the loop ended up being the most crowded so there were 14 people using one toilet that doesn’t flush. We checked in Saturday, by Monday our site stunk horribly, we ended up leaving early on Tuesday but it still stunk and had not been dumped. It’s also just disgusting to have to see that and sit in that smell. I do want to note that the park staff checked the toilets frequently, stocked them, wiped them down, and they were clean, but not emptied. The park staff were super friendly and great, this was just not a good trip for us overall…couldn’t start a fire because of rain two days and were freezing, rained so hard that all 4 tents took on water, gear inside, clothing, essentials, etc were soaked or destroyed (on two different days); a child got sick for two days, sprayed tents and ourselves constantly but still found ticks inside our bags of fresh, unused clothes, etc. It was cool to hear the buoys dinging on the water.