We have never taken our kids on a plane and they’ve never spent a night in a hotel or motel. Many times people say how do you guys do it, when it comes to all the camping trips and visiting 30 plus state parks across Maine. But what they don’t realize is that they do things with their kids that we have never done with ours or we are nervous of trying. Things that aren’t a big deal for us are a big deal for others and the same can be flipped around. It’s all about comfort in whatever you choose. We’ve stayed in yurts, cabins (without power and water), tents, lean-tos and our trusty teardrop, but it’s kind of strange that we’ve never rented a room somewhere with the kids at this point. The plane thing is just because we want them to see as much of Maine while they are young, but we plan to branch out as time goes on. Then again, we did just buy a new camper for those kinds of trips so who knows when they’ll actually earn their wings. 

We just got back from a repeat trip to Mt. Blue State Park with Lavoie family side and that makes our second stay not only there but also at Lily Bay and Cobscook. We have a couple more planned in 2021 back at Peaks-Kenny and Rangeley. We can’t help it, we love our Maine State Park campgrounds!

The state parks are comfortable for us, but now that we’ve stayed at them all and are pretty much returning to most of them, we felt it was time for something NEW. That’s right, we finally camped somewhere other than a state park. It’s not like we haven’t been asked to visit by private owners or encouraged by family, friends and strangers to try their favorite places. It’s hard when you know what you like and know what you are good at. Again, it’s all about comfort, but the blog part of our mission was only done to help push people outside of their comfort zone, so it was time for us to go back to our early advice and eat some of those words. 

When we go camping in June, we pick the coast. Why? BUGS. The coast doesn’t fully protect you from the brown-tail moth so make sure to track those hot spots each spring, but we are talking about black flies. A breeze off the ocean often makes things cooler to kick off camping season but it also help keep the flies away. This is year five of camping with the kids and our first trip each year is always near the ocean because it hasn’t let us down yet. With over 200 Maine licensed campgrounds to pick from, where do we even start? Just like our very first trip, we kept it simple. Not wanting to burn extra vacation time, we settled on somewhere we could head to on a Friday afternoon and that place was in Freeport, 20 minutes from our home. Winslow Park & Campground is owned and operated by the town famous for L.L.Bean. Reservations went live at the start of April 2021 which is a little later in the year than the state parks, which are always the first week in February. 

In classic Ruby fashion, we were ready to reserve a site the second Father’s Day weekend was available and we got our first choice. We are big on privacy, and it’s probably the biggest reason we won’t be camping at a place like Sebago Lake for a while again. While booking, it had appeared that there were only a handful of “our” type of sites at Winslow but we were wrong. The sites that appeared to be in open fields were nothing like the ones at Lake St George. There were ample natural barriers that were clearly planted for privacy, but either way it worked and it made for cubicle style camping, which isn’t terrible when your view up front is the Atlantic ocean. That all being said, we loved our site…#95. It was private, had a path to the shores edge of Staples Cove and was easily walkable to the playground and beach. I’m not sure we would have traded for another but it was clear after walking the property a few times, many of the sites were a lot better than we expected. 

This place, being owned by a municipality, was surprisingly similar to the state park campgrounds. There were just a few differences like quiet hours. Normally at a state park, you can hear a pin drop well before the 10PM quiet hour mark. Here, the noise level stayed pretty high past that. We also don’t run into seasonal campers very often unless it is a campground host. Nothing against them, but you just see things you normally don’t, like mini decks and manicured lawns. If you can pull this type of lifestyle off for a quarter of the year, more power to you!  

The beach, my gosh.  Camping has a way to scoop up hours of the day but when you stay somewhere that has a beach; more so the ocean, there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. We often get asked, what do you guys do when you go camping? There’s a good chance most of you reading this are like “Duh.” But if you don’t know what we are talking about, take a walk with the kiddos along the Maine coast and we can guarantee you won’t be looking at your watch. You’ll only be concerned that the sun is setting and you haven’t cooked dinner together yet. 

So yea, there is life outside of Maine State Parks and again most of you are like “we probably could have told you that.” Well, we took our little leap and it was a major hit. The nightly sunset display probably didn’t hurt. The easy pack up and quick drive home was icing on the cake. We will do this a little more if it’s going to go this way. We took 4 hours of vacation time and had an easy but incredible weekend getaway. It’s most likely not as much about this location as it is about just exploring your backyard with an open mind and a full heart.