Down East to Acadia — Camp Setup at Blackwoods

New England Road Trip 2026 · Boothbay → Bar Harbor, Maine · Saturday, June 6

Every trip has a day that's mostly windshield, and this was ours: pack up the harbor, point the car north, and trade Boothbay for the bigger mountains and sea cliffs of Acadia. We tried to be smart about it — top off the gas, grab coffee to go, and roll out around 9 to beat the famous Wiscasset bottleneck (the one where everybody queues for Red's Eats and US-1 just stops). It worked. We slid straight through.

The long coastal drive

The drive up the mid-coast is the kind of slow-pretty that makes a three-hour leg feel like part of the vacation instead of a chore. US-1 threads through one harbor town after another, and we let ourselves stop when a place looked worth it.

Camden got us. We pulled in, stretched, and wandered down to the harbor — schooners, the little amphitheater by the library, the whole postcard. A quick coffee-and-leg-stretch turned into the best break of the drive. (Quick honesty note for fellow road-trippers: this stretch of coast is winding, and a couple of us in the car are prone to motion sickness, so we keep the Dramamine handy. Camden was a good place to let everyone reset.)

From there it was north past Belfast and over the Penobscot Narrows by Fort Knox, then the last push into Ellsworth, which is basically the gateway to Mount Desert Island — and the last easy spot to provision before you're at camp. We had lunch at Finn's Irish Pub, then did the unglamorous-but-essential camping errand lap: groceries and firewood at Shaw's, and a Walmart run for the right camp-stove fuel. (You always need one more thing than you packed.)

Setting up at Blackwoods

About twenty minutes past Ellsworth we wound onto Mount Desert Island and into Blackwoods Campground, site A27 — our home for the next three nights, tucked into the spruce and birch. The forecast had rain moving in around 6–7pm, so the move was simple: get the tent up while it's dry. We pitched the dome, rigged a tarp over the picnic table for a dry kitchen, and called it a solid setup.

Camp set, we had a couple of dry hours, so we drove into Bar Harbor ahead of the weather. Dinner was at Atlantic Brewing – Midtown — good craft beer for me, and a kids' menu (nuggets, grilled cheese, pretzel, fries) that kept our pickiest eater happy, which is its own kind of win on a travel day. We strolled the downtown a bit, and then the rain caught up with us right on schedule and we headed back to camp.

First night under canvas

Back at A27, we settled in for a rainy first night — pads laid out, everyone winding down inside the dome while the rain ticked on the tarp. There's something about that sound on a tent that makes a long driving day feel like it landed somewhere good.