General Information:
Smuggler’s Den Campground is located in Southwest Harbor, Maine and is about a 4 hour drive from Portland. It opened in 1969 and has been owned by the same family for four generations!
I have to give them a HUGE shout out! They are the kindest family and have the best staff working for them.
It appears many of their staff live at the campground and we enjoyed getting to know them as we made our nightly trek to the Camp Store for an ice cream treat.
Smuggler’s Den is a medium campground that welcomes RVS, pop-ups, and tent camping and has a total of 93 camping sites with about half devoted to tenting. In addition, they have 12 cabin rentals, 2 RV rentals, and 2 house rentals.
There is a variety of RV sites including pull through sites, cement pads, back-in sites, and ones that also include tenting platforms.
Neat feature alert: You are given your site location and directions to your site ahead of time (once you pay your balance) and can go directly to your site without stopping at the camp store, which was a neat feature.
I’m not sure if this is available for cabin, RV, and house rentals given that those rentals usually involve keys of some sort but I do know this feature exists for any who are camping.
If I had to recommend any RV sites they would be: Sites 70-75 and 80-87. However, honestly, you would be happy with most of the sites on the property. Also, almost all sites have a good dosage of shade each day as the trees on the property are well over 50 years old.
.
My only heads up on a site is #117. It is placed close to the camp store, bathrooms, and where 3 camp roads converge so it’s definitely busy and there is no vegetation border to give you any privacy. However, if you are a social butterfly and love to people-watch, then this site is definitely for you!
Quiet hours are 10pm-8am. If you are looking for a quiet campground, THIS IS IT! Many times, my husband and I were sitting by the fire commenting on how quiet it was during the evening.
There were definitely more noises in the early AM hours as people came and went from the Cadillac Mountain sunrises, left early for hiking adventures, or got a jump start on heading home with their camper or to their next adventure… but even those noises were quiet in comparison to other campgrounds we have visited.
And..I wasn’t sad about the AM noise given we have an early riser in our midst!
If you are a walker like me, I love to get up early in the morning and get a couple of miles in and at Smuggler’s Den, I could do about a .4 mile loop a couple of times within the campground or take the trail on the property that connects you to the Lurvey Spring Road (which is technically in Acadia National Park!) for some more miles…which is what I did on occasion! Walking on Lurvey Spring Road can get you to either Long Pond or Echo Lake.
As always, don’t forget to bring a map or take a screenshot of one since cell phone reception isn’t great there.
A couple times, I stayed within the campground property for my early morning walks so I could snag an open washer/dryer for the two days I needed to do laundry. With a bunch of tenting sites, the coin-op washers and dryers were in high demand..not so much at 5:30am though!
Finally, the pool. The heated pool was a HIT with our daughter who is part fish, I swear! They have a slide into the pool that my daughter was brave enough to try on our last full day at the campground.
Also, they have a kiddie pool that is about a foot deep making it fun for even the littlest campers.
Cleanliness of Site/Site Details:
We reserved a back-in site and reserved site #75 and LOVED IT! Check out the campground map to see where we stayed. The site was impeccable, clean, and VERY level. Our camper sat on a gravel site and we had lots of access to grass and two big boulders that my daughter enjoyed attempting to climb up.
We had some tree root situations to deal with where our camping rug was placed but they stuck out so well that only one of us tripped on the roots (me!).
While we were close to our neighbors, with the mature vegetation around our site, we had no problem enjoying our campsite even with our neighbors relatively nearby.
The fire pit was clean and in a great location and you were allowed to hang a clothesline..which was crucial given our frequent pool adventures!
Site Costs:
We stayed at a gravel back-in site for $80/night. Back-in cement pad sites and pull through sites are $90/night. These rates are the same throughout the season. WI-fI is INCLUDED with your site. It took a little bit of figuring out how to connect our Amazon Firestick but worked really well for us.
They have a nice policy where you are allowed to re-book your site for the same timeframe for the following year when you check-out..which is what we did!
I will say calling to book our reservation was a little easier for me than navigating their online registration system.
And like I shared at the beginning of this blog, the staff are amazing; and I can say the same for when I called in our reservation last year and when we had a hiccup in some confirmation emails (thanks to my wondrously long email address I have) and I needed to call the campground, prior to our arrival, to give them my correct email address.
Amenities:
- Heated Pool: The pool area includes chairs, loungers, and picnic tables. There is a large pool along with a kiddie pool. Both are heated. The large pool has a slide.
- Playground
- Wireless Internet…that actually works
- Coin-Op Laundry (3 washers, 4 dryers)
- Dedicated Bathrooms and Free Showers within the Campground (more on that later)
- Camp Store. Filled with really good essentials, ice cream, cheap bundles of wood ($5/bundle..and you get a good number of pieces), and LIVE lobsters.
- Trail from campground to the Lurvey Spring Road for access to Acadia National Park and Long Pond and Echo Lake
- Island Explorer Bus Stop
Bathroom Low Down:
There are two bathroom facilities within the campground. One is at the group camping sites (which I did not check out) and the other is centrally located and just a short distance from the pool.
While the bathroom facilities are dated and show their age, the bathrooms and showers (FREE) were very clean..like SO clean!
I can’t attest to the water pressure or temperature of the showers at Smuggler’s Den because I gave myself a goal of overcoming some claustrophobia and using our small camper shower.
However, I did peek into the showers and you have a changing area and typical shower stall. Both of which, like the bathrooms, are very clean.
Additionally, the bathrooms closed for one hour each day for cleaning.
Bathroom Rating: A-
The only reason I couldn’t give it an A+ was because of the age of the facilities. A huge thing for me that I loved was that they closed the bathrooms each day for cleaning.
Overview of our Experience:
Arrival was a breeze. We could head directly to our campsite because they use an online check in system that provides you with written directions of where and how to access your campsite and all you do is click a check in button via your phone once you arrive.
All the sites have some level of shade. We stayed in site #75 and it instantly became our most favorite site we have stayed in.
Everything about the campground is SO CLEAN. Bathrooms never had trash overflowing; dumpsters always could close; no pet waste to be seen; mowed areas…this campground is well taken care of.
Our favorite amenity was the pool. With a slide and kiddie pool, there was something for everyone. Additionally, while my daughter preferred to spend her free time at the pool, the playground has extensive things to do.
The Island Explorer bus makes a direct stop at the campground, making for easy access to Bar Harbor.
Overall, this campground is amazing. We have already booked for next year and hope to stay a little longer than a week next time.
Have you stayed at Smuggler’s Den or explored Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park? If so, share your experience in the comments below.
Thank you for reading this blog on The Wandering Chickadee! Check out more about our week on Mount Desert Island and in Acadia National Park by following along on Instagram and Facebook.
~Natalie