General Information:
*Updated June 2025*
Searsport Shores Oceanfront Camping is located in Searsport, Maine and is about a 2 hour drive from Portland. The campground is also home to The Makers Guild of Maine. The Makers Guild of Maine is an organization that brings people together to make and enjoy handcrafted items, traditional music, and locally sourced food.
If camping, art, music, animals, and gardens are your thing, this is the campground for YOU! In partnership with The Makers Guild of Maine and the Fiber College, Searsport Shores brings campers art and music events all summer long including an artist-in-residence program.
At the front office, you will find a large white board filled with the events, workshops, and activities for the week. Most events are free for campers (and day visitors) or are offered at a low cost. We absolutely LOVED the art and music activities and I’ll share our experiences with them a little later in the blog.
There are a variety of RV sites including oceanfront sites (7 night minimum) with decks overlooking the ocean, back-in sites with views of the ocean, pull through sites, and wooded back-in sites. All RV sites are water/electric with 2 dump stations on-site along with the option to reserve a honey wagon service. Weekly RV stays come with a free honey wagon (you choose your preferred day).
They use colors to denote the different types of campsites: platinum= oceanfront, gold=oceanfront tenting, silver=ocean view, and bronze= little to no ocean view. You do not get to choose your site when you reserve, just the site type
With a campground that is directly on the ocean, the first several rows of sites have very limited access to shade and are relatively close together. In 2024, we stayed at a silver site and did not have any issues with our neighbors. In 2025, we decided to move back a couple of rows to a bronze site.
In general, I don’t think anyone would have “issues” with neighbors because this campground is soooooo chill; think less beer and cornhole and more campfire jam sessions with guitars.
Tenting sites include walk-in sites and park-and-camp sites. They also keep a handful of sites available for cyclists where you can call that morning and have a site chosen by the staff (as long as you arrive by 6pm).
They offer a handful of cabins ranging in amenities and sleeping capacities as well as two RVs you can rent.
Upon check in, you are escorted to your site by a staff member of the campground who also helps you get your camper into your site.
I will say that I saw several comments in the reviews of Searsport Shores where this service gets some not-so-great feedback. And this is the ONLY thing I didn’t like about our experience.
Here’s my take:
I think the escort to the site is great. As the oceanfront and ocean view sites are close together, this staff member can ask other campers to move vehicles, etc. to help you get into your site.
However, this person jumped into helping us back into our site and it wasn’t really needed. It caused confusion, frustration, and some stress on me (my husband is a cool cucumber so this stuff doesn’t bother him) because we have a pretty good system for backing in our camper. And frankly, these are the situations that give you the highest probability of doing some damage to your camper.
My husband and I joked that this was our worst parking of the camper to date. It felt like it took so long, and with so many adjustments, because that third person really threw us off of our game.
My feedback to the campground was to have this person ask us if we needed help getting back up versus just offering it.
On our second visit to the campground, I did kindly let the person escorting us to our site know that my husband and I were able back up our travel trailer as a team and he took the hint and just supervised the backing in.
Ok..back to the general information!
Quiet hours are 10pm-7am. I love a good 7am end time for quiet hours for my early riser! If you are looking for a quiet campground, this is another very quiet one! Evenings were relatively quiet with exception of the sites strumming guitars and singing along to music; which was very welcomed by us!
For those early morning walkers like me, I could stay right within the campground to get my miles. I walked all the RV and camping roads along with their nature trails to get about 2 miles. The nature trails do not have signage so I came upon them by chance.
Note: They would probably be very muddy after a rainy day.
Finally, the ocean. You have direct access to the ocean and the campground is nestled into a quiet section of shoreline just north of Moose Point State Park and south of Searsport Harbor. The tides here change quite dramatically and make for good tide pools and sea glass hunting at low tide. A stream that flows through the campground empties here as well and my daughter enjoyed playing in the gentle rushing water.
You can bring your kayaks or rent them at the campground. It appeared a lot of campers enjoyed taking morning and late afternoon paddles out on the ocean. I learned from fellow campers that mid-day and early afternoon jaunts out were not advised as the winds traditionally pick up at that time.
We had plans to go out and kayak but the tides and weather did not align with us so…on the to-do list of next year!
Cleanliness of Site/Site Details:
In 2024, we reserved a back-in silver site which gives you views of the ocean (which we had) and were placed into site #25. Check out the campground map to see where we stayed. The site was very clean and relatively level. Our site was on the smaller end as far as sites go and our camper sat on a gravel site with a grassy picnic and firepit area.
In 2025, we stayed at bronze site, site #120. Our site was very level, so much so that we didn’t even need to use leveling blocks. This site was also on the end of a row so we were fortunate enough to not have any neighbors on our camp side. You definitely get more space and a bit more privacy from your neighbors. I also feel that everyone tries to grab the oceanfront/ocean view sites so these bronze sites are never fully booked (aka bonus privacy!)
As I shared earlier, my recommendation is to reserve a bronze site, for a little more space from our neighbors. Bronze sites have the same gravel/grass combination as the one we were on for this trip.
If I had to recommend any RV sites they would be: Bronze Sites 110-129. They are set back on the campground (see map) and offer shade and a bit more spacing between neighbors. They are centrally located to the playground, office, art studio and bathroom/laundry/showers as well as to where you access the beach.
Like I said before, you can’t pick your site. However, I did ask to be placed in the range of sites I mentioned above and…viola! We got into site #120. Now, do I think this will work every time? No. But I don’t think it hurts to ask either.
PS: We LOVE these picnic table covers! I would recommend getting the larger covers (the 96 inch ones) and using tablecloth clips if you end up with smaller table. That way, no matter what, you can cover your table!
Site Costs:
2025 rates are:
- Platinum: $121/night
- Silver: $85/night
- Bronze: $70/night
Prices for tent camping can be found on their website.
3 night minimums are required on all sites with the exception of: a 7-night minimum on the ocean front sites and a 4-night minimum on their premium tent camp sites.
These rates change slightly for the off-season. All sites have water/electric with a free dump station. You can reserve a honey wagon service, if needed. Weekly RV stays get a free honey wagon service on the day of your choosing.
Amenities:
- Free and Discounted Art and Music Events
- Kayak Rentals
- Playground and Rec Room
- Wireless Internet…that actually works
- Coin-Op Laundry (4 washers, 6 dryers) available 24 hours/day
- LP Gas Refills
- Dedicated Bathrooms and Free Showers within the Campground (more on that later)
- Camp Store. Filled with essentials, artisan gifts, cold brew coffee, ice cream, wood (soft and hard woods)
- Nature Trails
- Valet RV Parking. Somebody will drive your truck/camper down to your site and park it for you. Not my jam..but perhaps it’s yours!
- RV and Boat Storage
Bathroom Low Down:
The bathrooms and laundry are housed in one building with sex-separated bathrooms.
Showers are attached in the same building as the bathrooms and laundry. They are accessible outside under the covered porch. There are 5 individual shower stalls all with their own exterior doors. Once you turn on the lights to your shower stall, a small red light illuminates the outside of the building to indicate your stall is occupied.
The showers were hot and, depending on how many people were using the showers, the water pressure was fine.
There is a family shower and bathroom located back inside the building. This is a great feature for those of us with small kiddos.
Additionally, it always looked like someone was cleaning the bathrooms and shower area so this bath house was CLEAN.
There are also 4 privies/composting bathrooms throughout the campground and..well..they are quite cute looking!
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 always looked clean or someone was always cleaning them when I went in.
Overview of our Experience:
In 2024, we arrived at Searsport Shores for our second week-long camp trip. We spent 4 nights at Searsport Shores and then headed down to Rockport for a 3 nights of camping at Sea Swell.
The biggest reason we chose Searsport Shores was because of the art and music on-site. And wow, WE WERE IMPRESSED!!
My daughter and I enjoyed 3 morning art classes with Ms. Paula where we made our own collage books, an upcycled mobile, and our own bookmarks. Open studio times were posted for the afternoons and we could go back and finish any of our crafts or bring something in that we were working on from home.
In addition to art lessons, they had cooking classes happening too!
Mostly the classes are geared toward people of all ages (with parents helping little ones) and I loved the inclusivity of that!
In the later afternoons, we were able to sit and enjoy two jam sessions. The one offered on Wednesday nights is free to the public and a food truck is usually on site.
Oh, and did I mention the sheep, goats, and chickens that have big, wide-open pens around the campground?! We visited them in the evening as well!
To watch my daughter truly immerse herself in the experiences of this campground gets me emotional even as I write these words. To find a place where she can be around artists, musicians, and inspiring people…there is definitely something magical about Searsport Shores.
In 2025, we returned for a 3-night adventure. We arrived before the official kick off of summer so that artist-in-residence program (aka the art classes) hadn’t started yet. However, we found plenty to do on this trip! We visited Fort Knox and Fort Point to get two more stamps in our Maine State Park Passport, explored Belfast, and spent a morning at the Penobscot Marine Museum.
So you can definitely bet that once the reservations open up in January next year, we will be booking our return to this wonderful campground! And I will be sure to check out when the artist-in-residence program kicks off (and book our return visit for when this program is in session) because what makes this campground so unique is the art class experience!
For more on our trip to the midcoast area as well as all of other adventures, check out my posts on Instagram and Facebook.
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~Natalie