Best Places for Camping in Boothbay, Maine

We recently camped in Boothbay, Maine for the second time. In this post, we’ll share some of our experiences from camping in and around Boothbay Harbor, Maine. We’ll share our ideas for where to stay and what to do while you’re there!

Best Places for Camping in Boothbay, Maine

We’ve camped twice in Boothbay Maine, and stayed at the same place both times. As luck would have it, thanks to a huge backlog of posts we need to write for our 2021 travels, we were just getting ready to write up our experience from 2021 in Boothbay, when we traveled back to Boothbay for 2022. Therefore, I’m using some notes and photos from 2021, but I will be adding to the post with the benefit of our 2022 experience of staying for a second time in the Boothbay Harbor area.

Camping in Boothbay, Maine at Boothbay Craft Brewing

When we go to Boothbay, since we are traveling by RV, we love to stay at Boothbay Craft Brewery which is a brewery, tavern, restaurant, Harvest Hosts site, and a small RV campground that now has 16 sites. (There were only 14 sites last year when we visited). We stayed last year after searching for a spot to stay with our Harvest Hosts membership and then ended up staying for a longer stay in the RV park. For those who may not know, Harvest Hosts is a membership-based network of wineries, breweries, farms, and restaurants that allow self-contained boondocking for RVs and campers. The stays at these sites are free with a Harvest Hosts membership, but they do ask that you make a purchase from your host of at least $25.00 per night. Usually, this is easy to do, especially at Boothbay Craft Brewery where there are so many fantastic beers, and food offerings available at their Biergarten. This year we stayed one night as a Harvest Hosts guest, and then paid for additional days directly to the campground.

View of the RV sites and Cabins in the evening at Boothbay Craft Brewery & RV Park

Boothbay Craft Brewery RV Camping Amenities

Boothbay Craft Brewery is an excellent spot to stay when exploring the Boothbay Harbor region. The RV park has both back-in and pull-through spaces, available with full hookups for electricity, water, and sewer connections. The gravel sites are level and edged with grass to give each space some nice room for spreading out chairs and grills. There’s also free Wifi, a dumpster for trash removal, and a beautiful bath house for paid RV guests. Sites also come with a picnic table, fire ring, and light post, and some of the back-in sites also have a grill. The owner, Riley, could not be kinder and more welcoming. He is often the one who will see you to your site. He’s often hard at work on-site and in addition to knowing everything about brewing and Boothbay, he is also quite knowledgeable on all things RVing as an RVer himself.

The Watershed Tavern provides delicious farm-to-table food, craft cocktails, and stellar beers made on-site at Boothbay Craft Brewery

Beers and Food at Boothbay Craft Brewing

While there are some great restaurants to explore in Boothbay — and we’ll touch on a few of those — we really enjoy staying at our campground and having the benefit of the on-site food and beverages at Boothbay Craft Brewing at the outdoor biergarten that is an outdoor extension of the Watershed Tavern. On our first visit in 2021, we tried a Margarita Pizza and their famous Thirsty Botanist beer. On our visit in 2022, we were able to enjoy even more of the menu. We again ordered and enjoyed the Margarita Pizza – delicious large pieces of mozzarella basil and tangy tomato sauce, along with their sour beer – Puckerberry, and their flagship 633 Beer. On our second night we tried the cheese pizza, also delicious – and the Farmers’ Salad. The craft cocktails are also exceptionally good. We kept coming back to the Farmer’s Daughter and The Tools of the Trade. The brewery also features pop-ups and collaborations with other local purveyors. That night was Brother Shucker. We enjoyed the dirty oysters – which were actually a very clean-tasting combination of oysters, roe, and sour cream, and the smoked mussels with fried jalapenos.

The Biergarten is lined with picnic tables games and lights that make it a festive and welcoming spot for enjoying all the food and drinks the Brewery has to offer.

Since the brewery isn’t open for breakfast or lunch, it’s also worth noting that there’s a combination Dunkin’ and Subway combination restaurant within a 1/3 of a mile of Boothbay Craft Brewery, which is a short walk, and an even shorter bike ride or drive. The road between Boothbay Craft Brewing and Dunkin’ is very busy, so definitely use caution if you walk or bike. We went a few times and since we don’t have a car were thrilled to be able to get coffee, donuts, and sausage egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches so close to our site, without needing to bike or drive the RV into town for breakfast.

This area at Watershed Tavern hosts music and food from local farmers. We enjoyed fresh scallops and oysters from Brother Shucker here.

Parking and Getting Around Boothbay in an RV

Getting into town is easy by car, but can be a little trickier by RV or bike. Parking in Boothbay can be crowded and a bit hard to come by for the most desirable spots, but the town tries its best by having a good mix of paid on-street parking and municipal lots.

During our trip in 2021, we just had the RV, so we drove that into town and were able to find some parallel parking spots with 4 hour parking that we fit into. This was good, because RVs are prohibited in most of the paid parking lots in Boothbay. Our rig also did a great job of handling the hills and somewhat twisty roads of this area of Maine. In 2021 we tried a few times to get and Uber to be able to go downtown in that but, to no avail. In 2022, we relied heavily on our Rad e-bikes to get us into town, since we wanted to keep the RV set up and the AC on for the dog at our campground. While there are bike lane signs and even a biking initiative supported by the local Rotary, it is still pretty difficult to ride around and into Boothbay because of the steep hills, narrow breakdown lanes, tight sidewalks and congested areas of town, and basically non-existent biking amenities like paths and racks. It was definitely a drawback to trying to get back and forth to enjoy the downtown area.

As we mentioned, RVs aren’t allowed in many of the public parking spaces in Boothbay, even for our smaller rig (24 feet). We did have some success with parallel parking, especially the 4 hour spots on the street which had some nice shade. We found a few parking spots near smaller Beaches in Boothbay in Southport, that are fun to visit to read a book.

The Footbridge Across the harbor in Boothbay is one of the many historic and scenic attractions by the water in this quaint town

Where to Eat in While Camping in Boothbay, Maine

Boothbay is full of great places to eat. One of our favorite things to do in a new-to-us town is to check out the dining options! Since food is a necessity as well as a fun diversion in any new town, here are some of the places we went. We’ll write more in a list of Places to Eat in Boothbay, but here’s a quick overview of some of the spots we liked.

On our drive into Boothbay during our trip in 2021, we stopped about nine miles away from Boothbay in Wiscasset, ME to get a lobster roll at the infamous Red’s Eats. We’ll detail that adventure in future posts about all things lobster and lobster rolls! While the lobster rolls were pretty good, the line was no fun. To avoid that line in the future, and to get another perspective on lobster rolls, we’d also like to check out Sprague’s Lobster across the street.

On our trip in 2021, we enjoyed the Boothbay Harbor landmark, McSeagulls. This tavern and restaurant has a waterfront dining room and bar, and a great well-rounded menu of seafood and traditional fare. In 2021, this was one of our first dining experiences during COVID, and it felt very clean and safe in a sunny, open-air environment. We had a Haddock Sandwich with onion rings and a Maine Fields Salad which features blueberries also the Mc Seagull’s Mule which also features blueberries. To continue with the blueberry items, we also enjoyed blueberry ice cream at the Downeast Ice Cream Factory for dessert. On our trip in 2022, we were happy to see that McSeagulls was still in business after we heard the news that it was closing and/or changing hands in 2021. While we didn’t eat there this visit, the menu and the view looked just as good as before, with many of the same favorites we enjoyed, and we’d certainly go back anytime!

In 2021, we also stopped at Pinkham’s Market one day for lunch – an amazing meatball sub! And we ordered two lobsters and steamers already prepared which we brought back to our campsite to eat with drawn butter. It was a memorable camping meal, and it was made so much easier by being able to pick up the seafood already steamed and prepared from Pinkham’s. In 2022, we enjoyed the Cape Cod Chicken sandwiches from the same market and picked up provisions as well as lobster again!

On our trip in 2022, we decided to check out Kaler’s which offers a beautiful view of the harbor from their picnic table-filled deck. It was the afternoon, and we had dinner reservations, so we kept it light and just split an order of onion rings and a pitcher of beer. However, we found both the bartender, John, and owner Mary at Kaler’s to be extremely welcoming and fun to chat with! We went back before boarding the Cabbage Island Clambake to try the lime mule cocktail the Bad Larry. We’d love to return again for some fried seafood and blueberry pie!

For dinner one evening, we were celebrating a special occasion this trip, so we decided on Ports of Italy as a fine dining spot for our special dinner. We enjoyed the Bocce Ball cocktail, Eggplant Rollatini, Fruite de Mare, and Osso Bucco.

In addition to the Dunkin’ that is close to Boothbay Craft Brewery and RV Park, there is Bet’s Fish Fry, which is open odd hours, because they close when they sell out for the day, but is usually open Tuesday through Saturday 11-2. The Fish Sandwich and fries can’t be missed.

Kaler’s offered waterfront dining with a panoramic view of the harbor, excellent food, drinks, and welcoming service

Things to Do While Staying In Boothbay

While some of our camping arrangements and dining experiences qualify for us as things to do for us, we also found some other wonderful diversions in Boothbay! We’ll write up a longer post of specific things to do, but here are a few things we enjoyed while there!

In 2021, we took one of Capt’ Fish’s Harbor Cruises to get a view of the water. We elected to take the Harbor Cruise with Lighthouses, Seals, and Lobster Trap Haul, They also offer whale watching, puffin cruises, and other itineraries! We enjoyed it because it helped us get our bearings, see the Harbor and interesting islands, see some of the Maine coast, and learn some history of the area — all while enjoying a beautiful day on the water!

In 2022, we did the famous Cabbage Island Clambake. While this is a dining experience, it also qualifies as a once-in-a-lifetime (or perhaps more than once, if you’re lucky!) kind of authentic Maine travel experience. The boat ride out to the island is a narrated tour that lasts about an hour and takes you through some of the beautiful details of the history of Boothbay Harbor. The tour will also point out some of the landmarks nearby, as well as the islands you pass on the way out to Cabbage Island where the Clambake is held. The Clambake is a feast of lobster, clams, corn, fish chowder, potato, and a hard-boiled egg. Accompanied by iced tea or water and a delicious, and famous blueberry cake for dessert! The whole experience isn’t one you’ll ever forget.

The Cabbage Island Clambake is one of the most classic and unique Maine dining experiences in Boothbay, Maine

Boothbay is home to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens It’s just a few miles from the campground, but requires pre-purchased tickets and also doesn’t allow RVs to park on the property. Dogs are also not allowed, so it was a bit tricky for us to figure out a visit. For some of these logistical issues, we haven’t gone yet, but is on our list of places to visit.

The Boothbay Harbor Shops also include Galleries that feature local artists paintings and crafts. There are so many talented artists that make Boothbay their home, thanks probably in part to the endless sources of artistic inspiration from the water, boats, and coastline. We also enjoyed Maine and Ivy, and The Footbridge Shop, and thought they were some of the nicest stores to visit for classic-meets whimsical preppy attire and tasteful gifts respectively. We also ducked into Marcel’s Submarine Shop and Whisky Bar – a winning combination of excellent gourmet subs and fine whiskies, which had an extensive list of whisky and cocktails. There’s much more to experience in Boothbay including spas, beaches, resort hotels, and even more restaurants but we didn’t have the chance to visit those during this stay.

No cooking and easy clean up is appreciated when you’re trying to eat lobsters in an RV. Pinkham’s Market will steam lobsters for you. We took them back to our campsite and ate them there!

More Places to Stay in Boothbay

For RVers, there are a few other places to camp in Boothbay. For instance, Shore Hills is down the street from Boothbay Craft Brewing and we passed in on our drive-in. We also passed Gray’s Homestead Oceanfront Camping in Southport which looks like a neat spot to try sometime since it’s waterfront and offers seasonal sites. The harbor also has several gorgeous resorts, hotels, and bed and breakfasts.

If we ever travel here just by car, enjoying a fine dining and spa experience while enjoying the Spruce Point Inn or staying at Linekin Bay Resort in one of their Oceanfront rooms or pet-friendly cabins or looks like it would be a fun thing to do. However, we absolutely love the hospitality and location we found at Boothbay Craft Brewery and will likely return again next year!