Camping Near Bar Harbor Maine at KOA Oceanside

On our recent trip to Acadia National Park, we spent a week camping near Bar Harbor Maine, at the KOA Oceanside. This campground is near the entrance to Mt Desert Island.  If you are planning on camping in Maine, this is a great location. It is located near Bar Harbor, and points of interest in Acadia. The tent sites are quite and out of the way, and we were able to enjoy meals and evening campfires in silence.

There are themes for most weekends, including activities for the kids.  They have lobster dinners available nightly, but we didn’t try this so I can’t comment on how good it is. We did enjoy some great restaurants in Bar Harbor, but our campground meals were all at our own campsite.

We found the tent sites to be very comfortable.  I think the RV sites seemed a little crowded together,  and very open, but that is the case in many campgrounds.

This campground is pet friendly, and we saw numerous campers with their dogs. They also have a nice fenced in dog run for your furry camping buddy.

Plan on not having strong cell coverage (at least with Verizon Wireless).  Nothing that KOA can control of course.  The campground also has wifi, but that too is weak down near the water in the tent sites.  Normally I don’t mind unplugging from technology while camping, but I was using Google and maps to find things to do and places to eat, and the weak connection made that a challenge.

Pros

The tent sites were very comfortable, with sand covered areas to place your tent. This provides comfort as well as good drainage.  It rained HARD one night that we were there, but there was no standing water on the sites.

The facilities are clean, and everything is well maintained.  They have clean bathrooms and showers.  That’s important at a campground.  There were garbage cans to drop your trash in a nice central spot, and I saw capground staff picking up the trash bags from this area on a regular basis.

Cons

There were only 2 things I did not like:

One was the deluxe ocean view tent sites. I paid quite a bit more for that site,  and had high hopes for the ocean view.  You had to walk down to the end of that drive (past our neighboring site) or follow a trail through a marshy area from our site to get to the water. You definitely were not next to the water.  There are some RV sites that are right along the water, which is what I was hoping for. But the tent sites are not.

The other thing was their pancake breakfast on Sunday. It was over priced for what you got.  And since they wrote each order down and hung it by the cook, I was surprised that they messed up the orders.

Overall

So overall, this is a really nice campground.  Bottom line, next time I visit Acadia will I camp there?  Probably not.  Next time I want a tent site closer to the water. But if that is not your top priority, then I highly recommend this campground. For more information visit the website for the KOA Oceanside, Acadia National Park, and Visit Bar Harbor.