It’s been so rainy that even Mainers are cutting camping trips short
By Lori Valigra, Bangor Daily News Staff
Campers in many state parks around Maine are going home early or not showing up for their reservations as the rain that left last month as one of the rainiest Junes in a quarter century stretched into the four-day July 4 holiday weekend.
State parks around Maine all reported early departures, even though camping and day trips are up so far this year. Last year, Maine’s 48 state parks and historic sites saw a record 319,000 visitor nights and more than 3.28 million people spending time, according to Maine’s Bureau of Parks and Lands. This tourist season still looks promising, especially on sunny days, but it has gotten off to a soggy start.
“It has been horrible with this rain,” Etta Kaplinay, a customer service representative at Rangeley State Park, said. “People are leaving early this weekend.”
Kaplinay said the park attendance still is above previous years during the pandemic, but the rain since June has been a deterrent. The campground has 50 sites that were full on Friday and Saturday, but about half of the people left by Sunday because of the weather, she said. A majority of the campers are from Maine.
“It’s no fun because there’s no sun to dry out the tent the next day and everything is cold and wet,” she said.
Camden Hills State Park also is seeing early camping departures and some no shows, but it is busy with day visitors, Charlene Hood, a park manager, said.
Hood said park staff are working to keep the 30 miles of trails open for hikers. Drivers can stay dry and traverse a park road to Mount Battie, which has views of Camden Harbor and Penobscot Bay.
The steady rains still haven’t broken any previous records. Portland received 4.72 inches of rain on 23 days in June, just over half of the last quarter century’s high in 2006, when 9.18 inches of rain fell. Bangor has seen 4.89 inches of rain this June, well above its total monthly June average of 3.24 inches. Both cities also were 3 degrees cooler than a normal June. That is keeping swimmers away from lakes and beaches.
With 7 to 9 days of rain in the forecast, people won’t show, especially those coming from outside Maine, Brian Faye, manager at Lily Bay State Park in Greenville, said.
The park occupies 934 acres on the southwest shore of Moosehead Lake. There has been so much rain, and more mosquitoes than he remembers in recent years, that even the most coveted campsites with private beaches are not getting rented. Part of the reason is that the water levels have risen so much that they are affecting about one-third of the park’s 94 campsites.
“The beaches are gone at the shoreline campgrounds,” Faye said.
By contrast, Lake St. George State Park in Liberty has only seen a couple people leave early, and camping is up over last year, Vera Dowling, who takes reservations for the park, said.
“It’s been raining just about every day, but people are coming up anyway,” Dowling said. “People are made of strong stuff in Maine.”