Seawall Campground

I stayed here for three nights and loved this campground. The campground is clean and well-​kept. While there are no showers on site, the bathrooms are clean. The rangers were friendly and helpful. This was our first time visiting Acadia and I am so glad we stayed here. The campsites had a picnic table and fire pit. The sites are private.

I really liked this campground. As others have noted there are no showers, but we liked the way the campsites were laid out. The bathrooms were always very clean and it was great being able to walk over to the seaward side to go walking over the rocks at low tide.
Note — the campsites are NOT on the sea.
A bus comes regularly and I think goes around both sides of the island.
Yes, we will be going back!

Seawall is pleasant and quiet, as others have noted. It is located near the ocean and the natural seawall, making it a pretty place to check out. It is unfortunately distant from much of the rest of the park, so expect a 20-​mile or so ride to the main park.
We had hoped to cycle from our campsite to the top of Cadillac mountain for sunrise, but had to settle for driving when considering the distance and the hour at which we were rising.
Please also note there are modern bathrooms though no showers. One must travel about a half mile down the road from the entrance to a convenience store which charges $ 1 for two minutes of shower, open 8a-​8p, last shower at 7:45p.

We spent four nights at this campgrounds a few weeks back for our summer vacation. This was our first time visiting Acadia and staying at these grounds, so we didn’t know what to expect. We ended up enjoying our stay, but a few things irked us while we were here.
Here are some of the positive aspects;
1. We ended up staying at site D68 which was in the «walk-​in» camp loop. Our site was located near the parking area and bathrooms unlike other in the loop. This was great because we didn’t need to haul all of our items far and the bathrooms were close.
2. The walk to the ocean was short and the views were incredible.
3. The overall camping experience was great and it was nice to have a fire ring as well as a grill.
Here are some of the negative aspects;
1. While checking in I stood in line for about ten minutes but got cut by an entitled couple who walked in and started making the counter their home. The ranger didn’t seem to care and didn’t apologize after having me wait for another ten minutes (of course they had a ton of questions.) We also never saw a ranger unless they were at the check-​in office.
2. I love children and have never had an issue with sharing campgrounds with younger people, but camping here made me mad. The children surrounding our campsite cried or yelled until 10/​11pm and were back at it by 6:30/7am.
3. At one point since our camp site was near the parking lot random campers decided to walk through our site instead of going around. Talk about rude when you are trying to enjoy your campfire. Also, one night a car alarm went off and the owner never shut it off because his site must have been so far into the woods that he didn’t hear it. We did though.
These issues aside, we would stay here again but may try the other Acadia site on our next visit. Also final tip, if staying here buy wood before you come. We bought some from a few shacks along the road and a few of them wouldn’t burn regardless of what we did. This made our camp fire a smoke machine.

The 2 stars are only because of the beautiful location of this campground. The gorgeous seawall is about a 10 minute walk or a 2 minute bike ride!!! When the campground is quiet at night, you can sleep to the waves crashing on the walls of the sea. :) Other perk is the Explorer Bus has a stop at this campground every 30 minutes. Also, the bathrooms have plugs for hairdryers and getting a quick surge of juice for your electronics. Other than that, I would not recommend this campground.
We stayed 7 nights and 6 days in the middle of August this year.
I deducted 3 stars for good reasons.
1. They do not enforce quiet hours. 8 am — 10 pm. I was woken up every single morning before 7 am by kids screaming and people speaking loudly. One night there was a large crew who stayed up past midnight singing and laughing loudly. After long days of hiking/​biking, I needed good sleep but I never got it because of the lack of enforcement.
2. Unsecured. There are no rangers on site from about 9 pm to 8 am. This is poor management for safety reasons alone and also for any one who needs quiet hours enforced. I never saw any rangers come around the sites which I thought was odd. The camp grounds I have stayed at before, rangers are usually friendly and involved with their occupants.
3. Camp sites sit on top of each other. No privacy. Might as well camped with the folks at the 3 sites that surrounded my site (D95).
4. Check-​in was uninformative. Troy, who checked us in, simply highlighted the map and sent us on our way. We wandered the campground trying to find our site! After parking by the trail that lead to our site, we realized the walk to D95 was VERY long. This made it a complete haul for all our camping gear! Luckily, I found one wheel-​barrel which helped a little bit.
5. The upkeep was poor. Our site had trash on the ground when we arrived and the fire pit was filled about 6 inches of burned wood. Luckily, I had a trowel to dig it out.
6. Not just no free firewood, there was no firewood at all!!! This is a campground, correct? We had to backtrack on the road and look for the best wood bundles for the price. The best deal I found was a few days later, at a gas station. I actually got about 8 pieces of wood for 4 bucks, instead of the OVERPRICED firewood on the road surrounding Seawall Campground. Along the roadside, you can pay 2 bucks for about 3 pieces and upwards to 5 bucks for about 6 pieces. Pfft.
7. Bathrooms were disgusting. I felt cleaner peeing outside in the woods than within the 4 stalls that were offered. The were consistently dirty because they only clean the bathrooms once a day. Also there was ONLY hand sanitizer in the bathrooms, no soap.
Warning: No showers.
I love camping but I also love hygiene.
TIP: Go down the road to Bass Harbor Campground and pay 3 bucks for a hot shower as long as you want.
The drive out to the East Side of the Island is over a half hour from Seawall Campground! Just a heads up, I’d recommend staying on the EAST Side of the Island if that is where most of your activities will be. Not too much happening on the West side.
Thurston’s Lobster Pound is less than 10 minutes from Seawall Camgpround. If you like your seafood FRESH (who doesn’t) then this place will meet and go above your standards. We went there TWICE because it was that exceptional.
Okay, good luck camping and don’t forget to pack your can opener! We forgot ours :)
Cheers.

Great campground! Very quiet, at least when we were there. Bathrooms were very clean (no showers). There are multiple places on the way there that sell fire wood. Couple of them are right down the street. It’s roughly a ½ hour ride to the other side of the park depending on where you’re going. So that is something to consider. I’d stay there again…

A great, cheap place to go camping in a beautiful spot of the country. Online reservations were quick and easy, and check in when we got the the camp was quick. The bathrooms (while not having soap) were clean.
When making a reservation you really have to look at a map, some of the sites are a nice distance apart while others are right on-​top of each other. I wasn’t a fan of the gravel ground in the sites — I’ve never experienced that before.

I was hoping to relax and unwind… No power, no showers… i thought it would attract other quiet loving nature lovers…
They have horrible generator hours… from 8 am to 7 pm… and thats what it was 11 hrs of non stop generator running form every direction…
We left three days early cause we couldnt take the noise anymore.

Yes, Blackwoods is closer to Bar Harbor, but if you’re looking for a peaceful, beautiful spot to hang your hat for a few days, stay at Seawall during your trip to Acadia. Wonderland and Ship Harbor trails are just down the road as is the incomparable Seawall and Bass Harbor Lighthouse. Stop in at Gott’s Store (a legendary local spot) for coffee in the morning. Take a detour over to Tremont or go to Thurston’s in Bernard. Enjoy the true beauty of Acadia and the hospitality of the Quietside.
I think Seawall used to be a walk-​up campground that didn’t take reservations but I’m sure that’s changed. I made our reservation through the Reserve America website — cost was $ 22 per night. The rangers that checked us in were really friendly and the campsites and bathrooms were very well kept. Seawall would be perfect if it just had showers (neither of the Acadia campgrounds have showers). Ugh. Still I really enjoyed my visit to Seawall and I’d definitely stay there again when in the mood to camp.

Solid campground, nicely run by the NPS. Very good prices and clean bathrooms. It was nice you had to park your car and walk a bit to each campsite, making the campgrounds quieter. Quite hours are from 8 pm– 10 am, FYI.
Ranger Jenkins was very condescending to his fellow park ranger. Stinks to be that guy.
It was a little frustrating there weren’t showers at the campsite. It seemed they had made a sneaky deal with the Seawall Store down the road, who were making a fortune charging $ 1 for 2 min of showering.

Camped in D loop in August. Our site, No. 9, was really small, with barely enough room for our 9×12 tent. The trail to the restroom ran between our tent and the picnic table. On the plus side, the campsite was quiet and the views of the sky from open areas was magnificent. The nearby store with public showers was a bit funky but kind of fun. We always left there feeling really clean. Seawall is a long ways from anything, which I rather liked. Bring everything you need.

Very nice campground on the «Quietside» of Mount Desert Island. If you want to be near most of the attractions of Arcadia park, or close to Bar Harbor, this is not the place for you as it is about a 20 – 30 min drive. I personally loved the drive and enjoyed being away from the crowds. Unfortunately our walk-​up campsite on D-​Loop (D34) was very close to our neighbors, and that was a little bit of a bummer for me. Neighbors here, neighbors there, neighbors everywhere. It seems from reading other peoples’ reviews there are more private campsites, so perhaps I would consider staying here again but on a different loop. I also may be spoiled and used to hiking camping, perhaps this is normal for car camping. Not having cars pull into each site was nice, but the tree coverage was nonexistent between camping sites. This place would definitely be great for groups.
Park rangers were very friendly, and the bathrooms were fantastic, even if I could hear the occasional flush of a toilet from my campsite. The ocean is right across the road from the entrance from the campgrounds, but I never heard it from inside the grounds. Very dog friendly campgrounds with clean, respectful campers. Showering up the road was easy (open from 8AM-​8PM, $ 1 for 2 mins) and the store with the showers had lots of things for sale like bug spray at reasonable prices. Fire wood was easy to buy from road side stands for $ 2 – 3 bucks depending on the stand. Southwest Harbor is a cutie town a very short drive away with one or two restaurants, a fancy supermarket, and a great bar (The Upper Deck). A little closer to camp you can get fantastic pop overs in the morning at Common Grounds and phenomenal lobster rolls at Sawyer’s Lobster Pound. A llitle further up the road past the main strip of Southwest Harbor there is a supermarket (IGA) and gas station.
Overall great location, just not much campsite privacy on D loop.

Great campground. Highly recommended! We stayed there for a long weekend at the end of July!
Things we likes:
–the wooden paths were very easy to follow in the walk in sites and it was really nice to not have cars right next to your tent
— the low key vibe and quiet atmosphere despite it being high season
— it’s cheap! 12/​a night
— clean bathrooms
–a wheel borrow available to get your stuff to the site initially
–friendly park rangers!
–eccentric camp store just outside the campground with hot showers!
–the rocky beach beach across from the campground for star gazing!
Things we didn’t like:
–no hand soap in the bathroom– there is running water and hand sanitizer but no soap, that doesn’t make sense to me
— you are supposed to wash your dishes at the campsite however we didn’t being a tub to wash with and they don’t tell you this so plan ahead with your cookware and dish washing options.
All in all I wish I was still there and not writing this on the way home:)

We stayed in Seawall last September (2013).
This was our first trip to Acadia, but we loved it and plan on returning to the same campground this year. This year is site specific for rentals so we scouted out another site that we’d like.
We stayed in the D loop with a 300 ft walk in. Because it was September there weren’t a lot of people here which was great. Had there been a lot of people though, we noticed you would have been quite close together which is really the only downside. The space is good, tent is on gravel, but it was flat. lots of trees around.
We saw 2 deer one morning which was great and two nights racoons tried to take our stuff, which was not so great, but that was probably our fault. Be careful with your food, they run fast!
This campground was shockingly quiet. You could hear a pin drop at night (as in any time after dark). One night there were people loud (not annoyingly because they were no where near us and not late) but they were the ONLY thing you could hear and they were pretty far away from us.
Across the way by the entrance of the campground is a great picnic area along the water. Really beautiful, nice place to hang out for a bit.
Bathrooms seemed fine and clean to me, but like I said we were there in September, much less people.
This part of the island is nice because its away from the main section. There’s still food, place to rent bikes, etc. and even hiking. We had no problem driving in to the park each day.

We’ve camped with our pop-​up in many Nation Park Service and National Forest campgrounds and this was by far the biggest disappointment we’ve found to date. No showers was the first real turn off. Yes, I suppose I should have caught that when I made the reservation, but it’s 2013, I guess I assume we’ve progressed that far. Second, the site we had was back to back with our neighbors. I’m pretty used to us all pulling in the same way and that’s how the game is played. Here, we pulled in opposite our neighbors so the back of our camper was a foot (literally) from our neighbors camper. Pop-​up camper have thing walls. I heard things I didn’t need to hear. Come on folks, let’s update the system. When we go back to Acadia, I’ll look for someplace different. The best part is that it is away from the crowds of Bar Harbor, but that’s little benefit when you don’t want to be there.

a lovely place to camp. It was reasonably quiet, clean and not very fancy. Walk in sites are all pretty accessible even with gear, and the fire pits are really easy to make a good cook fire in. I did wish the sinks in the womens’ bathrooms had warm water and were a little easier to wash up/​brush teeth in but hey, it’s camping.
I didn’t mind that there were no showers, the camp store up the road had clean pay showers and wasn’t very far away. I do recommend reserving a site, especially if you plan to go during peak season.

Quiet, clean, inexpensive, awesome!
Loved the walk-​up sites. I’m used to the drive-​up sites where you park right next to your tent, but this layout was fun. We felt more like we were in the middle of the woods — we could only see the campfires from a couple other sites, and we couldn’t see the road at all.
We came without a reservation — in the middle of August — and called the camp office from Bar Harbor on Sunday night to see if they had any spot. They had ONE spot open, which they agreed to hold for us for an hour, and we booked it over there in 30 minutes. Got the spot, which was right on top of the road and the restroom — last choice spot! Then we went to the office in the morning and requested a site change, and within 30 minutes they’d moved us to one of the nicest and most secluded spots in the place. Awesome! We didn’t quite realize how lucky we’d gotten until we saw the huge lines of vehicles out front every morning…
It’s a good 30 minute drive to Bar Harbor and the park loop, but it’s totally worth staying on this side of the island for several reasons:
1. Avoid the hordes of tourists — even in the peak of summer, it was peaceful here.
2. At night, you can walk across the street to the Seawall picnic area and look at the stars from the beach. Highly recommended! It’s really dark and on a clear day you can see the Milky Way! The 2 other nature walks in this area are great, too.
3. In the morning, before you drive to the east side of the island, you can visit the Common Good Soup Kitchen just outside the campground and start your day with fresh popovers, jam, and coffee. No waiting. FREE — they just ask you to make a donation to their program. (We donated a ton.) After being fortified with a couple of popovers and filling up your coffee mug, the drive to the other side of the island is a breeze.
Would be worth it to reserve online in advance, which is probably what we will do if I can go back here next summer.

Very affordable option at $ 14/​night, as with any national park. Half of the campsite are on walk-​in basis, which was good, since we didn’t have an reservation. The downside is they run out of campsite around 9:30 AM. We waited in line from 8 AM to get a site.
The site is very spartan, without showers. If you are doing tent camping, make sure you bring a pad, as the sites are gravel covered.
The location is on the more barren side of the island. If you are doing a reservation, I would recommend to go to Blackwoods, since there’s a lot more activities — hiking, carriage road, scenic drives. For the money we saved, we spent the same amount or more on gas. If I were to do it over again, I would get a private campground on the Bar Harbor side for around $ 29/​night with all the amenities.

First time on Mount Desert Island and not the last, we had an amazing time and the Seawall Campground is wonderfully AWAY from the touristic craze, sure you have to drive 45mins to Sandy Beach but there’s no bus full of people at Echo lake which is only 10 minutes away from Seawall.
Walk-​in sites will all be reservable by 2012, for the rest of the summer, Stop by Thompson Island’s park outpost and you can make a 1h reservation by the time you get there, no wait.
Like others have said, great park, awesome campsite, no showers, not much else to say. I did notice that every morning the rangers would collect the unused wood from empty sites and left it by the trash container for people to use for free. Beside, $ 1,50, $ 2 wood bundles by the road supports local economy.
See my other Mount Desert Island list for great place to visit in the area.

Really beautiful, well maintained campgrounds. I stayed in D loop and had a 300 ft walk up. I loved that each site had its own fire pit and picnic table! The ground was also very level– no rock diggin’ in my back at night! We could hear the tide crashing at night… aaahhh serenity.
Bathrooms are insanely clean, but no hands soap. As stated, no showers on the grounds. Dog friendly! A ways away from many trails but not a bad trade for the area.
They also have free programs at the amphitheater!
For $ 14 a night, it’s pretty swell.