When we visit Acadia National Park, we stay at Blackwoods—one of the Park’s two managed campgrounds. Located near Otter Point on the southeast end of Mount Desert Island, Blackwoods is Acadia for us, a place we have returned to again and again, nestled in the heart of the Park. Its proximity to the shore gives a constant sense of the coast, making for a magical and distinct camping experience. When the surf is active, you can hear it from your campsite. At night, the ringing buoy bell and the wind through the sparse trees surround you as you lie in your sleeping bag…provided a family member isn’t snoring too loudly. The atmosphere at Blackwoods is beguiling and restorative.
Blackwoods is organized into two sections: Loops A and B. We, being creatures of tradition and ritual, always stay in Loop A, if we can help it. On reflection, I believe it is because Loop A is that much closer to the shore. The shore was good. The shore meant atmosphere. During our most recent visit this September, my brother and I walked Loop B and were dually impressed by how surprisingly different it was in look and feel to Loop A. We had ridden our bikes through Loop B many years ago, and so were familiar with it, but now we noticed its character as if for the first time. Loop B had more dense tree cover, which made it darker, but in a good, mystical way. We resolved to go for Loop B next time.
There is a quiet to Blackwoods when campers head out in the morning. It is incredibly relaxing and peaceful - a perfect foil to the draining routine of normal life. Suddenly trees are worth looking at. The calls of birds you don’t hear back home work their way into your awareness. The crunch of gravel on the campsite is noticeable under your feet. You are back to existing, not chasing or doing. This is the effect of Blackwoods.
One prominent feature of Blackwoods is its amphitheater. Located between loops A and B, it connects the two. The amphitheater is where the National Park Service rangers gave slideshow presentations on the park’s many attractions and features. We attended the shows nightly during our stays in the Eighties and Nineties. By 1997, we had stopped attending them, mostly due to having seen them so many times. There are only so many times you can hear about tidal pool ecosystems and constellations in the night sky. My family got the feeling that the shows are no longer conducted, but we could be mistaken. There was something peaceful, reassuring, and informative about those slideshow presentations. They gave us something to do between dinnertime and s’mores time. During the day, the amphitheater was a place for kids to ride their bikes to and walk on stage and see what was behind it. We soon discovered you could meet other kids there. In the mid-Eighties, I met a cute girl with short blond hair named Jessica. I believe she was from New York. Open and sweet, she wore my red windbreaker and when she handed it back to me, the smell was lovely. The fact that I remember her name says something. It was a short-lived crush rooted at the amphitheater.
From the time of our first visit in 1983 to 1993, we camped in a Coleman brand pop-up camper. It sure beat camping in tents. The interior table folded down to form a third bed, which our large family of seven needed. I am still amazed how we all fit in there. Around 1997, my father traded in the Coleman camper for a larger and fresher Jayco pop-up camper. Newer and more spacious, it was a significant and welcome upgrade.
There was a ritual that we followed when arriving at Blackwoods. First, we checked in with the ranger station at the campground entrance. This required turning the engine off and we would all sit there in deafening silence after having ridden six hours on mostly highway. My father and the ranger would greet each other and chat amiably. I would always review the grease board with its notes on the week’s forecast and slideshow topics. The ranger would point out our site on the map and draw a path to it with marker. We would then drive slowly but excitedly up to our site, eye its features and judge its fitness among other sites, then my father would back into the site trying to get the camper located as best he could and then he would shut off the engine. After six plus hours, we had arrived.
My siblings and I would all get out and proceed to manhandle the camper - under our father’s supervision - into its final location and orientation. Once that was done, we would go about getting the camper stabilized and popped-up. My father would then unpack the rest of our camping gear and set it up in the usual locations around the camper and site.
One of the best smells to wake up to in the world was that of bacon frying in the skillet. Eating it with eggs and coffee was a delight and set the tone for the rest of the day. Morning cigars and reading followed. Mid-day was spent exploring the park and/or going into Bar Harbor or Northeast Harbor. Evenings featured dinner prepared on a propane stove inside the camper or on the site’s picnic table. Nighttime activities included more cigar smoking (and in later years, whiskey drinking), playing frantic card games like Dutch Blitz, and talking while sat around the fire. There was also reading by the hissing Coleman lanterns, which, until the cannister design appeared, required hand pumping to keep the gas pressurized and flowing to the mantles. This silence, except for the lantern hissing, was the sound of camping at Blackwoods.
We camped at Blackwoods almost every year from 1986 to 1993, then, after my older sister got married and my younger siblings headed off to college - and I spent the summer of 1996 in Italy - our annual trips to Acadia were placed on hold. Then my father got the Jayco camper, I moved back into my parents’ house, and in the summer of 1997, we returned. Our relationship with Acadia - and Blackwoods - was renewed. Whereas Blackwoods was my bubble to isolate myself in, now it was a basecamp from which to venture out and experience Acadia through hiking and biking. It was now just my parents, my younger brother David, and I myself. Debbie now camped with her own growing family. John and Rebecca were away at college. My father, David, and I smoked multiple Moniemaker cigars in the morning and evening. They were machine made but somehow so tasty. It was probably the fact that we were camping.
I finally went back to college full-time in 1999 and camping at Acadia became something that marked the summers in between the school years. Whereas camping had been an escape from a full tech support job, it was now just one more wonderful occasion during college life. This was the apex time when my parents were middle-aged, I was still “young”, and my siblings were still frequent campers as well. I remember lying in the camper’s bed reflecting on how staying with my parents in Blackwoods would soon be a thing of the past. (or so I thought).
During the 2000s, visits to Blackwoods and Acadia were infrequent - only three visits - but as immersive as ever. 2008 marked the first time I stayed in Blackwoods in a site of my own with my girlfriend at the time. It was still Blackwoods, just in a space of my own, establishing my own setup and feel.
In 2010, that same girlfriend and I stayed in Seawall, the national park’s other official campground on the western half of the island. It was wonderful, with its own magic, but remarkable in how different the Acadia experience could be when not at Blackwoods. I got married the next year and we did not visit Acadia for six years, finally returning in 2016 and briefly staying at Blackwoods for just one night before cold overnight temps sparked my wife’s desire to get a room in Bar Harbor. That would be the last moment my ex-wife and I would have in Blackwoods.
In 2021, with COVID still in the picture and driving up national park visitorship, my family and I stayed in Bar Harbor Campground, several miles north of Bar Harbor and far from Blackwoods. It was a solid campground, but lacked the history, location, official park status, and mythic magic of Blackwoods. It was a distant experience to Blackwoods and left me feeling forlorn not being able to stay at an official park campground. Still, we were visiting Acadia and that was the important thing.
We finally returned to Blackwoods in 2023 after a seven year hiatus - the longest of all time. My father, brother, and I stayed in Loop A. No popup camper, just tents like in 2021. One day into our stay, we were informed that an approaching hurricane was forcing a park shutdown the following day. That made the visit a bittersweet one.
We returned in earnest this past September, staying in Loop A for three days and four nights. A full Blackwoods experience was had once again after such a long period of flux. The classic features were all there - bacon and home-roasted coffee in the morning, cigars in the morning and evening, sounds of distant campers, the bathroom door banging, crows waking us from our slumber in the early morning hours, and the breeze gently blowing through the surrounding trees.
