Hermit Island Campground — Hotel in Phippsburg

First, let me say that the campground is amazing. Beautiful and beautifully maintained. Most of the campsites are pretty well spaced and do an ok job of blocking your neighbor.. though it would pay to have a look at your site before committing. The beaches are very nice, but don't expect much swimming. The water is, of course, super cold. Staff was nice.

Bathrooms leave a little to be desired. The composting toilets were decent, but the flush toilets were pretty nasty. Smelled really bad. The showers were decent... really small but the water temp and pressure was nice... though you had to control it by pressing in a spring loaded button every 10-20 seconds or so.

Peace and quiet and relaxation are very important to us so when we made our reservation it was important that the campground enforce quiet time. Well, campers, you may not be surprised that this was not a thing. The woman we made the reservations with said a gentleman would be driving around in his golf cart or truck patrolling during the evening.. and, as is usual, there was a large crowd making all kinds of noise and a woman with her children that were also unruly. So, after an hour of putting up with this we had to go tell them to be quiet. You will be shocked to learn that they were not apologetic, though they did quiet down. But this is not my idea of camping: to have to do the job of the campground "patrol." "But," you're saying, "why didn't you just flag down the guy on patrol?" Well, it would have been impossible unless I left my campsite and stood on a side road far away from my campsite (since he never once came down our road) and hoped he would drive by. I saw him once and never saw him again. There would have been no way to catch him. People also got up long before quiet time was over and made plenty of noise.

Now this seems to be a problem in all campgrounds that I wish campground owners would address. I get that people are having a good time, but there are also people who want peace and quiet. If you're going to have quiet hours, enforce them! Otherwise, don't bother. It should not be your camper's responsibility to police other campers, which tends to breed animosity between the campers.

The last thing to know is that at least some of the trails on the island are not well maintained and not for a leisurely stroll. Elderly people especially would not be able to make the one we took. And the flies are crazy. Once on the trail we were engulfed with flies. Not the fault of the campground, of course, just something to be aware of. The island is pretty buggy.. so bring insect repellent.

Other than the noisy neighbors, the campground is wonderful. We will definitely be returning, and hoping the noisy people can manage to...

Found the site online, looked nice and had good reviews so was excited to camp with friends for the fourth of July. What then proceeded was the worst camping experience of my life. We tried for over a month to make a reservations probably tried calling a couple dozens times attempting to get in contact with the camp. They don't have an online reservations system, no email that gets answered, no answering machine, and rarely does the phone even get answered during business hours. After we were finally able to make a reservation and sent in a check it took weeks to be cashed and confirmed. Upon arriving they said we still owed them money for the site. Once we got that sorted and to our site we were instantly swarmed by mosquitos upon getting out of the car only to discover there was a swamp behind our site. Despite being fully covered head to toe I woke up the next morning with probably over 30 bites bitten through my socks on each ankle and they swelled up so bad we had to go into Bath to find the nearest pharmacy. The mosquitos were present 24/7 not just at dawn/dusk. There is only so much one can take of swarming mosquitos and pouring rain before we packed up early and headed home. The sites on the water seemed much nicer bug wise and had nice views of the water, but all the inland sites were just unbearable to someone who gets eaten alive. When we were getting recommendations on which site to pick from an employee this definitely should have been mentioned and they need to do something about the swamp. Additionally, we attempted to use the showers near our site at one point and they wouldn't even get hot and they were gross with hair and trash in the stalls. Also seems a bit ridiculous to only allow 2 adults per site, we had to reserve two sites and didn't even use one of them. Overall would...

This was a really fantastic campground! With a placid beach, an on-site store, an ice cream shop, and hiking trails to boot, there really is so much to do here. We didn't even considering traveling outside of the campground as the activities were numerous. The beaches were really clean, and even on the hottest days of the year, they weren't packed. The views from some of the trails were really beautiful.

Given there is no online system, it is somewhat harder to make a reservation than with other campgrounds. We had to call to reserve our campsite, and there was a miscommunication as to what campsite we were reserving. We did need to mail a physical check to pay for the campsite. Do note that the campground is massive, and each area of the campground is like a neighborhood with different vibes, but everyone was kind, and a bunch of us gathered around a fire in the Kelp Shed and chatted when it was raining. The campground we ended up staying in our first night was in the western reach area, which is relatively wooded and in an area where there were swarms of mosquitos. The next night, we moved to the intersection of Cross Island Road and Island road, where there were no mosquitos.

I mention the mosquitos twice because camping means lil bugs are gonna come after you. But the mosquitos here must have some sort of training regiment, or they might be mutants, because they are something else. Bug spray really didn't work on them, and they were piercing our thick rain jackets to try to get our flesh. They were really only present closer to the trails, and in some of the more woody parts of the...