8 Towns Made For A Quiet Getaway In Maine

The Maine towns made for a quiet getaway share three traits. Parking isn't a problem. The innkeeper knows which trail is muddy. A good meal doesn't require a reservation made three weeks ahead. Castine's 15-mile peninsula sits 35 miles from the nearest interstate, and Blue Hill's summer chamber music festival fills a converted barn seating fewer than 200 people. The eight Maine towns ahead each carry a documented reason for the drive and a population where visitors don't outnumber residents on most weekends.

Castine

Castine sits at the end of a 15-mile peninsula that juts into Penobscot Bay. The nearest interstate is roughly 35 miles away, which keeps most casual traffic away. The town's year-round population is approximately 1,300, and that figure includes 700 students enrolled at Maine Maritime Academy, whose training ship, the approximately 500-foot T/S State of Maine, is docked in the harbor for much of the year.

Castine is one of the oldest continuously settled communities in New England, with a documented European presence dating to 1613. Fort George, a British fortification from the Revolutionary War, stands at the top of the hill. The Wilson Museum on Perkins Street has been open since 1921 and houses geological and archaeological collections alongside a working blacksmith shop. Castine Kayak Adventures offers guided paddling tours through the bay while Dyce Head Lighthouse sits at the end of a short walking path off Battle Avenue.

The Pentagöet Inn & Pub on Main Street is a Queen Anne Victorian built in 1894, which was the town's original summer hotel, and is now operating as a bed and breakfast with a pub open to the public. The Castine Inn on Main Street is an historic property with 18 guest rooms and a perennial garden overlooking the harbor. In late July and August, the Pentagöet hosts a summer jazz series on its wraparound porch on Tuesday evenings.

Blue Hill

Blue Hill has a year-round population of a little over 2,800, spread across 62 square miles of the Blue Hill Peninsula in Hancock County. The village center is compact with a post office, a co-op, a bookstore, and a handful of galleries, but the surrounding area supports one of the more serious arts communities on the Maine coast.

Kneisel Hall has hosted a chamber music festival every summer since 1902, drawing professional musicians from around the country for performances in a converted barn seating fewer than 200 people. The Blue Hill Concert Association supplements it with additional performances throughout the season. Bagaduce Music Lending Library maintains one of the largest circulating sheet music collections in the world. Galleries, including Jud Hartmann Gallery and Blue Hill Bay Gallery, feature regional sculptors and painters.

Blue Hill Mountain, a 940-foot summit accessible by a 2-mile round-trip trail, offers views of the bay and the islands of Penobscot Bay on a clear day. The Blue Hill Inn, built in 1840 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has 13 guest rooms and two suites. The Barncastle Hotel & Restaurant on Route 172 offers additional boutique lodging options in the village.

Stonington

Stonington is at the southern tip of Deer Isle, which is itself accessible only via a suspension bridge from the mainland. The town is, by most available measures, the largest lobster port in Maine, with fishermen landing tens of millions of pounds annually. That working identity defines what Stonington looks and sounds like.

The downtown, a short run of 19th-century buildings along Main Street, includes working fish buyers operating alongside galleries and restaurants. The Stonington Opera House, built in 1912 and restored by the nonprofit Opera House Arts, hosts live theater, music, dance, and film year-round in a 150-seat venue. The Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, four miles north on Deer Isle, brings internationally recognized artists to the island each summer and offers public tours.

The Inn on the Harbor on Main Street has rooms overlooking the working waterfront. Pilgrim's Inn in the Deer Isle village, a few miles north, offers 12 rooms and three cottages in an 18th-century building on the Mill Pond. Isle au Haut Boat Services runs daily trips departing the town dock for Isle au Haut, where Acadia National Park maintains 18 miles of trails across 2,700 acres of the island.

Greenville

Greenville sits at the southern end of Moosehead Lake and comes alive in summer and fall, when moose-watching tours, seaplane rides, and fishing guides bring the area's effective population to many times its original size. Greenville is accessible via Route 6 or Route 15, both of which run through the forest for extended stretches before reaching town.

The outdoor infrastructure here is substantial. Northwoods Outfitters on Pritham Avenue rents kayaks, canoes, bikes, snowmobiles, and ATVs and runs guided moose safaris by truck at dawn. Katahdin Cruises operates excursions on Moosehead Lake aboard a restored steamboat. Jack's Air Service at the Greenville Municipal Airport offers floatplane tours over the lake and into the Allagash Wilderness. The Mount Kineo peninsula, accessible by ferry from Rockwood (about 20 miles north), has a hiking trail to the 700-foot cliffs above the lake. The 1890 lumber baron's mansion that is now the Greenville Inn at Moosehead Lake sits one block from downtown with lake views and private cottages. The Lodge at Moosehead Lake on Lily Bay Road is a boutique property with hand-carved bedposts and a deck overlooking the water.

The Moose Safari season runs May through September, with the best moose viewing typically in early morning from mid-May through June, when bulls are still in velvet and cows are with calves in the bog edges near the lake.

Rangeley

Rangeley's year-round population of approximately 1,222 puts it on the list of Maine's smallest incorporated towns. The town is built along the eastern shore of Rangeley Lake, a 6,000-acre lake that is part of a chain of six interconnected lakes draining into the Kennebec River watershed. In winter, Saddleback Mountain, 4,120 feet, with 68 trails and 2,000 acres of terrain, brings skiers and snowboarders. In summer, fishers come for the landlocked salmon and brook trout fishery.

The Rangeley Lakes National Scenic Byway, a 35-mile circuit on Routes 4 and 17, includes Height of the Land, a scenic overlook above Mooselookmeguntic Lake that is one of the better viewpoints in the state. The Wilhelm Reich Museum on Dodge Pond Road preserves the laboratory and personal archive of the Austrian psychoanalyst who settled in Rangeley and conducted his contested orgone energy research there until he died in 1957. The museum is one of the stranger and more interesting institutions in rural Maine.

The Rangeley Inn & Tavern, a 1907 property on Main Street, has 36 rooms overlooking Haley Pond. The Loon Lodge on Pickford Road is a smaller, lakeside property with direct Rangeley Lake access and canoe rentals on-site.

Boothbay Harbor

Boothbay Harbor occupies the southern tip of a peninsula in Lincoln County, reachable from Route 1 via Route 27 south. While summer brings a significant uptick in visitors, the October-through-May months are genuinely quiet. The harbor is flanked by a pedestrian footbridge connecting the two sides of town, originally built in 1901 and considered one of the few footbridges over saltwater in the country.

The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, located on Barters Island Road in the adjacent town of Boothbay, draws more than 300,000 visitors annually to 295 acres of gardens and trails along the Sheepscot River tidal estuary. Back in the harbor, Cap'n Fish's Cruises and Balmy Days Cruises both operate seasonal whale-watching, puffin, and lighthouse tours out of Pier 8. The Boothbay Region Land Trust maintains over 35 miles of free public trails through coastal forests and along rocky shores. The town has hosted the Windjammer Days festival every June since 1962, a three-day event that brings historic schooners into the harbor for parades, fireworks, and concerts.

The Topside Inn on McKown Hill, built as a sea captain's home in the 1800s, has 25 rooms with harbor views across multiple buildings. Brown's Wharf Inn on Atlantic Avenue offers waterfront rooms directly across from the pedestrian footbridge.

Hallowell

Hallowell is the second-smallest incorporated city in Maine, with a population of approximately 2,400. It sits along the Kennebec River just two miles south of Augusta, which makes it easy to dismiss as a satellite of the state capital.

Hallowell is a dense three-block commercial corridor of 19th-century brick buildings, a live music scene, and one of the more intact antique districts in central Maine. Water Street, the main drag, is two lanes wide and flanked by Federal-period and Greek Revival storefronts that house antique dealers, the Harlow Gallery, the Gaslight Theater, the Liberal Cup Public House & Brewery, and Slate's Restaurant. The Hallowell Antique Mall occupies two buildings on Water Street and stocks furniture, ceramics, and an array of other vintage finds. The Kennebec River Rail Trail runs 6.5 miles between Hallowell and Augusta's Waterfront Park along the riverbank. Hallowell's Historic District encompasses more than 260 acres and includes over 446 buildings recorded with the National Register of Historic Places. A 19-sign Museum in the Streets walking tour routes visitors past documented buildings along the main corridor.

The Maple Hill Farm Inn on Inn Road sits on 130 acres of fields and woods four miles from downtown, with eight guest rooms, a spring-fed swimming pond, and trail access into the adjacent 800-acre wildlife preserve. The Second Street Bed & Breakfast, meanwhile, is within walking distance of Water Street.

Bethel

Bethel sits in the Oxford Hills at the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. The village center has a traditional New England common, a prep school, and a handful of independent restaurants and shops within walking distance. Sunday River ski resort is six miles north, which means Bethel sees winter traffic without being itself a ski town. Grafton Notch State Park, 14 miles north on Route 26, is the primary summer draw. The park's trail system includes Screw Auger Falls, and the Appalachian Trail passes through it, with the Old Speck summit accessible via a 7.6-mile round trip. The Androscoggin River runs through the village, and Bethel Outdoor Adventure on Mayville Road rents kayaks and runs guided river trips May through September.

The Maine Mineral and Gem Museum on Bethel Common opened in 2019 and houses the largest collection of Maine minerals in the world, including meteorite specimens and a display on the Oxford County pegmatite deposits that have produced tourmaline and beryl since the 19th century. The Oxford County pegmatite mines, including the famous Mount Mica mine in Paris, Maine, about 20 miles south, have produced gem-quality tourmaline since 1820.

The Bethel Inn Resort on Broad Street is a classic New England resort on the village green with 60 rooms, an 18-hole golf course, and a cross-country ski center. The Sudbury Inn on Lower Main Street is a more informal option with a pub and B&B rooms in the center of town.

Sit Back and Relax in Maine

Most of these towns are at their most comfortable in May, June, and September after mud season has passed and before or after the summer peak. Greenville and Rangeley are strong fall destinations, with moose activity tapering into October and foliage peaking in late September. Castine and Blue Hill are genuine four-season destinations, though the peninsula roads are best avoided in mud season. Hallowell and Boothbay Harbor stay open year-round and are worth a winter weekend when the crowds are gone entirely.