State parks plan for busy summer Reservations up from last year

Though Maine’s 32 state parks don’t officially open for the summer until Saturday, the Department of Conservation already is predicting a profitable season.

“Right now, business looks like it’s going to be better than it was last year,” department spokesman Jim Crocker said Thursday.

Reservations to camp at state parks are up 4 percent overall, from this time last year, with 22,139 nights of camping already reserved.

Maine residents have been particularly interested in securing campsites, with the numbers for in-state reservations increasing by 7 percent over last year, according to the department.

The news is welcome after last summer’s slow season at Acadia National Park and at the state’s 32 smaller parks and the independently managed Baxter State Park.

“Things are starting to turn around,” Crocker said Thursday.

Some businesses blamed last summer’s damp, cold weather for the slump, but it’s hard to explain why visitors do what they do, according to one park official. Some years, the cold seems to slow visitors, other years it doesn’t faze them, Irvin “Buzz” Caverly Jr., longtime director of Baxter State Park, said Thursday.

Summer weekend reservations at Baxter are limited and almost always sell out well before May. This year is no exception. The most popular campsites, particularly those closest to Mount Katahdin, already are booked nearly every weekend between now and Labor Day, Caverly said.

Crocker believes this year’s high rates of reservations might be linked to high gasoline prices, which were topping $2 per gallon in some parts of Maine on Thursday. With uncertainty about whether the prices will rise even higher, an in-state vacation just makes sense, he said.

“That may help the tourist economy as much as anything else – the tourists might be Mainers,” Crocker said.

During the early 1970s, when the nation saw high gasoline prices, visitors to Baxter stayed longer, camping for more nights in the park rather than wasting gasoline traveling to the coast or farther afield, Caverly said.

At Baxter, nightly rates range from $18 for a tent site to $75 for a four-bed cabin. At the smaller state parks, camping fees top out at $15 a night for a tent site.

This summer, the park system will add two new trails to its offerings – the 27-mile Newport to Dexter rail trail, which officially opens June 12, and the 40-mile Grafton Loop Trail, which connects to the Appalachian Trail and ends in Grafton Notch State Park in western Maine.

For more information about Maine’s state parks visit the DOC Web site at www.state.me.us/doc/parks or www.baxterstateparkauthority.com