How much does it cost a day to vacation in Maine?
Plenty if you beeline to a tourist trap along the coast. I know, I know, those lighthouses, sliding on a bib to crack a steamed Maine lobster venues are a lot of fun. But they can set you back some serious money. Being planted in the Old Port section of Portland Maine is a little pricey if you spend a serious amount of time there.
This blog post explores the question of just how much it costs a day to vacation in Maine.
The advice on where to vacation is often written by a media specialist many moons away from Maine.
The hired pen “suggestions” are hired out ones to strongly suggest to the audience this is how to should vacation in Maine and where, when, why. But what if you don’t own the hospitality business being highlighted in the write up? The outfit or chamber of commerce touting this location as the only place to consider staying and spending lots of money while you do is not trying to save you money. Not giving you options on how to vacation cheaper in Maine so you can visit more than just once a year.
This Maine blog post explores other cheaper ways to get away from the tourist trap high expenses and to see more of Vacationland without the unnecessary extra costs.
For starters, what time of the year are you planning vacation travel to Maine?
Remember the “shoulder seasons” are your best value. The periods just before and immediately after the busy summer Maine vacation season save a lot of bucks. Plus not so many people on the sidewalks of those quaint Maine harbor town locations.
Way less traffic on the narrow streets networked around the Maine coastal harbor town locations in the shoulder season. You don’t see the cruise ships double parked out front. The big tourist buses from Canada and beyond are not casting a shadow in the restaurant parking lots.
And the people who work the restaurants, run the inns, hotels, bed and breakfast locations along the coast are less stressed, more friendly during the shoulder season.
The daily grind serving the public is not so intense or fast paced for the Maine motel and restaurant, the amusement business operators.
Everyone is more laid back and enjoyable like the surroundings that are not to capacity and beyond for tourists. Just my suggestion as a local native Mainer in my travel experience.
So how much it costs per day to stay during a Maine vacation depends on the time you arrive.
Winter can make the lodging rates even cheaper and you’re right. Not every place to stay is open when snow piles up outside the Maine tourist establishment. Many motel, cabin, hotel and inn owners take off for the sunny south to spend the winter months. To unplug and recharge for another Maine summer tourist seasons ahead without blisters from operating a snow shovel.
But winter stays at popular Maine tourist destination offer something else besides savings.
Solitude, smaller groups, no lines and everything in the tourist mecca returns to simple small town Maine existence sans the tourist dollars. Take Wells Beach Maine for example during the winter months. Winter at Sunday River or Sugarloaf USA is not cheap but sure is fun. The cost to maintain that many downhill ski trails, especially when Mother Nature does not cooperate with the snow flow all takes money. Plenty of snow in this Maine Sugarloaf ski video getaway over one New Year’s Day a few years back.
Sugarloaf USA In Western Maine To Ski, Stay, To Getaway Video
The ski areas in Maine have to make the long dollar because despite the myth, winter is not six months or long .
The added golf courses, hiking and biking trails and fall leaf peeking tours on the chairlifts all help the ski area’s bottom line financials.The smaller Maine ski mountains with lots more volunteers and less paid staff can weather the overhead easier to survive. Plus the cost of area lodging is much lower to the ground. The entire day in and out local economy in smaller rural communities is so much less.
The how much does it cost a day to vacation in Maine can be $250 a night and up or the coupon rate of $59 for the lay your head in the bed.
When traveling to Boston MA living in Northern Maine, stopping in York seems to be the line to not cross for motel room rates. Way cheaper, no charge for parking or any other add ons happens getting off exit 7. Because once you go further south, open your wallet or purse wide happens for the cost of the stay. Parking is never a problem in Maine for vacations. You can not say that when hemmed in a city like Boston with lots of one way old cobblestone streets.
The cost per day of a Maine vacation room, suite, cabin, where you stay depends on the season, the region, what events are happening.
What do you like to do for fun and is the vacation around your kid’s school recess break? School basketball tournament week or a labor day, 4th of July long weekend are prime time when vacancy rates are low. Dead of winter changes everything on the lodging bill and the meal deals to expect. If you tow up a camper trailer and go the RV route on a leased lot with hook ups, when you pitch a tent. The overhead is different than a five star resort with all the overhead.
Getting a lean to at Baxter State Park or renting a house on the beach or a lake and splitting expenses with your loved ones that jointly vacation as a group.
There are many approaches to hold down the how much it costs a day to vacation in Maine.
But do you snow sled, downhill or cross country ski, ice fish or snowshoe and is outdoor winter hiking up Katahdin your idea of fun? Are you more of an apres ski kinda person and want to curl up by a crackling fireplace blazes with a blanket as you gaze out onto the Maine winter landscape?
The problem with average costs per night for vacation rates in a state as large as Maine is the extreme. The $250 a night in Kennebunkport does not match up with the $59 motel rate in Presque Isle or Fort Kent, Rumford or Eastport Maine. The average them all together for around $160 a night is not what you would expect to pay everywhere in Maine. More on Downeast Maine.
What do you spend for meals? That’s like asking what is the electric bill going to be in this Maine home each month.
Do you hang your sheets out to dry on a line or do you wash Suzie’s one favorite pair of jeans for the big high school dance that is suddenly only a few tense hours away? Are the household showers long and never ending or do what you gotta do and get in, hop out to dry off? Still in the one Saturday night bath whether you need it or not mode? Your habits and preferences dictate how high or low will the household bills go month to month. We live cheaper in rural Maine so how to vacation, what to do for fun is lower cost too!
Do you like picnic lunches and outdoor dining by a stream with a Maine mountain view?
Or do you think taking advantage of a family meal special is cheap not instead a way of freeing up vacation funds for something else fun?
Your best Maine vacations are the ones that did not cost an arm and a leg going into debt to pay off for months to come. In small town Maine, pre-COVID, tonight’s meal at the local farmers museum for $8 gets you everything from new potatoes and fresh peas, ham, baked beans and home made bread and biscuits. To the same room for later. To take your pick of created at home just a few hours ago fresh pies of all kinds. Whip cream or ice cream on that generous slab of pie?
The earlier breakfast down at the local Maine snow sled or fish and game club is even cheaper.
Plus there was a family discount. The land owners dinner is free to those letting local sledders run a groomed, market trail across their property. The breakfast ploys, pancakes, steak and eggs with fresh juice, hot coffee and muffins, toast again served up by the volunteers you know by first name in small Maine towns.
You can rent a cabin on a Maine lake for around $80 a night at a place called Tall Timber Lodge in New Limerick.
Or tap into the many vacation rentals where owners offer their places dirt cheap. Airbnb rentals, VRBO cost of and home away from home travel sites make the Maine vacation way more affordable. So you have money left over for more than one trip to Maine a year from the savings.
The same people rent the place they buy for vacations in Maine too.
That lake camp or woods cabin owner started off sampling Maine on vacations. Then decided to invest and become a local property owner because of the positive vacation experience. The vacation second home up in Maine is put up for rent. Everywhere, the same one or two weeks, folks look forward to another leased piece of Maine in the same spot. If you don’t buy a property in Maine, you are more likely to explore other areas of Vacationland. When you have the investment, working on it and returning to the same base to explore a section of vast Maine happens.
So the cost per day of your vacation in Maine for meals does not have to be an average of $40 a day when you go deep local.
The thinking that the trip to Maine for a couple for one week will cost over $2200 does apply in so many cases. When you hit a church supper meal, you dine with the locals and they take you in like you lived there. Sharing the experience of living in their small Maine town and if you ask, volunteering how best to spend your vacation. Pointing out what to make sure you don’t miss out seeing while you are staying in this part of Maine. Isn’t that a more memorable Maine vacation that won’t set you back vast sums?
Agri-tourism where you visit a local Maine farm or learning about the state’s rich lumbering history with museum tours.
The trip out with a lobsterman, someone fishing for a living is the real deal. It’s way more than mini golf and go karts or whale watching and lighthouse tours to make your Maine vacation memorable. So much extra to squeeze out of the vacation time when you approach it like a local who lives here. That is your best guide on what to do for fun.
Fishing, hunting, kayaking, hiking, biking, camping or glamping up in Maine.
Are you planning to crack lobsters and munch on butter dipped steamed clams or trail mix and open grill sizzling steaks or BBQ lathered chicken?
Pass the potato or macaroni salad please. The cost a day to vacation in Maine can be just a tank of gas, a stop at a grocery store for grub and hanging your hat at a simple woods camp.
Just listed a 60 acre woodlot in Washburn Maine that would be one ideal simple vacation destination.
Just got a call just now from a Maine land buyer in Lisbon, down country who has relatives in the Presque Isle area. He and a friend are thinking seriously of going in 50-50 to buy this well wooded property. The one that is more than just a source of income when trees get selectively harvested to open up recreational trails.
The Washburn Maine land for cheap instate vacations fronts Pettingill Brook.
And the town shows 72 acres, more than the 60 acre estimate in the warranty deed. If this Maine land buyer builds a simple camp, it could be rented out when not being used for profit.
Wood stove, playing cribbage and cards, having wildlife for neighbors uptah the rustic camp in Maine.
Is that all you are looking for in your Maine vacation? Is the Maine land on snow sled trails and four wheeler ATV pathways? Yes it is and building restrictions, heavy duty HOA’s? Not in Aroostook County or most of rural Maine is what you find for building permits. No people, no hassles, that’s Maine. Where common sense still rules the day.
Dial in your type of Maine fun.
Is your Maine vacation outlet shopping and are the kids going to be blue screen reflection silent during meals, and on couches plugged into Internet devices like the back home routine? Or unplugged and hitting the trails for a family adventure to learn about a new area of Maine? Show of hands, who wants to hike up to the top of Mt Katahdin tomorrow? Better get to bed early and pack lots of water, trail mix and quick energy snacks for the climb up and down Mt “K”, Maine’s mile high tallest peak.
Thank you for following our Maine In Maine blog posts faithful reader.
Reach out with blog post topic suggestions. It is all about helping you find your way around Maine and sharing what it is like being a local insider living here in Vacationland.