Moorings Oceanfront RV Resort has a rich history of welcoming campers from around the world, dating back to the late nineteen-thirties. We are located in Belfast, Maine, on the shores of Penobscot Bay, in scenic mid-coast Maine.
From 1945 to 1977, Fred and Florence Bastian owned the campground as well as the adjacent Mooring Restaurant and Dairy Joy, which were popular with locals and summer travelers. The campground had many repeat vacationers from across the country.
In the 1950s, author Clinton Twiss spent much of one summer there working on The Long, Long Trailer, a book and later a movie with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, about a couple who spends a year traveling in a trailer across the U.S.; the book has a section on Belfast. Below is an excert from the Spring in New England chapter:
While we had traveled through Connecticut and Massachusetts, to Merle and me, New England in the spring means Maine in May and June. Our specific objective was the Mooring Trailer Park somewhere near Belfast, Maine.
Hoonsy and Loretta helped us hook up The Monster and point him in a northerly direction. Sandwiched in between the good-byes and handkerchief waving was a shouted promise to meet the Hoons at Laguna Beach in California sometime during their six-weeks summer lay-off.
Just beyond Portsmouth we slipped onto the Maine Turnpike, a divided, four-lane toll road, brand new and smooth as taut silk. The turnpike slashed through the woods and headed straight for Portland.
This was what we had promised ourselves nearly a year ago – spring in New England. Once more we wallowed in velvety greenness, steeped ourselves in historic towns and places, and mispronounced jaw-breaking names. Again we turned back the calendar to the seventeenth century and fought Indians from Falmouth Foreside into Yarmouth.
We sailed into Brunswick and right past the home of General Joshua Chamberlain on Maine Street, the same General Chamberlain who received the surrender of Confederate General Lee at Appomattox. It was also in Brunswick that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom s Cabin.
We tooled along the rugged coastline into Bath, birthplace of the Navy s super-destroyers. In Wiscasset, romance and history became so thoroughly entwined, we couldn’t t distinguish one from the other. Here was hatched a plot to rescue Marie Antoinette from prison. Talleyrand, master French diplomat, visited Wiscasset on one of his trips to America. It was here, also, that a gentleman named David Robinson, to whom we will always be grateful, made the first ice cream in America, the more to impress General Lafayette.
We went on to Newcastle, part of a grant to the Duke of York by Charles II and named for the Duke of Newcastle; Waldoboro, settled by German immigrants; Rockland, birthplace of Edna St. Vincent Millay; Rockport, Camden, Lincolnville, all as New England as Calvin Coolidge; then around the bend of the geographical center of the Maine coast and Into Belfast, a picture-postcard town perched on a hill above the water and cradled in the arms of Penobscot Bay.
Here was our destination. This is what we had struggled through more than half the states to find. Here was our recompense for more than eight-thousand miles of wrong turns, Culpepers, coyotes, Holland Tunnels, difficult backings and truck routes. That is, here it was if we could find the Mooring Trailer Park.
We threaded our way down the main street past the shoe factories, the beautiful old homes built by sea captains, the sardine packing plant at the end of the bridge, the lobster pound, the hills dark with blueberries, and turned onto a lush carpet of green grass. Here was our spot. Twelve acres of gently undulating lawn shaded by giant oaks.
We rolled down the hill to the edge of the bosky bluff overlooking the Bay, and signed the register for a two weeks stay. This period quietly lengthened into five weeks and would have developed into five months had it not been for my earth-shaking encounter with the budget.
We scarcely had time to anchor the Zephyr and put the interior in order before clam rakes were thrust in our hands and we found ourselves on the beach digging dinner. Not five minutes away was the lobster pound where we discovered the toothsomeness of the Maine lobster trapped within the hour. It was such a delicious delicacy that we promptly placed it in the same category with our other discovery, key-lime pie. We felt at least equal to David Robinson and his ice cream.
Our neighbors on all sides were enthusiastic about showing us the delights of this little piece of Maine. We were rushed from clams to lobsters to flounder and then to Blueberry Hill not two hundred yards away; a several-acre mound carpeted with luscious, ripe berries.
Although some things have changed over time since the Twiss’s trip, Maine and the Moorings Oceanfront RV Resort still remains a vacation destination spot for people from all over the world every year. To learn more, please contact us.