Wild Duck Campground - Scarborough Maine
Having logged five hours in the saddle on a semi-directionless journey I was ready to settle down for the night and began scanning for campground signs along US Route 1 in Scarborough Maine. Always mindful of the tourist trade, this Maine highway was well equipped with a variety of metal markers promoting a plethora of eating and lodging establishments. A particularly loaded sign indicated several camping choices along Route 9 heading toward Old Orchard Beach, so I leaned my loaded Harley Davidson Sportster to the right, and began scanning for entrances campgrounds.
A well financed sign for Bayley's Family Campground caught my attention, and I decided to give this campground resort a try. Confirming a vacancy for a tent site, I was about to exchange legal tender with the local high school help when an "authority figure" questioned my ownership of the Sportster. I quickly acknowledged that the Harley Davidson was mine, only to be quickly dismissed from the premises. Apparently Bayley's Family Campground feel that the momentary noise from a Harley tailpipe is more of a distraction to their guests than hundreds of unsupervised, screaming kids running around at all hours of the day and night.
A few extra revs of my engine and I resumed my search for a motorcycle friendly campground on Route 9. Backtracking slightly, I came across a sign for Wild Duck Campground, which apparently I missed my first time through. This time I verified a tent vacancy and motorcycle tolerance, both of which received a positive response. To my surprise, not only was Wild Duck Campground motorcycle friendly, but they didn't allow kids!
Bikers Welcomed and No Kids Allowed!
Wild Duck turned out to be a small but pleasant adult campground, catering primarily to full hook-up campers, but still offered a decent amount of well maintained tent sites at competitive prices.
As I motored my way to my tent site, the first thing that struck me about this campground was the cleanliness. It was as though room service tended to the entire campground every morning. Even my fire pit had been cleaned of debris and ashes from the previous tenant.
You Don't See Tent Sites Like This Often
Located in the middle of Maine Audubon's Scarborough Marsh, Wild Duck Campground wasn't short on late day mosquitoes, but like any campground, you need you to be prepared and a quick dose of repellant kept the pest at bay while I set up camp on this humid late afternoon.
The tent sites at Wild Duck were located on the far end of the campground, making for a quiet night with no noise from the access road. Perhaps the most pleasant feature of campground was the cleanliness of the bathrooms. Tiled, clean and lacking the usual spider web decor, the facilities at Wild Duck rivaled home, by far the best I have ever seen at a campground. Since most of my camping is done two-up, I made an mental note to return to this Scarborough hide-away with my RIO sometime in the future.