TOWNSHIP C – Next-door neighbors Marylin Bennett and Jeanne Mahanna loaded up a dark SUV with enough supplies for a week, settled their five children with a DVD and prepared for a long drive ahead, with a pop-up camper in tow.
“I pulled the camper all by myself,” noted Bennett.
They were leaving behind husbands – who prefer hotels to tents – and homes in Medway, Mass., for their first camping experience in the wilds of Maine.
Well, maybe not so wild.
“We haven’t seen any moose. The kids were pretty disappointed, but we heard the loons the other morning. That was cool!” said Mahanna.
The destination they decided on was South Arm Campground in Township C, north of Andover in Oxford County. It’s eight miles off the electrical grid, at the southern arm of Lower Richardson Lake. There are beachfront campsites, running water, flush toilets and showers.
“We make our own electricity with generators,” said campground owner Robert Thompson of Nantucket, Mass. “There are only two places for cell-phone reception. You can boat out to the dam or drive back the overlook. That’s it.”
It also offers 11 camping sites on four different islands in the lake. No worries if you don’t have a boat, though. The staff at the campground will drop you off and pick you up.
“It’s a way to remote camp without really roughing it. There is one gentleman who’s been out there for almost three weeks who’s in his 80s. The sites are beautiful. People have made wooden furniture over the years and left it when their stay was over. It’s really quite nice,” remarked Thompson.
Back at the beach, Bennett and Mahanna’s husbands had arrived for the day and were fishing with the kids while the two women relaxed on the beach watching Bennett’s youngest.
“It’s such a beautiful place. I would highly recommend it,” sighed Bennett.
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