Camden is the harbor town that makes Maine look as good as it does in the brochures. The Camden Hills rise right behind the town, with Mount Battie, about eight hundred feet high, standing over the inner harbor, and Penobscot Bay lies in front, dotted with islands and sailing vessels. Windjammers, the old-style schooners that take passengers on multi-day cruises, fill the waterfront in summer, their masts and rigging a forest against the sky.
The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up here and wrote her first famous poem, Renascence, after climbing Mount Battie, and a memorial on the summit recalls her. The 1957 film Peyton Place was shot in Camden, which gives the town a small footnote in film history. A road runs to the summit of Battie through Camden Hills State Park, and the view from the stone tower is one of the best on the coast, with the whole harbor, the bay and the islands spread below. The little stream that tumbles through the center of town drops over falls into the harbor, an unusual feature that gives the place charm.
Route 1 is the spine of the coast and the main road through Camden, with traffic that can be slow in summer. Route 52 runs around Megunticook Lake, with gentle curves and glimpses of water, and a little north, Lincolnville Beach has a ferry to Islesboro. South, the road to Rockport and Rockland leads past a quieter harbor and a lighthouse-filled shoreline. Weekday mornings are the time to ride; on summer weekends the main road is a slow procession of cars and rental bikes.
Camden has fuel, markets and enough restaurants for any appetite, from lobster shacks on the wharf to fancier dining rooms. Rockland, about twelve kilometers south, is bigger and has more of everything. The best months are June and September, when the crowds have thinned and the light is soft, and early October brings color to the hills. In July and August the town is delightful but packed. Fog is common in late spring and early summer, and it can shroud the harbor in the morning, so a bit of patience pays off.