Below the small hamlet of Georgetown, ME, at the South end of the Island, Reid State Park is a 770 acre wild area with an expansive sandy beach worth exploring. You know you’ve come to a place with many options when your first choice from the parking lot is to head to “Half Mile Beach” or to “One Mile Beach”.  It had me smiling right from the start. 

If you are someone like me, who is used to regular sandy stretches of beaches along the Atlantic coastline from Florida to New Jersey, Reid State Beach will impress you with the variety of seascape experiences that are available.  There are large rock outcroppings called the Little River Ledges where you can explore scores of tidal pools.  The Little River is a tidal tributary, and you can walk upstream along its banks and then ride the current back out to the ocean.  (When the tide is going out, the river water is a bit warmer than the Atlantic!)  Then there’s the exciting place where the river current and the ocean tide collide, where kids like to frolic with boogie boards and get bounced around unexpectedly.  It is the sort of environment that a man-made swim park/ pool adventure can’t begin to capture.  Beginning at the Penobscot region, tides are dramatically higher than elsewhere on the Atlantic seaboard.  The ten foot changes between high and low tides adds to the interesting variation of the seascape and beach experience.

When you’re through exploring, you can plop down on your chair or your towel with room to spare and enjoy the waves and the wide sandy shoreline.  The Atlantic is always cold here, so packing a sweatshirt is a good idea.  An off-shore breeze will usher in an unwelcome wave of insects, so be prepared with lotion or a cover-up.  Maine insects have a short breeding season, and they can be surprisingly aggressive.

The park lands were donated to the state in 1946 by businessman and philanthropist Walter E. Reid, a native of Georgetown who grew up in a family of modest means and who built an oceanside estate nearby.  Reid State Park is only a 20 minute drive off of Route 1 using ME Route 127.  Access and parking is easy.  There’s a large, well maintained pavilion with showering, changing and toilet facilities.  Food was not being served there during the pandemic.