To kick off our three weeks in Maine we stayed for a week in Kokadjo. After a ~5 hour drive from Boston the previous day we wanted to do something close by, so Lily Bay State Park being only 20 minutes away fit the bill.
Lily Bay State Park covers just over 920 acres, so it’s not a particularly huge state park. The main trail in the park – the Lily Bay Trail – runs from one side of Rowell Cove near the boat launch to Dunn Beach where there’s a camping area and another boat launch.
Lily Bay itself is part of the sprawling 75,000+ acre Moosehead Lake which is Maine’s second largest lake and can be found to the southwest of Baxter State Park.
The Lily Bay Trail is an out-and-back trail and is 2.1 miles each way (i.e. 4.2 miles round trip). It’s an easy hike as there’s not much elevation change along the way, but it’s worth wearing sturdy footwear due to rocks, tree roots, mud, etc.
The trail follows the shoreline of Rowell Cove fairly closely, so there are some nice water views as you walk along which sometimes provide the chance to get to the water easily.
Lily Bay State Park is pet-friendly and pups are allowed on the trail, so Truffles was able to join us on the hike.
Shae and I were also joined by my parents who’ve come over from England to join us in New England to see the fall leaves. We visited Lily Bay State Park on September 22, so some of the leaves were starting to change, but it wasn’t peak fall color season yet.
It didn’t take too long to get to Dunn Beach at the end of the trail. The beach isn’t pet-friendly from April to September, so Truffles wasn’t allowed up to the water at that point. However, set back from the shore line was a grassy, shaded area with several picnic tables and so we all sat there to have a picnic lunch and enjoy the water view.
Both on our way out to Dunn Beach and then back to our parking spot at Rowell Cove, we spotted mushroom after mushroom after mushroom. It wasn’t just your average white/gray mushroom either; there were those, but there were also yellow, orange and red mushrooms/toadstools and more. Here’s just a small selection of what we saw.
We not only got to enjoy the flora in the park, but the fauna (or should that be fawn-a?!) on the way out too.
Lily Bay State Park Fees
Lily Bay State Park charges an entrance fee for day use on a per-person basis rather than per-vehicle basis. If you’re a non-resident of Maine (like us), it was $6 per person or $2 per person for seniors. My parents both fall into the senior category, so we would’ve had to pay $16 total for the four of us.
There was an alternative option that we took advantage of though. Most of Maine’s state parks offer an annual pass for day use which is done on a per-vehicle basis. This costs $105 for most people, but the price drops to only $45 for seniors. Knowing that we’d likely visit several state parks in Maine during my parents’ visit, we figured getting a senior annual pass would save us money over the course of the three weeks we’d be in Maine.
There’s a key stipulation with getting a senior annual pass for Maine state parks – the senior always has to be in the vehicle. That wasn’t going to be an issue for me and Shae as my parents would always be with us on any state park visits during our time here, but it’s something to bear in mind if you find yourself in a similar situation but where the seniors in your party won’t always be joining you at the state parks.
[…] first week in Maine involved several hikes. We started off at Lily Bay State Park and then a couple of days later we headed to Mount Kineo State Park to hike up the mountain […]