5 Serene Inns on the Maine Coast for a Calming Escape

Coastal Maine is a beauty zone of rugged coves, spruce-lined islands, hidden beaches, jagged ledges, historic lighthouses, and artistic seascape views. With a tidal shoreline of almost 3,500 miles, you could get lost in all the nooks and crannies of this northern New England state, but I’ve found five idyllic inns, south to north, that will bring you up close and personal to the uncrowded awe that you’re searching for and a chance to find stillness, quiet, and calm.

Maine is known as the lobster capital of the nation, so you will find lobster in everything from the famous lobster rolls to martinis, ice creams, stews, beers, and breakfast eggs. Add in breweries, distilleries, and cuisine with local sea-to-table offerings, and this is a landscape you may not want to leave anytime soon.

An easy drive from Boston Logan Airport (1.5 hours) to start the trip or a quick hop from local airports of Bangor International Airport or the Portland Jetport, and you’ll be quieting your mind quickly.

Where To Stay

Maine is meant for finding stillness, but stillness is not silence. It can be creative: a simple act of pausing. It allows your body to reset, away from constant sensory overload. Perhaps it is watching the sunrise each morning, or maybe it is stopping in the middle of your stroll down to the beach, closing your eyes, and just listening to whatever sounds are around you. Maybe it’s a simple wake-up call to yourself to just focus on being away. Whatever it is, make it yours on the coastline of Maine.

I took this solo stillness getaway by car, and each location, south to north, is special in its own way. Pick one for home base, try a few, or go on the whole route. Find your zen.

1. Black Point Inn

Artful stillness on Prouts Neck

Set on an outcropping of sculptured granite ledges and surrounded by spruce groves, sits a natural landscape of found stillness. Strolling around Prouts Neck is like being inside a Winslow Homer painting: crashing surf, windswept spruce twisted into rock crevices, clouds scudding across the sky. Homer spent 25 years painting throughout the mid to late 1800s here, creating masterpieces near Checkly Point, a rocky outcropping sloping to turbulent seas.

Black Point Inn, gray-shingled, with wraparound porches full of wicker rockers, is a classic beauty. Facing Western Cove and Ferry Rock, you are front-chair-central for sunset views, so make sure to dine on the porches. The rooms are decked out in nautical blue and white, and windows are meant to be open for seaside breezes. Collect your artful images here.

Intention suggestion: Take a walk along the cliff paths and find a granite ledge that allows the rush of tides and crashing surf to fill your ears. With each sound of a wave, think of something to let go of: a grudge, a worry, some sadness. Let the tide carry it away, out of you, into the vastness of the sea.

Additional adventures: Head into the Old Port of Portland and explore unique shops and locally sourced cuisine in this foodie capital.

Additional adventures: Visit the Portland Museum of Art and get a ticket for a tour of Winslow Homer’s art studio.

Additional adventures: Take one of Black Point Inn’s bicycles and cycle the back roads and beaches of Prouts Neck.

2. The Dunes on the Waterfront

Water stillness in Ogunquit

There’s something about watching the pull of tide, the roll of waves, that slows your breath and gives you pause. Water allows for stillness even as there’s movement, a rush of wind, a crash of surf. If you’re staying in a whitewashed cottage with picket fences covered in sea rose and this cottage is perched on a knoll overlooking a tidal river, distant sand dunes, the rolling sea, this is a getaway to a perfect place.

In a hidden nook of Ogunquit, The Dunes on the Waterfront is just your ticket for solo stillness, water as your guide. Cottages are revamped dollhouse cute with screened porches and feather pillows. A cabana boat chauffeurs guests to uncrowded beaches, and a riverside pool offers shaded umbrellas. Breakfast is brought to you in a basket each morning.

Intention suggestion: Take a kayak and float with the water, feeling the tide pull you slowly along. Steer wherever the river speaks to you. Perhaps you can pull the kayak up on the sandbar and walk over the dunes to the empty, private beach, or maybe you float to the reeds for birdwatching. Water offers soothing stillness. Journal about what water says to you.

Additional adventures: Walk Marginal Way hiking trail along the rocky coastline, sitting often on benches on the ledges, or find a nook in one of the many swimming coves.

Additional adventures: Check out the walkable (busy) downtown and stop at the Front Porch piano bar for raucous singing of Broadway tunes.

Additional adventures: Go to the Ogunquit Playhouse for amazing Broadway shows.

3. Inn at Ocean’s Edge

Scents of stillness on the cove in Lincolnville.

Inn at Ocean’s Edge, perched in the curve of Penobscot Bay, is nature immersion at its finest. With expansive lawns, flower gardens, spruce groves, tidal inlets, and an infinity pool to the sea, you can wander, stopping often for scents of rose, sand, wildflower, tide, sunshine, never following a direct path. Suites offer seaside decks, gas fireplaces, and spaces popping with color and comfort.

Intention suggestion: Using scent as a start-off to stillness, take yourself on a walk and stop often, closing your eyes and smelling the seaside, the pines, the sea rose. Pick one scent and let it fill you with a sense of place, of being right here and right now. Or collect as many scents as you can when you wander along the tidelines. Try some vacuum breathing: vacuum in the ocean scents and exhale out whatever you don’t want in your life any longer.

Additional adventures: Head over to Camden for the quaint shops and beautiful harbor.

Additional adventures: Swim at Lincolnville Beach or peaceful Lake Megunticook.

Additional adventures: Take a ferry to Islesboro Island for hiking trails on island. Check out the Gilded Age cottages or mansions in Dark Harbor while on the ferry.

4. Salt Cottages

Morning stillness by Acadia

Hull’s Cove holds sunrise open for you, never rushing, with a glow that comes slowly over Mount Desert Narrows and across Frenchmen Bay. The beach is empty early in the morning, and driftwood offers natural seating, especially with a thermos of coffee and a blanket.

Salt Cottages sit front stage to welcoming the day, but you might not want to leave the chic, coastal grandmotherly vibe of your curated cottage. Think red-striped awnings, a retro-inspired kitchen, a king bed with six pillows, and a gas fireplace with cozy quilt throws. A playful pool area with Picnic Cafe is on site for light BBQ and cocktails.

Intention suggestion: The sun rises on the cove just in front of your cottage, so walk to this pocket of the sea and find your favorite round stone rolled smooth by the tide. Place this stone in the palm of one hand, hold it to your heart, and make your morning intention for the day. Think of someone you love or have loved and hold them close all day, the stone in your pocket.

Additional adventures: Hike the beautiful trails of Acadia National Park.

Additional adventures: Drive up Cadillac Mountain at sunrise and watch the coastline glow.

Additional adventures: Rent a bicycle and cycle the car-free carriage trails around lakes, past harbors, and up hillsides in Acadia National Park.

5. Island Inn

Island stillness on Monhegan

Monhegan is a special place in the late afternoon, when the last mail boat leaves, and only those who are staying on the island receive the stillness of island living. There’s a hush, an exhalation, a sense of quiet that settles over the spruce forests like the rolling fog that waits in the distance. The trails here wind up and over ledges, through moss forests, and through hidden coves. The magic is everywhere and so are the artists painting the rocky coastlines.

The Island Inn edges its rugged charm atop a bluff overlooking the historic harbor and offers elegantly classic lodging scented by the sea. Local art hangs on walls, inside rooms. Often there are impromptu art discussions in the dining room, and music happens on the lawn, spur of the moment.

Intention suggestion: Take a hike on the Cathedral Woods Trail in the late afternoon. You’ll be in the moss forests, sunlight illuminating the silent pathways. Find a garden of moss and take your shoes off. Explore the feeling of moss on your feet, gently allowing the softness between your toes. Place your hands into the moss and spread your fingers wide. Observe the intricate hairlike system of moss anchoring over jagged granite, adapting itself in layers of green. How do you anchor yourself in the world? Can you find it in the forests and nature of Monhegan? Can you hear the hush?

Additional adventures: Make sure to hike around Monhegan Island. Pick up a map downtown before heading out along miles of trails.

Additional adventures: Visit the Monhegan Museum of Art and History, located on Lighthouse Hill, for island-inspired paintings by Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Andrew Wyeth, and other creators.

Additional adventures: Stop at quirky Monhegan Brewery and enjoy your beer, sitting on lobster trap couches, benches, stools, and rocking chairs.

Getting Around

Car and Bicycle. It’s a good idea to rent a car to explore the coves, inlets, rural villages, forested beaches, and to get to your inns. Bring a paper map (found at visitor centers throughout the state) as internet service in remote areas is often spotty or nonexistent. Bicycling along the coast is a wonderful way to see the jagged coastlines and country backroads, and there are plenty of rental locations available. Most of the inns offer bicycles on site, or bicycles can be arranged for you.

Public Transportation. The Amtrak Downeaster train links Boston to seaside towns up to Portland, Maine. Bus service is limited and primarily only available in larger cities.

Ferries. To get to various Maine islands, you will need to make reservations on the ferries. Islands are walkable, but you will often hike on rocky paths, and most do not allow cars. Parking lots offer day rates and overnight rates on the mainland. Ferry schedules vary during each season.

Best Time to Visit

June–August: Prime time for summer getaways. Ocean water is refreshing and cold but can be warmer during these summer months.

September–October: No bugs, no crowds, empty beaches, and foliage.

November–March: Off-season, with discounted rates. Some inns close for the winter season or offer seasonal openings and specials for limited periods. Cozy fireplaces and hot toddies.

April–June: Lodging deals and warmer days mixed with colder weather. Watch for black flies in June.

Where to Eat

All inns offer dining on property but are also close to quaint seafaring villages and foodie hot spots. Portland has a harbor-front location, Michelin-starred bistros, and specialty dining. Ogunquit has eat-on-the-ledge views while enjoying tides.

Camden and Rockland offer mid-coast up-and-coming cuisine, and the Acadia region is lobster central.

Fresh-from-the-boats seafood can be found at local inns and seafood shacks on Monhegan. Packed picnics are a good way to explore, stopping for peaceful lunches, and many local mom-and-pop cafes line the coastline.

Take a stillness getaway in Maine. You will not be disappointed.

Need a hand planning your trip? Here are the sites and services we rely on most, from booking tools to travel products we love.

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• Coastal Maine by Car: A Scenic Road Trip from Portland to Bar Harbor
• Maine Travel: Top 10 Things to See and Do in the Pine Tree State

Author Bio: Peggy writes about travel, adventure, culture, local connections and collaborations for various publications, including City Lifestyle, Real Simple, VitaBella, and Lonely Planet. She looks for nooks and crannies of place, stories of the landscapes, and persons within these communities. She has pulled on “oilman gloves” for uphill skiing, glided Nordic-style throughout most of New England, jogged with wild donkeys, snorkeled in sea caves, gone Hoodoo hunting at dawn, and always looks for an end-of-the-day waterfall to jump into after a muddy hike.

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