BLUE HILL, Maine — The town known for the Blue Hill Fair, a mega-Labor Day weekend event that draws about 30,000 people, is home to another affair just as dear to its participants — the Eaton family campout.
Across Route 172 and a half-dozen doors down from the Blue Hill Fairgrounds, on 4 acres fenced-in just for the event, the campout has drawn thousands of family members and friends for the past 23 years, including some who work at the Blue Hill Fair as volunteers.
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It’s a revered family tradition, with its own lore and customs and everybody chips in by bringing food or refreshments or making donations that help purchase whatever the party might need, and throughout its 12 years on Route 172 ― known locally as Ellsworth Road — this campout has several times been mistakenly thought of as part of the fair, much to the mirth of the family.
People who walk by, especially at night, commonly see the few dozen parked vehicles, fencing, several strings of lights hung up across the backyard, the large fire pit, a dozen campers or tents and the Port-a-Potties and think it is part of the fair. Some try to wander in, but it’s a private event. And within Blue Hill itself, the campout is about as well known as the fair, family member Meredith Townsend of Blue Hill said.
“It gets bigger every year,” Townsend said. “Ask anybody in town, and they know about it. I mean, we have a sign.”
Blake and Wendy Eaton hang a banner across the back porch of their home that teases the campout for its vastness:
“Eaton Campground. Open for the Season!” it reads.
But it’s a family reunion, not a money-making venture, Blake Eaton said.
“It’s like the best part of the year for me. I love this. It’s relaxing. There’s no stress,” Blake Eaton said. “There’s nothing really planned about it. I have people in town who say, ‘God, you must be so exhausted from this.’ If I am, it’s because I want to say ‘Hi’ to everybody, and I love people. They don’t really bother us.”
“Right. Everybody does their own thing,” Wendy Eaton said.
One couple married at the family gathering, and couples who have broken up continue to attend after their divorces. This year’s campout drew 11 campers, three tents and at least a half-dozen dogs, about the same as previous years. Electricians, the same folks hired by the fair, wire up the back yard so that the tents and campers have electricity. The backyard fence keeps the dogs from running on to Route 172, Blake Eaton said.
The Eaton shindig used to have a fireworks show that actually stopped business at the fair for awhile one year because fairgoers thought that it was part of the larger event. It wasn’t — for one thing, the Eaton’s show was on the wrong night, Blake Eaton said.
There was also that time when fairgoers thought that the fair had begun holding a mud run on a large field adjoining the Eaton homestead. That was actually just several campout-goers who thought that their pickup trucks would be able to make it through the mud, Wendy Eaton said.
The first one made it through, but not the rest, which needed to be pulled from the muck by other vehicles, she said.
The Blue Hill Fair’s organizer said he doesn’t mind how people sometimes confuse the two events. It’s also a convenience that his event’s electricians are across the street from the fairgrounds, said Rob Eaton, president of the Hancock County Agricultural Society, which runs the fair.
Rob Eaton is not related to Blake Eaton nor Blake’s family members from Deer Isle, one of the places the campout was held before Blake and Wendy bought their house in Blue Hill 12 years ago.
“I’m a rogue Eaton,” Rob Eaton said.
The campout is an enduring tradition that has withstood hard times ― like the loss of a key family member. Ellen Eaton, Blake’s mother, died before last year’s family gathering from multiple sclerosis. She was one of the family gathering’s mainstays, constant in her attention to guests and her insistence that the family keep together by doing the campout every year, Blake Eaton said.
“She would stay here from sunup to sundown every day, and wait for somebody new from the family to show up because she hadn’t seen them in five years. That was her thing. There’d be times when I would say, ‘I don’t know if we’re gonna do it this year, mama,’ or whatever,” Blake Eaton said. “She would say, ‘What are you talking about? There’s no way you’re not doing it.’”
The Eatons honor her memory by keeping her portrait on a campout table dedicated to the family.
Another mark of the indelible nature of the event: It serves as a reunion for the wedding party of Kim and Tammi Suhr, who married at the gathering when it was held at the family home on Deer Isle 23 years ago. Wendy Eaton, a notary public, married them in a civil ceremony.
One of the in-jokes of the campout, Tammi Surh said, is how she and her husband have a hard time remembering exactly what day they were married. They were married on Labor Day, and that precise date changes every year.
“It’s just Labor Day weekend,” Surh said, “so the 29th through the 31st, we’re both saying Happy Anniversary every day because it’s part of that weekend.”
Family friend Jeff Eisenhauer credits Blake and Wendy for the kindness and patience it takes to host a family event year after year for more than two decades.
He figures that the campout will last for as long as they would like it to.
“Some people would feel put out. I mean, there’s this many people that are in your backyard for a week or two,” Eisenhauer said. “It doesn’t bother them. All those people are invading your personal space for that long ― dogs here, kids here. But they don’t care. They’re just that kind of people, just really nice.”