“Before you had mortgages, bills, and cell phones – we’d go in the woods as kids, we’d sing, simple stuff like that. We had Point Sebago Resort.”
It’s a bittersweet realization for Bob Zafian.
He’s lived big. He had a TV show. He made his mark auctioning sports memorabilia from golf greats. He compares it to a Walter Mitty-type of life. And yet, none of it compares to the lasting mark Point Sebago Resort has left in his heart.
He arrived at the Maine campground the second year it was open in 1971. Bob was only ten.
Little did he know, the monumental impact Point Sebago campground would have on his entire New Jersey family.
Now, 55 years later, Bob gets choked up as he reminisces about simpler times at the Casco, Maine, campground. It’s a long history, that for Bob, highlights the real value of Point Sebago summers.
1970s Point Sebago Resort: Real Maine Camping
“I’ve lived a really full life, but my summers in Maine really mean a lot to me.”
Bob is something of a Point Sebago expert. His family discovered the lakefront Maine campground in a Rand McNally guidebook. It was the Sears catalog of family road trips long before the internet.
“At the time, Point Sebago was unlike any other place,” Bob recalls as he described the ad. “It was an all-inclusive kind of thing with activities.”
It was enough to convince the Zafian family to make the six-hour drive from New Jersey. They packed up their three boys and their Starcraft pop-up camper and headed north in the summer of 1971. It was the start of something special when they pulled onto Yellow Road.
The Zafians fell in love with Sebago Lake. It’s the second biggest lake in Maine, covering 45 square miles. The lake remains largely the same 50+ years later.
However, the resort was different in the 70s. Not better. Not worse – just a different time that added up to mean so much for Bob.
“It was camping with Coleman stoves and firewood, and fishing. It wasn’t glamping.”
The original lakeside layout featured 400 tent sites starting at $6.50 a night. Families paid extra for camper sites, a whopping $9.50 a night.
“It’s totally different now.”
The Evolution of Point Sebago Resort
Point Sebago has grown from 200 acres in the 1970s to 775 acres in 2025. There are cabins, glamping tents, tiny homes, and even a nationally acclaimed 18-hole golf course.
“Everything was a tent back then, even the Point Sebago General Store.”
Tents housed the activities, arcade, and the popular Patio Club. Eventually, buildings replaced the tents. The Patio Club evolved to “Charlie’s Place,” which is now the entertainment hub known as Sebago Lounge. Tent camping is rare in 2025 at the Maine campground, but still available on RV sites.
But then, it wasn’t the buildings or tents that made the Zafians’ times at Point Sebago so special.
It was the people.
Building a Maine Camp Family at Point Sebago
The family created memories with strangers who became a second family.
“I met friends who are now lifelong friends.”
The Zafian’s Point Sebago social circle included families from New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
“I had a good friend from Lynn, Massachusetts. His family started the same year we did at Point Sebago. Thirteen years later, he was a groomsman in my wedding.”
For Bob, the Sebago Lake crew was an extended family.
“We weren’t troublemakers, we were kids hanging by a lake.”
He admits to “terrorizing” Harold the security guard during those early years, but calls it “kid stuff,” nothing mean.
Maine Campground Shenanigans at Point Sebago
Point Sebago didn’t offer golf cart rentals in the early days. Instead, all the kids brought their bicycles. Each morning, every campsite would receive a daily activity guide. The parents would go one way. Bob, his two brothers, and their friends would dash off on their bikes to meet the activity counselors.
Activities at Point Sebago Resort, like volleyball and canoe races, have always been the heart of the resort campground. Bob remembers making tie-dye shirts, macaroni art, and taking snorkeling lessons from a counselor named Dave Page.
The activities remain a staple of Point Sebago summers. More than 270 family-friendly activities are offered each week during the height of summer, from spikeball to dance parties and canoe races. Except now, guests use the CampersApp to see what’s happening each day.
Bob said the early Point Sebago would host square dances, too. There was even a talent show similar to Cove’s Got Talent. Somewhere there’s a home video of his 1977 winning performance, a tribute to Elvis with his Sebago friends as backup singers.
It’s these memories that mean the most. However, not all Bob’s Point Sebago memories were sanctioned activities.
“We would sneak off to The Point (now The Island) and drink beers as teenagers. There’d be five of us. We sneak beers from our parents, stick them in the water to stay cold, and return at night to drink.”
A lot can happen in the woods of Maine. Decades later, he’s still embarrassed to admit that his mom busted him making out in the woods with his girlfriend, who was staying nearby at Sebago Lake State Park. The couple would later marry and make their own Point Sebago memories.
“Visiting Point Sebago had such an impact, so many fond memories of growing up.”
Growing Older at the Sebago Lake Campground
The family vacations to Maine started as two-week stints. By the 1980s, the family was spending a month each summer at Point Sebago Resort. Eventually, his parents upgraded to a seasonal RV spot and a Fleetwood Prowler Trailer on Blue Road.
Bob spent less time at Point Sebago as he became an adult. However, he made it a point to drive from New Jersey each May to set up camp for his aging parents.
“I would open up the trailer, get everything ready, put the awning out, and put up the screen house.”
His parents stayed from May to October, becoming regulars at the Patio Club.
“Everyone at Point Sebago knew my parents.”
But as time went on, Bob realized he didn’t know as many people, which was a poignant realization that the magic of Point Sebago Resort belonged to more than just him. A new generation was falling in love with his “Maine campground” in a new way.
“It was bittersweet.”
His dad, Joseph Zafian, Jr., had passed away in 2005. His Point Sebago friends were still around, but their parents were gone too.
“We all knew the parents from being at the lake.”
A Final Point Sebago Resort Sendoff
His mother, Catherine “Kitty” Zafian, continued to be a seasonal Point Sebago resident after her husband died. Bob made the journey at the start of each season. He’d drive his mom to the campground, set up the campsite, spend a few days with her, leave her the car, and fly back home. He’d do the whole routine in reverse at the end of each season.
“She had so many friends there. She’d always be at happy hour at the Patio Club.”
The Point Sebago mother-son tradition continued until 2019. His mother passed away while vacationing at the resort, only two weeks after Bob had dropped her off for another season by the lake.
“It was a tough time.”
But that’s when his Point Sebago family came through. The resort team asked if they could host a celebration of life because Kitty had been such a staple at the Maine campground. Her obituary even mentioned her favorite vacation spot:
“She loved going to Sebago Lake in Maine, where she had been visiting since 1971 and bought a summer place in the early 1990s,” it reads.
The resort hosted a barbecue at the Patio Club in honor of Kitty.
“There were a lot of people there that I had never met. But they had known my mother for so many years. It was really touching.”
The trip was Bob’s last to Point Sebago Resort. It ended with the Zafian brothers spreading both their parents’ ashes near their favorite Maine campground – a quiet goodbye near the place they all cherished so much.
“It was very poetic. They’re forever there, which is kind of nice.”
Remembering the Best of Point Sebago Summers
Five years later, Bob has yet to return to Point Sebago Resort. He would love to fish on Sebago Lake once again. But there’s a tough feeling he can’t shake.
“I don’t know how I’ll feel being there. It’s not the same. You can never go back to those times, but it’s something I need to do for myself.”
There are only two members of the original Zafian clan from Point Sebago left, Bob and his younger brother Jim. Their older brother Joe died in 2021. The family’s loss makes it harder to reminisce about the Point Sebago that existed 50 years ago.
“I can’t call up and ask my father the name of the restaurant we used to go to in Maine. Certain questions can never be answered again. The answers are lost now.”
Now Bob follows the changes at Point Sebago on social media. He sees the changes, reads the comments, and occasionally shares memories of “his Point Sebago.” He chuckles over online outrage about changes at the lakeside campground and reminds everyone to have perspective.
He remembers when the campground took down the tents and added real buildings. There was outrage then, too.
“None of us liked it. But it grew on you. It’s the way things go,” explained Bob.
“In 50 years, you won’t remember the changes you hated. You’ll remember all the happy memories and the good people you met at Point Sebago.”