Calling the Old Canada Road (Route 201) a scenic byway does a small injustice to this 78-mile drive between Solon and Sandy Bay Township along the Canadian border. It’s not just scenic (think moose) but also grandly historic. Benedict Arnold led troops through this wilderness on his spectacularly ill-fated mission to sack Quebec in 1775. […]
Maine
From Yankee July 1986 This is about a man called Nuge and his wife Patty and a tiny slice of the Maine wilderness they claimed as their own. For nearly 50 years on Chamberlain Lake their names ran together — Nugenpatty — like one of the melodious Indian names for these waters. It is an […]
By Wayne Curtis and Christina Tree At these Maine properties, let the sound of the waves coax you to sleep and inspire your dreams.
By Wayne Curtis and Christina Tree The Tidewater Motel, Vinalhaven Finding a motel on an island an hour’s ferry ride offshore is an odd thing. Weren’t motels designed for cars, and islands for boats? Anyway, there it is, and what makes it even more appealing, and unusual, is that the name “Tidewater” is no flight […]
The river flows north out of wild and remote Maine headwaters: Allagash Lake, Chamberlain Lake, Eagle Lake, where Thoreau once camped. Below Chase Rapids, the current quickens and turns riverine; the lakes become smaller and farther apart. By the time it joins with the St. John some 92 miles after starting out, the Allagash runs […]
Without a school, a year-round island would lose its families, and then its character.
Where to Stay
Harraseeket Inn, 162 Main St. Rates: $125-$305. 800-342-6423, 207-865-9377. harraseeketinn.com Applewood Inn, 8 Holbrook St. Rates: $160-$190. 207-865-9705. applewoodusa.com
L.L. Bean: 4:48 a.m. It’s nearly 5 a.m. and you’re standing at the gateway to Maine’s North Woods. Well, actually you’re wandering through the hunting and fishing annex of the vast L.L. Bean retail empire in Freeport, joined by bleary-eyed, coffee-fueled hunters who have been driving all night from Connecticut and New York and have […]
As dawn broke over the lake this morning, your daughter caught her first perch. A few hours later, your son paddled to Loon Island with a new friend while you read several chapters (in one sitting!) of a novel you’d been meaning to start for years. At dusk, after a gourmet lobster bake, you and […]
What the Locals Know
Searching through her grandfather’s attic, local graphic designer Seania McCarthy discovered a clipping about a deserted village in the heart of Cape Ann called Dogtown Common (or Commons). A prosperous farming and mill community in the 1600s and 1700s, it was finally abandoned, literally, to the dogs in the mid-19th century. Now she, partner Dee […]
Eastport, Maine, has always looked to the sea for its identity and the livelihoods of its 1,900 residents. When the last of its 18 sardine canneries closed in the 1980s, salmon farming, scalloping, and diving for sea urchins filled in—but the town’s economic life has never ceased being hard and uncertain.