The mid-coast section gets more
beautiful. All of those gorgeous peninsulas – Phippsburg, Arrowsic, Georgetown , Boothbay, Bristol , Friendship, St. George, Owls Head –
hang tantalizingly off Route 1 like luscious fruit, inviting a bite or an
afternoon. The road dips and winds, into and out of views of corn fields and
tidal rivers. The towns are small and lovely: Bath
has retained and improved its small-town charm (and a new bridge eliminated the
horrid traffic caused by shift changes at Bath Iron Works); Wiscasset calls
itself the prettiest town in Maine ; Rockland is becoming Camden South; Belfast is reinventing itself for about the
third or fourth time. Every time I drive north, a certain spot in Warren catches my breath,
for it’s my first glimpse of the Camden Hills.
But the pressure points increase.
Traffic backups are legendary where Route 1 cuts directly through towns. It can
take more than an hour to get through Wiscasset on summer weekends, and one
generally avoids Camden
in August. Stuff springs up: there’s a particularly egregious mile south of
Wiscasset, where a new supermarket, gas stations, McDonald’s, convenience store
and bank, all scattered about the road like toadstools, have forced the closure
of an old strip mall without, apparently, the slightest thought of
re-development of that mall; where, in “an hour or a day,” for tourists too
busy to discover anything for themselves, the tiny booths of Maine Heritage
Village offer a review of traditional crafts and foods and occupations; where
Monkey C, Monkey Do offers “Maine’s first and only high-flying adventure park
and zip lines!!” How embarrassing for the prettiest village in Maine . What local zoning
board allowed this?
Excerpted from Saving
Maine: A Personal Gazetteer
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