Foliage

We were probably a week too early for peak color on our local foliage tour the other day. But the colors were more than satisfactory already, thanks to all the rain early in the summer. Of course, Vermont and New Hampshire get all the foliage press, but Maine is no slouch and we were very happy with the scenery just west of here: Damariscotta Lake and the hills around it; Lake St. George (how can you beat a lunch of baguette and goat cheese and apples and chocolate on the shore of a lake ringed with green pine and red maples?); the fields and dairy farms of Liberty and Searsmont; Appleton's gorgeous blueberry fields, now almost as red as the maples. Color splashed along the edges of roads and fields and lakes, and just started to speckle the woods. And unlike VT and NH, there were no tourists. And no tour buses. And no shoppes.

Why don't more people get off the beaten path? Why do we all travel the same routes, clutching our guidebooks? Some answers:

• Lives are run by the clock.
• Do they speak English in Maine?
• Tours take care of us, we don't have to worry.
• There's not enough time to get lost.
• We might not get good pictures if someone hasn't already been there to tell us about it.
• Gotta get home - NCIS is on at 8:00.
• We like the pre-paid chicken pot pie at Old Harry's Green Mountain Eatery.
• You went where for a color tour?

To me there's nothing better than a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, the DeLorme Maine Atlas, and thou. (Can't do the wine anymore, it makes us sleepy.)