The Maine Report--Summer 2011

Observations made on my vacation in August in Maine

Although I am a Maineiac at heart, I think I qualify as one of those “from away” people due to the fact that I have lived in Georgia for about 30 years. On my recent trip home I listened to some of the concerns you voiced about the state of affairs in my beloved State of Maine and some observations I made on my own.

The first concern I have for the area is doctors. You don’t have enough specialists in the area. Every time you need to see a specialist, such as an eye disease specialist like my nephew needed recently, you have to make the trek down to Portland.

You don’t have any foot doctors in the area either. I make an appeal here for any of you foot doctors out there who would like to set up a lucrative practice to go to Rockland immediately and hang out your shingle. Diabetic Seniors, did you know that Medicare will pay for a foot doctor to trim your nails periodically and check out your feet for you while they're at it?

I don’t know why specialists aren’t locating in the Rockland area. Maybe there needs to be a study done of some sort. Meanwhile, Maineiacs like me who might like to relocate to their home state in their retirement years may think twice after reading this.

Speaking of relocating, another problem you have is the roads. As I understand it the state is too poor in this economy to fix and/or repair the roads. Living in Georgia I’m used to seeing orange cones everywhere I go. They fix roads here that don’t even need fixing. You will find very few potholes. Of course, the weather has a lot to do with it.

I bumped along the road to Spruce Head and back in my brother’s truck all the while I was home. However, when my brother came to pick me up at the airport, we went home the Gardner way and down Rt. 17. Guess what? Rt. 17 is wonderful. Guess why? It’s the road all the local politicians take to go do business at the capitol up in Augusta. Hmmmm?

I observed a couple more “road” problems while I was home. The first is the famous “speed bump” on Main St. Whaaaat were you thinking, guys? What happens when the snow plow has to go through there? How long do you think it will last then? Couldn’t you find some other way to spend the Main Street Improvement money? How ‘bout planting some more trees or something?


I can just picture the cartoon Everett Blethen would have drawn for the Courier depicting a slow plow driver standing there by the bump and scratching his head. In Georgia, speed bumps are everywhere. I have to go over five or six just to get to my apartment here in this complex. If and when it ever snows, the roads don’t get plowed anyway because they only have one plow in the whole state. So speed bumps are pretty safe here.

The other road concern is the Wiscasset vehicle logjam that occurs every summer when tourists try to get through that town and over the bridge up Route 1. Evidently, a very expensive study to find a solution to the problem was a bust. No one knows the answer. I would venture to say that the only way to solve it would be to build a very expensive bridge/overpass such as the one down Portsmouth way or the bridge coming into Maine.

Damariscotta didn’t have that problem when that bypass was done because they don’t have to deal with any water navigations there. I note though, that the bypass there didn’t hurt business in downtown Damariscotta. It seems to be a thriving place these days.

The last comment I heard that concerns me is the fact that tourism is down yet again this year. This bad economy is hurting the Maine tourism trade very badly. People just don’t have the money for vacations when they have to worry about whether or not they are going to lose their homes because they can no longer pay their mortgages.

I would like to put a word in here to my fellow Maineiacs who actually live in the state. If you can afford the gas, take a ride on a back road you’ve never been on. Many surprises await you just around the corner.

A case in point is the little side trip my sister-in-law and I took when brother Ted was driving us home from the airport. He took a wrong turn and we ended up in a little park-like area by the Kennebec River. It was a beautiful spot for a picnic. Thanks, brother. Maybe I’ll get to explore that area more when I come home next time.

My final observation is the same one I make every year when I come home. Maine is still one of the most beautiful places on this earth; and I will continue to tell everyone who will listen that they won’t regret a visit up to see us.

Thanks for listening.

Here’s some fun facts about the Kennebec River you may not know.

Kennebec River

The Kennebec River just south of Bath.

Origin	Moosehead Lake
Mouth	Gulf of Maine, North Atlantic Ocean

Basin countries	United States
Length	170 miles (270 km)
Source elevation	1,024 feet (312 m)
Avg. discharge	9,111 cu ft/s (258.0 m3/s) at its entrance to Merrymeeting Bay
Basin area	5,869 sq mi (15,200 km2)

The course of the Kennebec River

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter breaks ice on the Kennebec River

 near Bath, Maine; March 2005

The Kennebec River is a 170-mile-long (270 km) river that is entirely within the U.S. state of Maine. It rises in Moosehead Lake in west-central Maine. The East and West Outlets join at Indian Pond and the river then flows southward. It is joined at The Forks by the Dead River, also called the West Branch then continues southward past the cities of Madison, Skowhegan, Waterville, and the state capitol Augusta. At Richmond it flows into Merrymeeting Bay, a 16-mile-long (26 km) freshwater tidal bay into which also flow the Androscoggin River and five smaller rivers. The Kennebec then runs past the shipbuilding center of Bath, thence to the Gulf of Maine in the Atlantic Ocean. Ocean tides affect the river height as far north as Augusta. Tributaries of the Kennebec River include the Carrabassett River, Sandy River, and Sebasticook River.

The name "Kennebec" comes from the Eastern Abenaki /kínipekʷ/, meaning "large body of still water, large bay".