Off the beaten path in mid-coast Maine: fall wayfarers discover New England charm in the countryside and coastal towns of untrampled Waldo County - Tour Of The Month

Travel America, July-August, 2003 by Randy Mink

LOBSTERS, CRANBERRIES AND flaming leaves color the vacations of those seeking out a red October in mid-coast Maine.

From fishing harbors to rolling farmland spread across valleys and hills, Waldo County presents a down-to-earth image, beckoning travelers who like to stray off the beaten path. Cozy rather than commercial, this part of Maine is often overlooked in favor of high-profile resort towns like Camden, Rockport and Bar Harbor. It's treated as a sideshow rather than a "Maine" event, but that's okay in our book. Backwaters suit us just fine.

Last October we centered our visit around Belfast and Searsport, historic Penobscot Bay ports that most people bypass. Even travel guidebooks give the area little ink.

Instead of national chains, we encountered homey bed-and-breakfasts, antique shops, seafood shacks and plenty of other mom-and-pop enterprises as we wandered leaf-strewn lanes and cruised scenic backroads.

In addition to mountains, rural landscapes and typical New England villages, Maine gives autumn explorers a salty taste of seafaring traditions, a dimension not found in land-locked Vermont and all but a sliver of neighboring New Hampshire, the region's prime fall foliage magnets. Leaf-peeping traffic, especially in untrampled like Waldo County, is thinner than in surrounding states, probably because of its northerly location and the fact that many tourists stereotype Maine as a summer place. But the turning trees with all their lovely colors are just as brilliant as anywhere in the Northeast.

Our mid-October trip coincided with the peak of fall colors. We saw red--and various shades of yellow and orange--on outings through countryside awash in tawny tones. Maples, oaks and roadside sumac screamed fire-engine red, contrasting with the cool green of pines. Harvested blueberry fields provided more swaths of scarlet.

One day we drove to Moody Farm Cranberry Bogs in Lincolnville. A tree cottage industry, the berry business is operated by Fred and Margo Moody, who market their crop locally--to groceries, gift shops and Cellardoor Winery. Another customer is a woman who makes cranberry chutney sold in gourmet shops around the country.

On October harvest weekends, the Moodys show visitors how they pick and process cranberries grown in a dry bog, once a cow pasture. With Fred at the controls, we watched the electric harvesting machine propel the crimson berries into an attached burlap bag. Then he demonstrated how a wooden cranberry scoop's long teeth pry berries from the edges of the bog, which is flooded in winter for ice skating.

At their shingled shed, a former sawmill, Fred or Margo shows how an old blueberry winnower removes the vines (or "wash") from the berry, then how a separator sorts the good berries from the bad. For sale are one-pound bags of glossy cranberries and jars of cranberry-walnut jam. Crates of freshly picked berries crowd the little room.

Lincolnville's Cellardoor Winery, offering vineyard tours and wine tastings from May through September, is one of only four Maine grape wineries, and the only one that grows its own grapes (20 varieties). Proprietors John and Stephanie Clapp, who have known previous lives as innkeepers, bakers and boat-dwellers, make wines from apples and blueberries as well as cranberries.

We based ourselves at a B&B in Searsport, billed as the "Antiques Capital of Maine." It seems every other clapboard home and B&B in town has an antiques barn attached. (One establishment is aptly named Treasures and Trash.) Flea markets, art galleries and gift shops also abound, most of them flanking Route 1, the road we traveled many times between Searsport and Belfast (five miles away).

We really got into the swing of local life during Searsport's Fling Into Fall festival, whose focal point is the eclectic collection of scarecrows on display in front of Penobscot Marine Museum. Contest entries ranged from a gas station attendant to a lobsterman in a yellow rain slicker.

Other Fling Into Fall festivities (October 34 this year) include a costume parade, bed race, crafts fair, classic car show, hayrides and concerts, plus a tour of historic bed-and-breakfast houses. At night, luminaries in plastic milk jugs light the sidewalks along the adjacent Main Street commercial strip of stone-trimmed brick storefronts dating back to the 1800s.

Across the street from the scarecrows, we enjoyed a typical Maine church supper in the basement of the 1840 United Methodist church. For $6 we feasted on turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, vegetables and homemade pie. More important, we got a chance to visit with the friendly folks of Searsport, a town of 2,600 with a long seafaring history.

During the golden age of sail (1870-1900), Searsport was a shipbuilding center and reputedly home to more sea captains than any other town in America. Many of the grand houses once inhabited by captains and wealthy merchants are bed-and-breakfast inns that provide doting alternatives to impersonal motels. Along with motherly love, guests enjoy high-ceilinged rooms furnished with antiques or period reproductions, such as four-poster beds, marble-top dressers and gilt-framed mirrors. It's like staying overnight in a museum.