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We’ve sliced Maine’s Mid-Coast into four regions and diced it into even smaller bits, so you can find just the right bed and breakfast, diner and farmer’s market. Still, the appeal of the area is its sweep and grandeur — mountains that meet the sea, lakes that shimmer in the sunset and rocky peninsulas that reach like fingers into Penobscot Bay.

To help you get acclimated, let’s consider the state in broad strokes. Maine has a population of 1.27 million in an area of 33,215 square miles. That’s about the size of the other five New England states combined. Almost 90 percent of Maine’s land is forested. In fact, wood product processing has been the principal industry for more than 300 years, with papermaking leading the way. The state is known for its potatoes, apples, blueberries and, of course, lobster. While the commercial fishing industry is on the decline, there’s an upsurge of interest in cranberry growing. Maine’s been slow to climb out of the 1990-91 recession, but manufacturing is making a comeback. 

The state’s summer climate is one of the most comfortable in the continental United States. The humidity is relatively low, the sun shines more than 60 percent of the time, and temperatures average 70 degrees. Average rainfall is 43 inches. Winter temperatures average 20 degrees. Snow usually doesn’t fall until mid-December, and the annual average is 60 to 90 inches, with more falling in the northern inland sections of the state. The coastal regions are tempered by onshore breezes, which make it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

If you’re deciding when to travel, remember that black flies and mosquitoes can make some country pursuits almost unbearable in June. July and August are the most popular months. If you want to avoid the crowds, try September and October; some attractions might be closed, but the fall foliage is spectacular. The off-season accommodations rates in winter can be a real boon to the hardy traveler, especially when it means cross-country skiing in Acadia National Park or tobogganing at Camden’s Snow Bowl.

Maine’s natural beauty is, for the most part, unspoiled by development, and many areas look just as they did decades ago. Pictures of the Aldemere Farm in Rockport 20 years ago show the area entirely unchanged. This timeless quality has attracted more than tourists. Actor Mel Gibson made quite a splash when he filmed part of his feature The Man Without a Face in Camden/Rockport. Parts of Forrest Gump, Stephen King’s Thinner and the sequel to the TV special Sarah, Plain and Tall were filmed here as well.

Rockland also has distinguished itself, having first been named in the mid-Nineties in The 100 Best Small Towns in America by Norman Crampton. At the time, however, a local newspaper writer with a long history in the area wondered in print whether Crampton had ever actually been to Rockland:

“In the wild and woolly days of the 1970s and ’80s, such an idea would have been unthinkable,” wrote the inimitable Emmet Meara in the Bangor Daily News. “Let’s chart the city’s progress from the night one of the members of the NSKK Motorcycle Club drove his gleaming Harley up the ramp into the Golden Spike, the club’s home bar. The Spike was so bad that even the police hated to go in. Every Labor Day, the rumor was that the Hell’s Angels were coming. They never did, but it said a lot that Rockland was where they were expected.”

Meara reported there were times Rockland’s crime rate vied with Portland, a city eight times its size. That was then. This is now. Rockland’s crime rate has dropped several years in a row, and it is an altogether different city. Now there are espresso bars, chic clothing stores and funky, fabulous restaurants. The city is billing itself as the schooner capital of the world, the lobster capital of the world and, more recently, an art mecca. The Farnsworth Museum's Wyeth Center houses the works of the Wyeth family (N.C., Andrew and Jamie), and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

Inland are a sprinkling of small towns worth exploring as well — Union and Warren among them. Down the peninsulas, life slows down. The roads can be excellent for biking, and along the way you’ll catch glimpses of rivers and bays through forests and across the fields of saltwater farms. Towns such as Friendship and Cushing are sleepy and pleasant, but don’t expect shops all decked out for tourists. Those cluster on U.S. Highway 1, the Mid-Coast’s main tourist strip. A trip down the St. George Peninsula is rewarded by the Marshall Point Lighthouse near Port Clyde, the point of departure for the mail boat to the island of Monhegan. There was a time when the population clustered at the tips of these peninsulas because boats, not cars, were the primary means of transportation. Consequently, many of the houses you’ll pass are old and exquisite.

Thomaston is our next stop on U.S. 1. Once you put the state prison behind you, massive white-clapboard sea captains’ houses line the center of town in an impressive display of architectural pyrotechnics. The blocks of buildings that form the downtown area hold restaurants and book stores, so don’t drive right past. At the head of the St. George River stands Montpelier, a splendid 1930 reproduction of a 30-room mansion built by Maj. Gen. Henry Knox in the 1790s.

We’ve told you something about Rockland already but should add that it’s the departure point for the state-run ferry to Vinalhaven (see Offshore/Islands), upscale North Haven and tiny Matinicus. In Rockport, don’t miss Aldemere Farm, home of the Belted Galloways (a.k.a. Oreo-cookie cows). To get there, turn right on Chestnut Street in front of the Camden Post Office and continue for a mile or so, passing a cemetery on the left. Inland, the towns of Hope, Appleton and Searsmont are windows on the way Maine used to be. If you like touring the country, get out your map and go!

Continuing north on U.S. 1, Lincolnville Beach (not to be confused with Lincolnville Center a few miles inland) has restaurants, shops and one of the few sand beaches around. The Islesboro ferry leaves from here as well (see Offshore/Islands). Belfast is next on our tour. The town thought it would never get over the closing of its poultry and shoe enterprises, but MBNA opened a processing center in town and lifted spirits considerably. The town has long had great art galleries, an impressive theater group and wonderful restaurants, but the pace of development is picking up, particularly along the waterfront. The housing stock is impressive as well. Historic properties abound, including the imposing James P. White House (1840).

Little Deer Isle and Deer Isle are connected to the mainland by a bridge and a causeway (Maine Highway 15). Drive all the way to the end and you’ll find Stonington, a fishing community that retains some of the grit of old-time Maine. Here you’ll take the mail boat to Isle au Haut and its tiny sliver of Acadia National Park.

Similarly, there are butchers at small grocery stores who will advise you on what to serve your guests because they know what your guests were served last night at Mrs. Peabody’s house. A friend of ours was shooed home because, said the butcher, “you have plenty of meat in your freezer. Now use it up before it goes bad.” This can be charming — or it can be a little unnerving.

“I have to live in this town,” is what people say when they temper their response to some civic scandal, but that tempering adds an air of much-needed civility. Which is not to say that tempers never flare. There’s nothing like a good zoning or school controversy to divide and alienate towns and families, and hard feelings can last for years. However, when you see a town pull together to raise money for two women with breast cancer, to fight off the Postal Service’s attempt to shut down their post office or to build up some town facility, you know that this is indeed the way life should be. The tiny town of Camden, for instance, recently raised $3.1 million for a 9,000-square-foot underground addition to its handsome library at the head of its harbor. No less than former First Lady Barbara Bush gave the keynote address. Camden is unusual in its resources, but not in its community spirit.

Another aspect of this small-town character is that families who have lived here for generations have a solid sense of identity. They tend not to bother buying expensive clothing or houses or cars to telegraph how important they are. They tend to look more at who you are than what you have. This translates into an easy egalitarianism, that can, at times, slip into a reverse snobbery. If you’re not from here, you’re “from away.”

How long do you have to live here to be from here? An old saw says there are daytrippers, summer people and year-rounders . . . and then there are natives — they are from here. What if you too were born here? That doesn’t mean you’re from here. “Just because a cat’s had kittens in the oven, doesn’t mean they’re biscuits,” as the saying goes.

That attitude’s softened considerably, but it flares up in different forms when people here feel that newcomers are changing the character of their state, a character as complex as it is precious. Lew Dietz, in his classic book on Maine, Night Train at Wiscasset Station, says “The [state’s] bedrock characteristic, it seems to me, is a stubborn independence of thought and action. Call it the frontier syndrome, or, if you will, a persistent strain of primitive, old-fashioned Americanism.”

Dietz also calls it “prickly pride,” adding, “It may well be that a fair share of Maine’s people today are engaged in trades, services and industry, but it is from its cadres of fishermen, woodsmen, trappers and farmers that Maine attitudes continue to be nurtured. It was the predisposition to resent all privileges based on wealth and class which colored Maine frontier attitudes. And this prejudice persists to this day.”

Dietz wrote that 20 years ago, but his words are still right on target, and it’s one of the hardest lessons newcomers and relocating businesses have to learn. One recent arrival, a big company from outside New England, hired a local contractor to do some work but was distressed to find the owner working along with his crew. That’s common practice here, but the company though it inappropriate — he was supposed to be the manager! — and asked him to stop. Needless to say, it caused some hard feelings.

While this book tracks U.S. Highway 1 in its path up the coast, we urge you to explore beyond it.

There is great charm on the back roads of Maine, but you will see some hardship as well. Just don’t judge too harshly as you pass by. Amy Willard Cross well could be describing Maine in this excerpt from The Summer House: “The houses that are old and worn down are owned by the real people who collect rotting and rusting machinery, be it tractors, cars or old plows in a pile on the front lawn. For country people, used to making do, those piles are a savings account whose balance is shown to all — and it’s a wealth the summer folk can not understand.”