America's Byways® Press Room
October 15, 2007 - Tom Bodett Interviews Jim Fisher Regarding Schoodic Scenic Byway

Tom

Thanks for downloading this podcast. What you’re about to hear is a true story — a story of American culture, history, and beauty. I’m Tom Bodett, and this is America’s Byways.

Jim

I’m Jim Fisher. I’m with Hancock County Planning Commission, but I’ve worked with four scenic byways in Eastern Maine. The two national byways are the Acadia All-American Road and the Schoodic National Scenic Byway. I’ve also worked with the Blackwood State Scenic Byway and the Million Dollar View State Scenic Byway. You can see beautiful places all through Maine, but when you get to the Schoodic area, you’re really in an area where people are making their living off the land, mostly by…by lobstering or clamming. And you’re…you’re in the thick of it at that point. You’re not surrounded by t-shirt shops anymore. You’re not being treated like a tourist so much, and…and you’re seeing people really making a living on a landscape that’s pretty rough.

We’ve got, they say, two seasons in Maine: winter and the Fourth of July. We like to be near the ocean if you’re on the coast of Maine. We, we like the cold weather, and in the summer it’s never hot. You know, you go to Minnesota; it’s hot in the summer. Not in Maine. It’s cold on the coast pretty much all year round. It stays pretty cold, and if you’re too hot, you can always jump in the ocean. If we’re lucky in the winter, we’re out skiing and snowshoeing. In the summer, we can be out kayaking and canoeing and things like that. I think that what we’re discovering is that we need to get people to look at Maine all seasons. It’s…it’s a…July and August kind of vacationland. And…and we need to get people interested in the spring, when… when the… when the ice melts and the lakes give out and the streams are at their highest. It’s a great time to go…to go whitewater kayaking and canoeing. It’s a great time for fishing. In the fall, of course, people come up to hunt moose and bear and deer. And we’ve got something just about every season, but it’s a challenge for us to get people to come any time but August. So I …I like to…like to tell people to come up when it’s not so crowded. They get better rates on the hotels, and they can see an awful lot then. People would be more relaxed.

We… we like to get friends of ours into the… into the local restaurants so they can meet local people and not… not be surrounded by handlers. I like them to get up on to the blueberry barrens. We’ve got thousands of acres of blueberries there, and they’re not high-bush. They’re not like blueberries anywhere else in the world. These are, when they get their tallest, about three inches. They’re right on the ground, and it’s, it’s quite a sight when you’re up on the barrens because you’re way up on flat plateaus, and you can see a hundred miles in any direction. And in the fall, particularly, when the bushes turn bright red, it’s…it’s a beautiful sight.

Tom

We’ve just heard another story from America’s Byways. I’m Tom Bodett. Travel well, act right, safe home.

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