EXPLORER'S GUIDE MAINE

By Christina Tree and Nancy English     Review by Tamsin Venn


19th Edition, July 2019
592 pages w 100 color photographs, ten maps
$23.95 paperback
ISBN 978-1-68268-309-5

Maine often turns up on our readers’ lists of most favorite place to paddle. And why not? In summer, paddle to one of its many public islands and pull into a secluded cove, spend the day there... or a week... or forever.

NOAA charts, the Maine Island Trail Assn. app, several good guidebooks, weather radio, GPS, and compass all show us the way on the water, but we could also use a good onshore guide.

Just out is the latest Explorer’s Guide Maine (The Countryman Press, N.Y; 2019, 592 pages) which Christina Tree co-authors with Nancy English. Tree has been updating this guide since 1982, so she’s the expert. End of story.

The Guide will provide you with all you need to know on land, be it sitting out the fog, enjoying a real bed after a camping trip, or just idling away on this beautiful coast.

Lodging (from sporting camps to deluxe) is keyed by helpful symbols including Author’s Favorites, Special Value, Child Friendly, Handicapped Access, Pets (look for a dog paw) and new, Wireless Internet for your latest NOAA report. Having traveled for years with her three sons, Tree knows a good cottage for a crowd of people.

Food is another area of expertise, especially for her co-author Portland resident Nancy English who was restaurant reviewer for the Maine Sunday Telegram for more than six years. Looking for the seafood shoreside deck we all love so well? They’ve got you covered. They also designate Dining Out and Eating Out, the latter a place a kayaker might be welcome in a wetsuit, salt-crusted facial features,Tevas, and dangling seaweed. Craft breweries are also well covered.

The guidebook lists all the kayak outfitters in various regions in the To Do section in a very comprehensive list. Also, if you want to act like a normal tourist, you have contact info for whale watching outfits, puffin tours, fishing charters; not to mention hikes, windjammers, blueberry festivals, lighthouses. Plus museums and galleries, to view possibly some of the seascapes you have been paddling through.

The section on the Bold Coast is useful for exploring this increasingly popular area, as is Acadia for the National Park Service’s latest crowd control measures. We were happy to see birding with our friends Natalie Springuel and Rich MacDonald at The Natural History Center noted. Also useful is the info on Schoodic Peninsula, which opened a campground there in 2015, a whole new realm to explore. I was glad to see that Helen’s in Machias is still serving pie; that Moody’s Cabins (and diner) is still going strong; that you can still spend the night at the Ocean House Hotel before taking the ferry to Monhegan, to name a few favorites.

Let us not forget inland Maine - the Allagash, the St. John’s, Attean Lake; Maine Huts and Trails on Flagstaff Lake and AMC’s renovated camps in the 100-mile Wilderness region east of Moosehead Lake (Medawisla is gorgeous). All details are well covered, in the way only authors who really appreciate the hospitality the people of Maine offer.

Support your local bookstore and buy Explorer’s Guide Maine there, or else you can find it on Amazon.



Nancy English's food and travel writing has appeared in several New England newspapers and magazines. She was the restaurant reviewer for the Maine Sunday Telegram for six years.

Christina Tree launched the Explorer’s Guide series more than 30 years ago. She is a regular contributor to Yankee Magazine and has been honored by the Maine Publicity Bureau and the New England Innkeepers Association. Tree travels thousands of miles every year doing research to revise her books. She lives in Cambridge, MA.