This group from France came to see the fall foliage at Steppe Falls in Newry. Julia Romana, from left, Faouzi Baklouti, Marc Romana and Kevin Kaulanjan. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen
BETHEL — “So what’s the gossip around town?” asks one half of a couple who came to Bethel from Dallas to go antiquing.
“I have always been a disappointment to my mother and my oldest brother because I don’t do gossip,” responds Chamber of Commerce employee Cathy Howe. Then she gets busy researching nearby antique stores for the pair.
When visitors walk into the Chamber building on Cross Street, they often start by looking through their many brochures. One or two people walk around the corner and stop in their tracks when they see the World’s Tallest Snowman replica.
And nearly all the visitors use the Chamber’s bathrooms, easily the busiest in Bethel.
Executive Director Jessie Perkins says the weeks around Indigenous People’s Day are the busiest in the year for the visitor center.
On a recent Friday, a man arrives looking for a map of Maine. “How far to Bangor?” he asks.
“If you drive like my ex-husband it is two and a quarter hours,” says Howe, “If you drive like me, it’s three.”
When the man says they are going to “Cal-AY,” Howe corrects him, “it is “Cal-IS,” she says.
Since the pandemic, the Chamber visitors are mostly Mainers who tell Howe they are finally getting to know their own state. They sign in from Portland, Jonesport and Winslow. But also from nearly every state on the East Coast, Arkansas, Illinois and Iowa. Canadians and Europeans record comments in the guest book, too.
An early snow storm turned Holly Schofield and Kevin Laughlin around when they first tried to travel to Maine by motorcycle from their home state of Missouri. They decided as soon as they saw a covered bridge they would head back. That was more than 20 years ago.
This is their first time actually making it into Maine.
Asked what they want to see, they say: moose, bridges, foliage, Acadia, Bar Harbor and general outdoor scenery.
“We haven’t had beautiful fall foliage in Missouri in decades. It has been 25 or 30 years since we have seen fall color.” says Holly. “Tree stress, it’s dry, then they usually brown out,” adds Kevin.
The Chamber’s popular driving tours range from 65 to 80 miles. They end in various places: Weld, Oxford, Upton, Poland and Sebago and include “points of interest.” The one that starts in Bethel and ends in Upton says there are, “breathtaking views of Lake Umbabog.” Stops along the way include the Lovejoy Covered Bridge, Screw Auger Falls and Step Falls.
Howe often sends visitors who strictly want foliage to Grafton Notch or down Routes 5 and 35 through Stoneham and Lovell.
Another motorist arrives asking where she can see a moose, then on second thought, returns from the parking lot and asks for a photo with her head poking through the moose cutout in the lobby.
Howe advises people to stop at the Maine Wildlife Center in Gray. “They are grouchy as heck this time of year,” she says of the moose, (not the staff).
“Somebody told me about a great big mountain?” asks George McGonegal who arrives in a motor home with his wife, Rita, from Lansing Michigan.
A crass response would have been, “look around, big mountains are everywhere.” But instead, Howe sweetly asks, “Katahdin?”
His wife explains that they are trying to visit every U.S. state and have only four left. We can check Maine off our list now, she says.
Howe maps out a route on 219 to get them to Interstate 95 but explains there aren’t many bathrooms along the way.
Rita says, it’s fine because, “we have our own little potty station [in the motor home].”
Then she heads to the back of the Chamber to use their bathroom.
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