State O' Maine Candlepin Bowling

I came across this wonderful vintage bowling alley on US 1 in Scarborough, Maine just south of Portland. My friend Tom, who considers himself a part time Mainer, explained the meaning of the Big "20". This bowling alley, at one time the largest in Maine features 20 lanes of Candlepin bowling, a style of bowling practiced mostly in New England and Canada. According the official Candlepin bowling website, the pins are taller and narrower than traditional hourglass-shaped bowling pins and resulting in a "candle-like" appearance. Unlike conventional bowling, downed pins are not removed during a players turn. Also the balls are much smaller and have no holes; from what I can tell they appear to be about the size of a softball. According to the Wikipedia site, these differences between Candlepin and conventional bowling make scoring much more difficult and the highest score ever recorded was 245 out of a possible 300 game. One of my favorite aspects about my trip to Maine was discovering peculiar Maine-centric customs and products like Candlepin bowling, Moxie Soda, lobster rolls, popovers and Bangor Taffy. I hope to visit again and try my hand at this challenging game.

Old Orchard Beach

Old Orchard Beach is the Daytona Beach of Maine. Or maybe the Panama City Beach. It's a place where the kitsch is overwhelming and the good taste, ever present in the rest of Maine, gets tossed aside to appeal to a steady influx of French Canadians tourists. A rare sand beach in Maine, Old Orchard has a rich history of entertaining vacationers and the campy eye-candy is everywhere.

The first boarding house for summer tourists was built in 1837. In 1853, the Grand Trunk Railroad connected Old Orchard Beach to Montreal, giving French Canadians easy access to the sandy beach. In the twentieth century, the long, crescent shaped beach was used a starting point for trans Atlantic flight attempts, based on the success of Charles Lindburgh, according to Old Orchard Beach website. Today visitors take flight in an assortment of rides at a beachside amusement park. Like so many beachfront communities in Florida, large chunks of quaint charm has been lost to condos. But enough is left over to get a glimpse into this city's colorful past.

The Maine Roadside

Bowling Alley, Scarborough, Maine

There have been no posts recently because I've been taking a little break vacationing in Maine. One of my favorite things about traveling is that not only do you see new sites at your destination, your perspective of your home can change in comparison to what you've seen. There were many things I really loved about Maine, that I wish were true of Florida.

In Maine, they know how re-purpose old architecture. Perhaps because they have so much of it. We stayed in an inn built in 1730. That's almost fifty years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Imagine if the whole state were like St. Augustine. Even most new buildings are designed in the classic Cape Cod style and in many places if you took away automobiles you could easily visualize what the it would looked like in the 18th century.

Detail of Cape Cod "Cottage", Bar Harbor Maine

Quaint Camden Maine commercial architecture

Architectural detail from downtown Portland

Art Deco detail from movie theater, Bar Harbor

Vintage Theater, Portland

Commercial Building, Bar Harbor

Sign of a motel long gone, for sale along US 1

Vintage theater, Ellsworth

There was also a refreshing lack of sprawl and residential developments. While there were some commercial corridors that could be anytown USA, they were wonderfully few and small in scale. Many of the businesses seemed to be "mom and pop" family-owned places, not franchise after franchise. Of course, Dunkin Donuts has an empire up there, but overall there was not nearly the number of franchises one would see in much of the rest of the country.

And as a result of the plethora of smaller businesses, the roadside is scattered with wonderful hand-crafted signage and "folk art" designed to stop motorists. From giant crustaceans on the top of buildings to lobster buoys and traps, Maine's "Mickey" is the lobster and it appears in many forms along the roadside. There are more folky roadside lobsters than alligators and flamingoes combined in Florida. Other Maine roadside icons include the raincoat clad fisherman, lighthouses, loons and black bears. It was touristy in a way Florida probably was in the forties and fifties.

Perry's Nut House is a vintage tourist stop on US 1 Maine that counts Eleanor Roosevelt as a former customer.

Arcade game to win a live lobster

Overall I found a quaintness to the Maine roadside that is different from most of 21st century America. Whether it intentional or it just evolved that way, driving along US 1 in Maine is kind of like going back in time in many ways. It was a huge contrast to fly into Orlando and see miles of residential developments in every direction and then drive down SR 436 and see strip mall after strip mall. Perhaps we can learn something from our neighbors up north?