So near and not so far away. While Linda and I have visited a number of places in Maine featured in Lois Stailing’s book, Nearaway Places, I was surprised by how many we’d never seen. Time to get to those wonderful places!
Lois focuses on scenic and historical places, both of which are plentiful in our state. And her book’s subtitle, Driving to a meal in Maine, let’s you know that she and her partner found great meals near every place she writes about. Yes, great food and beverages can enhance every trip!
Published by Maine Authors Publishing, some of the places that really interested me are the cattle pound in Harpswell built in 1793, a number of gorgeous ocean-side walks, the museums in Poland Spring, a stunning monastery in Kennebunkport, and historic homes at Paris Hill including the birthplace of Hannibal Hamlin.
Lois explains her motivation for writing this book in the introduction: “This book started as a blog as a way for me to express my enjoyment and admiration for so many of the beautiful and unique places in Maine… It’s fun and exhilarating to discover a new place. And Maine has some gems!”
You can access her blog at NearawayPlaces.com.
And she is so right about Maine’s gems. For the 7 years that Linda and I wrote weekly travel columns for central Maine’s newspapers, we loved finding great inns and restaurants to tell our readers about. You can still access those columns on my website, www.georgesmithmaine.com. Select “Best of Maine” and a town, and you’ll see all the columns we wrote about inns, restaurants, and events in that town.
Now, get out there and enjoy these special places!