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plowfaster t1_j5hba12 wrote

Rural Maine is ABSOLUTELY another world from rural VT/NH. “Rural” VT has (very) rich NYCers up skiing for the weekend and “rural” NH has people coming and going from Dartmouth or Mt Washington. Towns like Gorham, NH which ought to be serving pancakes to lumberjacks have fine dining crudités.

Rural Maine, on the other hand, is RURAL. Aint no one going through WashCo or Dover-Foxcroft on the way to anywhere. Also, many of these places are FAR from other states. Like, a rural NH dweller has been to ME and VT and has passing familiarity with them. When your state is tiny, you just end up in other states. When I worked in ME, I’d call people to set up appointments on my 603 number and get no answer. When I met them in person they’d say, “everyone I know is 207 so I figured it was a wrong number”. You could live your whole life in eg Houlton and NEVER need to leave ME. I think rural maine competes with, like, rural Wyoming or something where as rural NH is like, “gotta drive 45 minutes before you can go to a restraint with kale”

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MisterMan-Maine t1_j5i4kxn wrote

>Rural Maine, on the other hand, is RURAL. Aint no one going through WashCo or Dover-Foxcroft on the way to anywhere.

WashCo just because Route 9 and Route 1 to get to Canada through Calais. Other than that I would agree.

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t2ktill t1_j5jfof5 wrote

Bro i live in dover Foxcroft and this is accurate AF

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snowswolfxiii t1_j5jpevx wrote

I don't think what you're describing is really rurality. While it is true that rural NH towns tend to get a lot of through traffic for Mt Wash, Laconia, Dartmouth, etc; the same could be said for a lot of rural Maine. D-FC is a great, unique, example. However, a bigger contributing factor, in my opinion, is the fact that it's in the middle of the state, and not that it's rural. As I'm sure you know well enough, plenty of rural Maine gets a good bit of traffic come summer time.

Fryeburg, Ossipee Valley (Porter/Cornish) gets traffic for Conway, Fryeburg fair. Get up towards Carthage and Weld and you've got Mt Blue, Loon Lake, and Bigelow. Acadia pulls traffic through most of the state. NMW and Katahdin for Millinotcket, Medway, and Ashland.

And lastly, even with D-FC, it's just a short drive to Skowhegan or even Bangor to get some fancy eating. Certainly less than the 45 minute threshold.

I would also argue that a lot of folks in Houlton probably do cross over in Canada pretty regularly.

No arguments about VT, though. Nailed that one.

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