Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Firewood
When camping, remember that softwood, which is full of resins
and pitch, will help get a fire going quickly but will leave few
coals and lasting heat. Pine, spruce, and fir branches pop and
snap excessively, sending showers of hot embers into the air and
onto the ground around the fire ring.
Dry hardwood burns best and longest and leaves a good bed of
coals for cooking or getting a fire going again in the morning. It
also produces the fewest flying embers. Of all the hardwoods,
ash, which is used for axe and tool handles, is the hardest and is
believed to burn hottest and longest.
Fall Foliage
From mid-September through mid-October
Maine is ablaze with autumnal colors. This
colorful current begins in the north and
almost imperceptibly wends its way slowly
south, peaking last along the South Coast.
Due to sheer size alone, Maine provides
foliage lovers with no end of spectacular
landscapes. Every view - the wave-tossed
coast, the towering peaks of the Western Mountains, tumbling streams
and wind-swept lakes - comes alive with the vivid reds, oranges and yel-
lows of fall.
Foliage season in Maine, indeed in all New England, is one of the busiest
tourist times. What many leaf peepers do not understand is that the
leaves really don't change color so much as simply reveal their true
stripes. The pigments that produce the reds and yellows are present in
the leaves all summer long. In fall, a reduction in daylight prompts
leaves to form scar tissue where they attach to a branch. Cut off from a
source of water, the chlorophyll in the leaves, which gives them their
green color, fades away, revealing in a sense the leaf's inner beauty.
Many factors, such as an early frost or a dry August, can affect just how
vivid the colors will be. Also, if a storm with heavy winds and rain moves
through at just the wrong time, most of the leaves can be blown down in a
single night.
In Aroostook County colorful hardwoods ring potato fields that have only
been recently harvested.
Towering over the Great North Woods, Katahdin, itself mostly devoid of
trees, becomes a gray mass in contrast to the surrounding ocean of color.
e
:
The Maine foliage
hotline, in service each
fall, offers the latest
color-peaking informa-
tion for leaf-peepers.
Foliage Hotline
800-932-3419.
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