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Down East's 2025 Great Maine Scavenger Hunt

The Great Maine Scavenger Hunt

Twenty-eight excursions all across the state, from classical concerts to mountain sunrises to roadside doughnuts, that add up to one fun-filled Maine summer.

Spruce trunks, reimagined as posts, returned to roughly where they stood before the couple cleared the land.

How 8 Adventurous Homeowners Live Off the Grid in Maine

The range of their approaches is striking — from island cottages with cobbled-together utility systems to a fully electric house of the future

Down East magazine Where in Maine clue April 2025

Can You Name This Lush Maine Property?

A carved wooden gate welcomes visitors to the stately grounds, which opened to the public in 1962.

Doughnuts from the Cookie Jar Pastry Shop.

Doughnuts in Maine: From Inception to Perfection

Hundreds of miles and thousands of calories later, one very hungry road-tripper digests Maine’s long, sweet love affair with the doughnut, stretching back to the humble pastry’s hazy origins.

Maine Syrup Producers Are Branching Out

Their traditions trace back generations, but faced with increasingly erratic winters, syrup makers are tapping into new ways of turning sap into everyone’s favorite pancake topping.

The Magazine

April 2025 cover of Down East magazine: A bouquet of poppies and beets.

The Latest

the Stinger, Ripper, and Bat Wing hoes by Midcoast Tool & Design

This Mainer Has Reinvented the Humble Garden Hoe

Brian Hughes’s new and improved versions of an age-old tool make tending the soil a cinch.

Meredithe Stuart-Smith’s Favorite Maine Place

The Kansas native, and owner of Meri Meri party supplies, says her heart is in Castine, where she has summered since 1994.

Dave Copp outside Dave's Bottle and Buoy Heaven in Friendship, Maine

Colorful Old Bottles Fill Dave Copp With Joy

But recently, he’s begun selling off some of his 18,000-piece collection to make room for another passion: lobster buoys.

A (Pool) Party with The Barn Yard

The New England-based building and design company's catalog now includes timber frame pool houses built for entertaining.

Kevin McCartney, collector of antique clothes irons, owner of Old Iron Inn in Caribou, Maine

Caribou’s Kevin McCartney Presses His Case For Elevating a Humble Household Tool

More than 500 antique clothes irons are on display at his B&B, the Old Iron Inn.

The Island I was among several steamboats offering service to Squirrel Island.

Squirrel Island’s First Hundred Years

On the centennial of Maine’s original summer colony, Down East asked Edith Wheeler, the 93-year-old granddaughter of the Squirrel Island Association’s first president, to pen a recollection of the little colony’s early days.