Features
Best Places to Camp
Twenty-five of our favorite spots for kindling a fire, rolling out a sleeping bag, and unwinding in the Maine outdoors. (And yes, for social distancing.)
By the Down East Staff
Eat Outside!
Dining alfresco is a rite of summer, and this year, it’s imperative. These 33 patios, decks, lobster shacks, and picnic tables serve up a just-right mix of knockout food and delicious scenery.
By Will Grunewald
Old Home Place
A rootless descendant of some of Maine’s earliest settlers takes to the tidal waters of the midcoast, looking to return to a place he’s never been.
By David Howard
Departments
North by East
A Francophone Augustan brings a ball game from France, and a Khmer-speaking Wisconsinite helms Maine’s pandemic response. Plus, an acclaimed, Veazie-based writer verses himself in Washington mumbo jumbo, while a DC muckety-muck checks in on medical-swab production in Maine Dispatches.
Food and Drink
Upshots of the pandemic: takeout thrives in Tenants Harbor, to-go cocktails (and other good ideas), and farm stands sprout fresh demand.
Good Things from Maine
A baker’s dozen of gear, gadgets, and games — from canoe paddles to reflector ovens to buoy bats — for cooking up a fun summer in the Maine outdoors.
Maine Homes
A family turns a three-seasons camp on the Pemaquid Peninsula into a four-seasons home, and a Bar Harbor gardener makes a perfect mess of her vegetable patch.
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Where in Maine
Maine Moment
Dooryard
Editor’s note, reader feedback, responses to May’s Where in Maine, and more.
Columns
Timelines: Percival Baxter’s Mountain Epiphany, My Maine: The Deep Heart’s Core, Room With a View.
My Favorite Place
Down East senior editor Virginia Wright, on Acadia National Park.
On the cover: Cathedral Pines Campground, in Eustis, by Mark Fleming
Additional photos: Benjamin Williamson, Heidi Kirn, Erin Little, Michael D. Wilson.