We spent Memorial Day weekend off the grid in Grand Falls Township, Maine (take I-95 north until Howland-ME; exit right and proceed easterly until the utility poles along the road stop appearing. Keep going. Take off your mask and put on bug spray (the viral plague is here, too, but they call it “black fly season”)). More pictures to follow. We normally would have been in southern NH visiting the old Gregory summer place and Mt. Monadnock but we got canceled.

We were able to take a canoe ride up and back on the Madagascal stream, as we usually do. We ventured out on Sunday to check out how the local inhabitants were handling the plague. In the small villages, the adherence to the current phase of lockdowns and constraints is only slightly visible. One general store, and its customers, did not appear to be adhering to any lockdown or masking rules. We ate lunch there at their new take-out window but no masks or distancing was observed (we had our masks, but, we are from away). A restaurant that we have stopped at before was closed but they had opened up a take-out ice-cream concession that weekend, to our delight. Outside, they had six-feet apart queuing, but inside, no employees were wearing masks.

According to our observations along the 3-hour ride to and from, on I-95, we spotted more than 50% of travelers were in out-of-state plated vehicles; traffic volumes seemed similar to the past. We are guessing the out-of-staters didn’t stay 14 days at their Maine destinations.