7 Playfully Peculiar Towns In Maine

As the most heavily forested state in America, Maine hides oodles of oddities. Whether you are deep inside or on the outskirts of its wondrous woods, you are bound to encounter things that will shock you. Be shocked, but do not be scared. Many Maine oddities are shocking in playful ways, since they range from a mad scientist's cloudbuster to a wiener dog festival to a wife-carrying competition. Naturally, such far-out sights are often found in smaller, somewhat secluded settlements. Therefore, pine for these playfully peculiar towns in the Pine Street State.

Rangeley

You might think that mad scientists are reserved for fiction—until you visit Rangeley. In the 1940s and '50s, a once-renowned psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Reich isolated himself in the woods of Rangeley. On his 175-acre property, Reich studied "orgone," a dubious type of energy he coined and connected to the libido. He called his rustic research center "Orgonon," where he built a laboratory and channeled atmospheric orgone using giant "cloudbusters" that resembled space guns. Reich was targeted by the feds and died in prison in 1957.

Unlike many of his books and papers, which were burned on court order, Orgonon is preserved by modern Reichians as the Wilhelm Reich Museum. Guests can tour his former lab, whose three floors display everything from authentic Orgone Energy Accumulators to books that escaped burning, and his former grounds, which contain his tomb and an old cloudbuster amid 3.3 miles of nature trails. While the museum is open seasonally, the Orgonon Trails are explorable year-round.

However, you don't need to stay at Orgonon for offbeat hiking. Continue your trek at the nearby Rangeley Lakes Trails Center, whose 35ish miles of multi-use pathways are bedecked with gnome homes.

Belfast

For a city of about 7,000 people, Belfast abounds with playfully peculiar festivals. One of these, in true Belfast fashion, is the Maine Celtic Celebration. Besides classic Irish fare like Sean-nós dancing and singing, this three-day summer extravaganza features a kilt contest, the U.S. Championship Cheese Roll Competition (where competitors chase a wheel of cheese down a hill), and a Celtic dog show. Speaking of dogs, Belfast also hosts the Maine Wienerfest, a single-day September celebration of wiener dogs (AKA dachshunds).

Though the celebrations above are nutty, Belfast's nuttiest attraction, bar none, is Perry's Nut House. This house does sell nuts, but it also exhibits oddities, such as a stuffed gorilla named Ape-Raham and an alleged Egyptian mummy named Jay.

Lisbon

If you have moxie, visit Lisbon during the Moxie Festival on the second weekend of July. This three-day festival honors a bitter beverage called Moxie, which a Mainer created in approximately 1876. Although many people do not like—or even know about—Moxie, Lisbonites have been celebrating the soda and converting countless haters through over 40 years of festivities. They include or have included a Moxie chugging contest, a Moxie recipe contest, and a Moxie parade. Outside of the festival, locals and tourists sample Moxie at Food City and Frank's Restaurant & Pub, the latter of which is housed in the former Moxie Store.

Stuffed with moxie and Moxie, you can brave the attractions in nearby Durham, which, if you know your horror lore, is where Stephen King was raised and drew inspiration for later works. In particular, Durham's Runaround Pond inspired locations in The Dead Zone and The Body (which became Stand By Me).

Lubec

Lubec is the easternmost community in the contiguous United States. That means it is the closest contiguous US town to Africa. While we certainly would not advise you to travel to Africa from Lubec (thousands of miles of ocean separate them), we suggest taking the short bridge to Canada to tour the Roosevelt Campobello International Park or staying in Lubec to enjoy other American superlatives. For instance, if you stay at West Quoddy Station in early spring and early fall, you can be the first person in America to see the sun rise. Yes, Lubec's West Quoddy Head, a peninsula that allows overnight stays at the recreated crew quarters of its West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, is seasonally the first place in the United States to receive sunlight.

Boothbay

After seeing "gnomes" in Rangeley, meet "trolls" in Boothbay. Five giant wooden trolls, sculpted by Dane Thomas Dambo as part of an international art initiative, guard Boothbay's Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Make sure to meet each of them—named Roskva, Lilja, Birk, Søren, and Gro—and explore the other fantastical features of this 300-plus-acre preserve. From there, head to the Boothbay Railway Village Museum before choo-choo-choosing nearby Damariscotta for its fish ladder and pumpkin paddlers. The Damariscotta Mills Fish Ladder helps alewives travel upstream to spawn in May and June, while the Damariscotta Pumpkinfest & Regatta helps humans travel downstream or upstream in hollowed-out pumpkins leading up to Halloween.

Freeport

Maine may seem like the unlikeliest place to have a desert resort. Yet just minutes from Freeport proper lies the Desert of Maine, a wonderland of dunes, sculptures, gemstones, fossils, mini golf, and a campground with futuristic cabins, tents, and domes sheltered by prodigious pines. Though the dunes are natural, they were not naturally exposed—reckless farming from centuries past unearthed many acres of glacial sand. Following a foray into this out-of-place desert, get dessert at an out-of-place McDonald's. In Freeport's elegant downtown district sits a McD's that lacks golden arches and other colorful hallmarks. When the company wished to operate in Freeport, Freeporters welcomed a chain as long as it matched the local aesthetic. As such, McDonald's opened in the stately, historic Gore House, making it one of the least McD's.

Newry

Newry is a rustic Maine town known for the Sunday River, which supports sites such as the Sunday River Resort and the Sunday River Bridge. You can thus traverse Newry on foot, bike, snowboard, watercraft, or, if you are a husband visiting in October, with your wife over your shoulders. The Sunday River Resort annually hosts the North American Wife Carrying Championship, where husbands carry their wives through a 278-yard all-terrain obstacle course. The fastest husband wins their wife's weight in beer and five times their wife's weight in dollars. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the exact amounts are not publicly disclosed.

Maine is not just peculiar. It is playfully peculiar. As Rangeley, Belfast, Lisbon, Lubec, Boothbay, Freeport, and Newry show, peculiar can actually mean fun. With that said, you can hike the scenic trails around a mad scientist's former lab, or learn to love a polarizing soda during the soda's annual festival, or carry your wife for 278 yards to win an international competition. Better than finding fun oddities is becoming one yourself.