Unboxing Maine: What It's Like Living In Maine

does everybody in maine eat lobster does everybody in maine have a funny accent and is everyone in maine sick of the tourists we're gonna answer those questions and more so grab your snow shoes and your duck boots we're gonna unbox the state of maine wow we're out here in no man's land we could be anywhere but of course we know we're in maine because that's what this video is about there aren't a lot of people in these parts maine's the only state in the nation with just one border the state shares a long border with new hampshire but that's it it's actually a much bigger state than you might think you can fit all of the other new england states into maine new hampshire vermont massachusetts connecticut and rhode island maine has the lowest population density of any state east of the mississippi there's a million people here but most people are far south of where we are right now but more on that later to get a complete understanding of maine we need to look at it from a higher level and then explore each region this is maine as you can see there are large areas in the northern part of maine where things are vast and wide open and then closer to the coast and to the south there's a lot more going on but for the people in northern maine they got everything they need thank you very much we'll begin over here in the northwest part of maine way up here is really nothing outside of moosehead lake and it's woods and a lot of run down cabins no that's mean there are some teeny little tiny little villages with the smattering of folks tucked out way back here in the tracks of forest places that are just about as rural as you'll find in almost anywhere in the whole country maine claims to have more woods than any other state 89 percent of the state is woods that's probably why it got the nickname the pine tree state you could drive back here for three or four hours and hardly see a soul that's also why a majority of people in maine drive trucks and suvs and subarus most of this region is made up of pisquatticus county which is losing more people than any other county in the state this county lost six percent of its population over the last decade why mostly an aging population more deaths and bursts and a loss of net migration in fact maine now has the oldest average population of any state in the country there's plenty of places to ski on this side of state in the middle of this vast region is mount kitauden while new hampshire's mount washington might be called the beast of the east mount katahdin is the largest independent mountain with the most rugged terrain in the northeast crazy people trek up here in cross-country ski it's also where the appalachian trail begins or ends depending on which way you're going down here in somerset and franklin counties it's more woods and skiing logging is a big deal in maine a long time ago like before we were a nation timber from maine's woods was used to make english ships today lumber is an even bigger deal wood products make up ten percent of maine's exports but the logging and wood industry in general is under threat here in maine not because they're out of trees but because they're out of lumberjacks it's hard to find loggers and log drivers these days they don't want to do the work especially when they can earn higher wages in nearby states areas of interest in this part of the state include rangeley a smallish townish village-ish place along rangeley lake here people's summer cabins are bigger than your actual home also out this way is lewiston maine's designated punching bag lewiston is where they make orla vodka and whoopie pies nearby is the oxford hills casino this casino is out in the middle of nowhere so it doesn't bring in any out of staters it just sucks money away from the locals oxford casino is wicked good fun up here in aroostook county it's also rural but there's a little bit more going on like anything is better than nothing right this is the largest county east of the mississippi aroostook county is mainers simply call this place the county it's the crown jewel of everything that is old school maine and two things grow really well here pot and potatoes now they don't have to grow marijuana in hidden plots way out in the sticks anymore because wheat is legal in maine now and boy do mainers take advantage of that there's nothing wrong with potatoes though maine produces more than sixty thousand acres of potatoes and ninety percent of those acres are up here in the county in case you're counting half of all main potatoes are used for french fries and 20 are used for potato chips i'm glad ruffles have riches but mostly ruffles have flavor places of interest way up here in this part of the state are presque isle a cute little place with 10 000 people and a couple of small colleges and a mall but you're 170 miles away from an actual real city and there's also limestone which has the main school of math and sciences it's a bunch of nerds with seasonal affective disorder but for the most part about half of maine is really just isolated where grandkids spend summer days eating cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches while grandma and grandpa watch channel 6 and play cribbage they have thick accents up here what do most people do for entertainment way out here many haven't actually been spotted in the outside world for years so we can't ask them but there's a reason homes way out here have huge garages in fact often the garage is bigger than the house they need somewhere to park their snowmobiles and fishing boats and canoes and kayaks and atvs you'll probably even see mainers way up here taking their riding lawn mowers to the store for duct tape wd-40 and some coffee brandy now while the rural parts of western and northern maine might be considered hunters and woodsmen the east side of the state is more fishermen and sailors this is where mainers call down east a lot of people make their living as lobster fishermen clam diggers or seafood distributors there's a teeny cute little place with 1100 people in a lighthouse called lubeck located at the far eastern tip of the state this is actually the first place in the country where you can watch the sun rise as such people flock here to do just that this is also where they have a lot of blueberries people up here near jonesborough maine claims grow almost a hundred percent of all wild blueberries in the country most of the rest of this area is set aside for public land and there are really pretty remote beaches now we move to central maine and that's where you're going to find a majority of what people in maine bluntly call redneck trailer trash this is where the stereotypical poor folks live while maine doesn't have any traditionally large ghetto tracks it does have very poor communities and trailer parks there's a lot of welfare here you can go from a beautiful coastal town to a sad trailer park in 20 minutes if you take the right road of course pot's legal here now but you have hard drugs like heroin and fentanyl which have taken hold of the poor towns in central maine while a lot of people in central maine struggle with poverty and drug use there's a lot of hard workers that struggle to put food on the table parts of central and northern maine are why many refer to maine as the deep south of the north union maine is in this general area that's where the inventor of moxie grew up mainers love them some moxie but a lot of people think it tastes terrible it gets its flavor from some root that's supposedly medicinal and if a central mainer ain't drinking moxie he's taking oxy augusta's in central maine that's state capital it's relatively uninspiring not as boring as montpelier vermont but it's up there benga is up here too this is also sort of a boring quiet place with a lot of poverty this is where stephen king lives so you can imagine what the people are like there he based many of his books on small main towns just a piece north of banga is arono where the university of maine is on the last wednesday of spring semester they close campus here so the kids can volunteer they just drink instead guns are a big deal in this part of the state as is hunting maine is the widest state of all where 97 of the population is some shade of caucasian the other three percent is in portland in these areas we've discussed so far it's mostly conservative folks but the state is varied in its political leanings maine's a solid mix of democrats rednecks and even democratic rednecks it's very red in some parts and very blue in others like along the coast and in southern maine where two-thirds of the population is maine has just about more coastline than any other state even california this is where all the diversity and the democrats are the accents aren't as thick here nor are the bellies they don't hunt [ __ ] while northern maine is rural and has a simple life this is where the wealthier folks are who live in bigger homes southern maine is kinda barely maine anymore and as less maine the further south you get some call southern maine massachusetts light up here which maine calls mid coast is mount desert island or mdi this is home to acadia national park in bajaba katie is beautiful it has hiking and carriage roads all on the coast it's one of the top 10 most visited national parks in the u.s everyone bajaba is a cute little town that's so popular cruise ships come here sometimes there's so many tourists here in the summer it seems like the whole island's gonna sink but tourism brings in about 20 of the state's gdp and tourism is a big part of how mainers run their living so they have to deal with it there's a bunch of other islands off the coast that are sparsely inhabited maine actually has more than 3 000 islands most of them are teeny tiny further down the coast are more small cute towns along the waterfront places like boothbay and bath brunswick is home to bowdoin college and therefore is filled with snobs hippies and hobos south of that is freeport l.l bean is located here it's named after its founder leon leonwood bean yeah that's his name they make comfy clothes and their boots are loved by the ladies you get your sweetheart a new pair of duck boots out of the tree and she's like hey uh just outside of freeport's a unique feature in maine a little 40-acre desert it's called the desert of maine camels live here then we come to portland portland's the most happening place around portland has a bunch of breweries and great restaurants in fact portland has more breweries per capita in the nation it's also been called the best food city in the country many times in the past mostly because of the seafood more on that later but more and more folks are moving to portland as it's viewed as a safe city away from all the drama that comes with living in a big city i mean there's only 50 000 people here and with working from home a long-term reality for many job opportunities aren't a driving force in bringing younger people into portland five miles south of portland is cape elizabeth where like half of the pictures in this state are taken a lighthouse here is the most photographed lighthouse in the country it's actually one of 65 lighthouses in this state that has to be a record there's a lot of mansions and rural farms here along with wannabe artists nearby scarborough also has some great beaches but it's not all peaches and cream along the main coast just south of portland is old orchard beach or old orchard it's kind of like a lower end new jersey shore with a little bit less attitude there's too many tourists here in the summer it's run down and dirty not a bright spot on the main coast for sure but the pure fries are good and then you have biddeford which is druggy central further down the coast are posh coastal communities like kennebunk in kennebunkport or the kennebunks this is where the wealthy families vacation and where former presidents own second homes good for you kennebunks way down here in york county are more places which serve as second homes for wealthy new england elites this is also the fastest growing area in the whole state some people in maine say they dislike the influx of massachusetts folks others don't seem to mind or they say they don't mind but there's no denying that the far south part of maine is becoming more crowded with more traffic and more crime the natives along the coast are getting squeezed out by out-of-staters buying up oceanfront properties as vacation homes they're driving up the taxes even more i mean as it stands maine has the fourth highest taxes in the country and the us's fourth highest property taxes somebody has to pay for all the welfare in central maine right regardless because of the isolation and beauty tons of celebrities come to maine people like john travolta martha stewart daryl hall tucker carlson joan london oh my god joan london if you frequent the nicer coastal communities often enough you might spot other notable people you see in movies and on tv perhaps they're looking to escape the craziness now don't listen to all the talk about how maine is either hot or snowing the state actually has three and a half seasons winter mud summer and then they get two weeks of fall before it's dead of winter and it's dark at like 2pm the winters aren't always wicked hot in maine it's kind of all or nothing sometimes they're buried in snow especially when nor'easter's come roaring through other years it's incredibly mild winters here are really anybody's guess and speaking of dark and snowy there's all kinds of deer and moose and bear and all sorts of critters that you have to avoid on back roads at night driving can be a challenge when you share the roads with these animals there's an average 550 moose car collisions every year in maine and if you've ever driven past one the car usually loses there are seventy thousand moose in this state food wise it's not all moose fine dining in maine is seafood fella crab shacks with whole belly ipswich clams which are coated with crumbs of course the chowder is popular here main chatty used to have cod in it but cod are harder to catch now that maine's waters have warmed now the chatta has haddock and potatoes mostly and mussels of course but what's the biggest deal here are all the bugs ak lobsters and lobster rolls they're so popular you can get lobster rolls at mcdonald's in maine lobster is remains biggest export 14 of it in fact lobster brought in 368 million last year for maine and if you eat a lobster there's an 80 chance it was harvested in maine's waters what's funny about that is that in colonial times lobster wasn't considered a delicacy like lobster was what they threw to the lower class folks like slaves and prisoners as a way to keep them fed it was cheap and at the time no one wanted them a lot of people don't ever leave maine i mean why it has everything you need oceans and mountains are a close drive away as are small towns and woods they smoke and drink they embrace the snow they're generally nice and helpful and a little provincial they're a proud bunch and a different breed they don't want a big city life i mean can you blame them but a state that's traditionally low in crime and low in opportunity is kind of changing as opportunities grow so will the number of outsiders can maine hang on to its culture probably i mean it's not very diverse now but every year 0.5 of it is newcomers maine's an extremely clean state and they like to keep it that way so if you're from away and are thinking of moving here great don't [ __ ] the place up okay so we did a pretty good job of covering maine from top to bottom didn't we yeah we did and there's all kinds of other stuff we didn't talk about like the history of maine it's got a lot of history that we didn't go into nor did we have time to talk about all the quirky towns and villages everywhere we could have spent a whole hour talking about those but we have to go our neighbor's working on his car and he needs somebody to hand him budweiser's all afternoon blueberries potatoes pine trees blueberries potatoes pine trees you'll be bored unless you're into trees oh my god there's just so many trees trailer parks that are hidden in the trees creepy people that are hiding in the trees bears and things that are living in the trees you'll get lost if you go into the trees we're a real state we're we're not canada we're a real state we're we're not canada we're a real state we're we're not canada we're a real estate we're we're not canada moose [Music] put some lobster on that thing i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you and put some lobster on that thing and i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you i'll eat you we're a real state we're we're not canada we're a real state we're we're not canada we're a real estate we're we're not canada we're a real estate we're we're not canada hey guys if you learned something new about america or what it's like to live in america great you should think about subscribing and turning on your notifications you can also click one of these videos or playlists for more you can also now buy my songs on itunes and other formats click the link in the description thanks for watching and remember while we all might have different views we should all be nice to each other and try to make the u.s a better place in a positive way this is sage nyx manager this has been a corner house entertainment production

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 380,181

Keywords: living in maine, maine, what is maine like, maine research, i live in maine, maine travel, maine food, what is maine, maine trivia, why do people live in maine, maine map, maine stereotypes, maine residents, maine culture, maine cost of living, maine politics, yale, home owners insurance, moving to maine, autumn, beaches, portland, york county, maine weather, lobsters, fisherman, bar harbor, augusta, bangor, seafood, acadia national park, mt. Katahdin, rangeley lake, skiing, freeport

Id: UDgb-_5OXEc

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020