A year or two ago they visited Beech Ridge in Scarborough just before it closed. The year before that, they were in the Cross Insurance arena. They come around, you just need to keep an eye out.

news weathermen are a bunch of click seeking babies

Bus lines mainly stay on interstates which are kept up with as long as the snow fall is spread out enough. Too many flatlandrs in the weather service now, the put out winter warnings for every snow flake.

For pure bang for your buck, you can't beat a wood stove, and one step off that is a wood pellet stove, which is far easier to deal with.

Heat pumps are able to serve as a primary heat source, but you're going to pay a premium for the "ultra-low temp" models. If you're able to keep your oil as a backup, the standard "cold temp" models will keep up as long as the temps are above zero, and will save you a serious amount of cash on the initial investment.

I should mention we cut some of the firewood ourselves, off our own land. But not all. About half.

Sorry. There is nothing that compares with Maine.

In bad weather we take route 1 instead of route 9. no trucks, more plows, more gas, and closer to the coast so more rain instead of snow.

Our old farmhouse isn't that large, about 2000 feet with a recent extension, but it has distant wings, so doesn't heat easily.

When we got it, it wasn't insulated. The previous occupants used 700 gallons oil and ten cords of wood a year. We didn't exactly convert the place from oil. The oil furnace is still there. What we did was make incremental improvements. First we put in a wood stove and used that instead of the oil hot air furnace for about 80% of the heat. Then in stages we air sealed and insulated: new windows and doors, R40 cellulose blown in the attic, four inches cellulose blown into the stud bays, and two inches R10 foam board over the entire outside. Spray foam on the upper four feet of the cellar walls and joist bays. Smarter thermostats for the furnace and baseboards. Every year for five or six years we did something to improve on air sealing and insulation. We did it all ourselves.

Then we built an extension that had R10 foam board and six inches cellulose in the walls and R40 in the attic. We added a heat pump in the kitchen where we can feed both wings, although not well enough to get to the far corners where we have electric heaters to top up. We added solar, 2.7kW/hour of sunshine, which cancels out some of the extra power needed for the heat pump and baseboards. Right now we use 3-4 cords firewood, less than 50 gallons oil, and our power bills go from $40 in summer to $100 in late fall and spring to $300 in January and February. Quite a bit of that is tank heaters and heat lamps for livestock and block heaters for a tractor, though. We measured their consumption with a meter and it is high, as much as $80/month. If we didn't want to keep stock then we'd have only $120 to $180 more electrical consumption/month in winter. Our power bills would top out just over $200/month. I estimate our total actual heating costs at about $1200/year. Right now we are replacing the furnace with an identical newer used model. We don't use it much -- we've gone only from from 1/3 to 1/4 of a tank so far this year. But when it's really cold we do use it to keep the house warm when we're not here. It sits in the cellar so it keeps the pipes from freezing. The old one is getting rusty because the 120-year old cellar is damp and floods occasionally. And the insurance company wants us to have one, even if we barely use it.

(Full disclosure: I was an energy academic before retirement. Now I'm just a grumpy handyman.)

Imo the 100 level section isn’t worth it - unless you want to pit. The fold out seats are tiny af - and very tight. I bought upfront for FFDP and ended up sitting up in the 300s…

Only on SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY.

Feel like we’re forgetting about the more affluent bears along the coast

On top of that if it clears mid day, the view of katahdin around patten is incredible

Why not go up through Fredericton and cross in houlton/ Woodstock. Take the trans Canada (rt 2 if I recall) and dump off in Woodstock. Used to travel that way a bit and it only adds like 30 minutes to the ride and you have all awesome highway the whole way. Rt9 is horrible even if the roads are clear.

Can second that on the trucks.

Best advice I heard when looking to move to VT many moons ago. "VT people retire to NY to pay less in taxes". I've lived in NY and it wasn't cheap. Maine doesn't give a flying fuck what you do where once your north of Augusta. Last time I called for a building permit the town hall said to just go ahead, they trust me to do the right thing, permits would only slow things down

Route 9 from Calais is the scariest road I've ever driven on in snow. The large trucks do not slow down which can make for a white knuckle situation.

Totally agree. Unless its 2’ or more. I do everything i always do. Just allow more time. Never had an issue

Don't forget Giffords as well. I was really disappointed with the VT ice cream scene. All I could find local was really expensive pints. I could get 2x round top for the cost of the typical vt ice cream.

Oh you must live down the road

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Buses weigh 20,000 lbs? (guessing completely on the weight) they have just weee bit better contact to the road than a 2,000lb car. There is a reason people put weight in the back of their truck for traction.

Lol u really needs meds.

All of the 3 roads get cleared equally?

I'm pretty sure there's an event coming to Topsham in June

I know that a few shows have come to Speedway 95 in Hermon for the past few years