A gem in Sugarloaf's shadow

July 08, 2007|Patricia Harris and David Lyon, Globe Correspondents

KINGFIELD, Maine -- Summer dawn comes early at this latitude. The sky brightens around 4:30 a.m. as the deer start darting across the highway. By 5 on weekdays, Diane Christen opens the doors and starts dishing eggs and pancakes at The Kingsfield Woodsman just north of the village. Her early clientele is a mix of retirees and men who work outdoors and drive pickup trucks. Her breakfast specials range from $2 to $3.25, and she only takes cash. But at those prices you get both breakfast and the talk of the town.

It is June, so the discussion revolves around who's graduating, who's getting married, and who's come back for the season from Florida. There's a quick mention of the recent murder in nearby New Portland -- everyone knows the family of the victim -- and some surprisingly hearty approval of the just-announced sale of Sugarloaf/USA to the Boyne family of Michigan.

"It would've been nice if somebody local got it," says Christen, "but they seem like good people who know how to run a ski mountain. Maybe now we can get some quad lifts up there."

This wide spot in the high-country road between Skowhegan and Rangeley is perhaps best known as what Ski magazine called "the most beautifully preserved ski town east of Aspen." Herbert Grand Hotel co-owner Lynn Herrick refers to the winter community as "a feeder town for Sugarloaf."

So it's natural that Kingfielders are a little anxious about the sale of their bread-and-butter attraction. On the other hand, it's summer, and after the second successive slow year for skiing, many locals are happy to see warm weather and enjoy the subtler attractions of western Maine's mountains. Says Herrick, "There's plenty of boating and fishing, and it's a good place to just do nothing at all. That's what most of our guests are doing right now."

Kingfield attracts a different kind of visitor in summer, and Peter Jacullo from Ridgefield, Conn., and Fred Tonelli from Congress, N.Y., are not atypical. They have booked a couple of nights at the Herbert Grand, an old-fashioned genteel country hotel that dates from 1917. They plan to drive the approximately 220-mile scenic loop from Kingfield to Moosehead Lake and back on touring motorcycles. Jacullo, though, worries about moose. "We encountered seven of them in the middle of the road on the way over from Vermont," he says. "One just jumped out of a ditch in front of us."

Marcie Herrick, co-owner of the Herbert Grand, warns the pair to be careful, especially as they cruise the lonesome stretch of Routes 6 and 15 on the shores of Long Pond . "Those moose warning signs are for real," she says.