JONESBORO, ME — The maples lining Route 187 reached their actual color peak at 2:40 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, according to Marlene Pelkey of Pelkey’s Down East Inn, who happened to be watching through the kitchen window because she was opening a can of soup.
By 4:15, in Mrs. Pelkey’s professional assessment, the moment had passed. By Wednesday morning, what she had earlier described as “the most red I have ever personally witnessed” was, in her own words, “spent.”
This puts Mrs. Pelkey directly at odds with the Washington County Tourism Council, the Maine Office of Tourism’s downeast foliage portal, and three charter buses from Quincy, Massachusetts that pulled into the inn’s gravel lot Thursday morning under the impression that something was still happening.
“The peak window for our region remains broadly active through November 2,” said Renee Coombs of the regional tourism desk, citing satellite analysis, an internal color-grade index, and a system she declined to elaborate on. “We do not adjust the published window based on a single property’s kitchen-window observation.”
Mrs. Pelkey, who has lived on Route 187 since 1971, has not been asked.
The Quincy buses, having driven five and a half hours to see a thing that according to Mrs. Pelkey had concluded forty-one hours earlier, disembarked anyway. A retired phys-ed teacher named Dennis Halloran walked down to the maple at the bottom of the inn’s drive, looked up at it for roughly ninety seconds, and asked his wife if this was it. His wife, Sue, said it was very nice.
“It was not it,” Mrs. Pelkey said later, from the porch, with the air of a woman who had already had this conversation twice that morning. “What he was looking at was the second wave. The second wave is not a peak. The second wave is a courtesy.”
Bus operator Frank Petracca of Petracca Coachways disputed the characterization. He noted that his passengers had each paid $340 for a foliage package that included two nights at a Best Western in Ellsworth, a boxed lunch from a sandwich shop in Bangor, and what the brochure described as “saturated autumnal color at peak intensity.” He said his customers had reported being “satisfied.” His customers, when asked, mostly reported being tired.
Mrs. Pelkey is now keeping a notebook. Tuesday at 2:40 is underlined twice. She has begun including barometric pressure.