Visitors ask, does it snow there? Of course.

And are there live camels?

Not anymore. Years ago Sarah got mean and had to go live in a zoo. These days, well, there’s just nowhere to rent a camel short-term. You try.

The Desert of Maine: A tourist attraction for 80 years, a source of endless questions, maybe Maine’s most famous weird geography. Minutes from L.L.Beans, it is 30 acres of wind-rippled sand dunes skirted by dense pine forest, discovered by ravenous sheep.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 visitors – most from out of state or overseas – drop in each year.

“We take a lot of pictures, some of them getting down and crawling like they’re dying in the desert,” said Jan Vincent of Freeport. Retired, she and husband, Bob, both guide one-mile tram tours with frequent stops.

“(Kids) love to run up the dunes. They ask if they can roll back down. I say it’s up to your parents. We don’t have to clean them up.”

Ginger and Gary Currens from Florida bought the desert five years ago. A Boston college geologist who studied the fine sand last summer told them it’s glacial silt. Woodrow Thompson at the Maine Geological Survey said Maine has several different “deserts” – distinct from gravel pits – in Fryeburg, Wayne, Bethel and elsewhere, but none with the notoriety of Freeport.

Like its true, arid namesakes, the Desert of Maine’s sands shift: A house that once served as a pit stop and sold spring water in the 1930s is now buried 8 feet past its roof.

The land itself has had a tumultuous history.

Original settlers sold off wood for sail masts and train ties, Ginger Currens said. Next, the family farmed potatoes, but didn’t rotate crops often enough. When they decided to graze sheep to supply New Hampshire woolen mills, the animals plucked up the grass and exposed the always-lurking-under-there sand.

Currens said the next owner tried selling the sand to make glass (didn’t work), then for bricks (also didn’t work), then hung a sign out for visitors (success).

Today, the Desert of Maine is featured on RoadsideAmerica.com, “Your Online Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions,” along with the world’s tallest Indian in Skowhegan, a life-size chocolate moose in Scarborough and Bangor’s big stud, lumberjack Paul Bunyan.

Maybe because it keeps that sort of company, “Sometimes Mainers think it’s a tourist trap. It’s a shame,” said Gary Currens.

One visitor told them she came to check out the desert after reading about it in a Trivial Pursuit question. Others bring up an old “Jeopardy” episode where Alex Trebek asked, “Where’s the most easterly desert in the U.S.?” and called the player who guessed Maine wrong. Trebek later corrected himself.

“There’s been a lot of people on the tour who remember that to a T,” said guide Bob Vincent. (Although memories do vary as to whether that contestant was a man or a woman.)

For the entrance fee, visitors get the tram tour, access to the desert and nature trails for the day and kids get to “hunt” for polished stones.

Last week, they were still gearing up for the start of the season May 8. Leaves had to be raked, fallen brush cleared and sand plowed in some spots so the tram can still pass through. The fiberglass camels had yet to come out of the barn for the winter.

Ginger Currens said the idea to host a real camel on weekends comes up. A pair they inquired about at a Mt. Vernon sanctuary are too big to travel.

“We don’t know anybody who just has a camel,” she said.

Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, intriguing and unexplained in Maine. Please send ideas, photos and unicorn hairs to [email protected]