Rumford welcomes foreign visitors during summer
RUMFORD – Lorenz Wiebe’s mind always goes back to the beginning of the school year whenever Labor Day arrives.
But for the past five years, the retired elementary principal and his wife, Vicki, a retired teacher, haven’t had to think about the classroom. Instead, they’ve been on the road.
The couple from Vancouver, British Columbia, are two of thousands of visitors from around the world who have spent at least a few minutes at the Rumford Information Center.
“We want to see the real Maine,” said Vicki as she and her husband mapped out a route that would eventually get them to the coast after first seeing much of the interior part of the state. They’ve been traveling in their camper since mid-August. And by time they get home in a few weeks, they will have traveled across the northern part of the United States, down to New York City and Florida, then back to Vancouver.
“We’ve enjoyed all the greenery and we’re trying to imagine all the colors,” said Lorenz.
In past years, they have traveled to Texas, Alaska and Europe.
Evelyn Kidder, one of about a dozen volunteers and paid staff who take turns helping tourists at the information center, tried to send them to some of the more rural, less crowded parts of the coast and state.
“More people are learning about interior Maine, gradually, but 75 percent are going to Bar Harbor,” said the six-year volunteer who works two days a week starting in May of each year.
People are interested in some of the offerings right at the information center, though. They ask whose bust stands proudly at the entrance to the center (paper mill founder Hugh Chisholm), learn that Edmund Muskie came from Rumford, ask about Strathglass Park (built by Chisholm for paper mill employees), and wonder why a paper mill was built where it is (water power from the Androscoggin River).
Kidder, a retired travel agent, has met people from all over the world, one of the reasons she likes working at the center.
“I like the people contact and sometimes you know something of where they’ve come from,” she said.
Address entries in the center’s guest book read like at atlas: The Netherlands, Germany, every province in Canada and virtually every state in the United States, France, Israel, Taiwan, Japan, England, Switzerland, and many towns in Maine.
She said she is always surprised that almost everyone speaks English, regardless of where they are from.
For the Weibes, they’ll travel maybe as far east as Hancock or Washington counties, and that will be their easternmost venture in the United States.
“This is our first time in Maine. It’s just gorgeous,” said Vicki.
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