Kennebunkport Bus Tour - You Prounounce it Kenny-bunk-port

Dear Bath and Friends,

Last month, I led a bus tour for a group of seniors travelling for the day to Kennebunkport! It was a wonderful experience getting to know another Maine community. Like Bath, the Kennebunks started out with a focus on shipbuilding (but on the Kennbunk River). In the 1870s, they started focusing on a tourism economy. Have you heard of the “rusticators”? Well this wasn’t quite that. While the rusticators were going to Moosehead Lake and Bar Harbor, Kennebunk and Kennebunkport promoters were building more luxury-style (though not by our standards today) hotels to serve folks who would pack a trunk for a month, hop on a train and hop off at the Maine coast and enjoy.

Around the turn of the century, the Bush family married into the Walker family and purchased the land and began their compound at Walker’s Point - this gem has kept Kennebunkport in the tourist’s eye as well. If the Bushes are in residence, the Texas flag is flying.

I did some pre-tour planning on site and was able to attend an author-talk fundraiser for Kennebunkport’s Library. Revolutionary War historian Rick Atkinson was being interviewed by Susan Swain, formerly of C-SPAN. I worked at C-SPAN for 9 years, and Susan - the network’s co-CEO was my boss’s boss. She was very engaged with all of us back then, in the early 2000s and generous with her time and advice on the work right in front of us, but also helped us think strategically about our careers. It was great to see her! My husband Ben also got a chance to say hello to former First Lady Laura Bush, who was in the audience. Mrs. Bush and Ben worked closely together in Ben’s capacity in federal law enforcement (protection). That is all I can say about that!

On the bus route, we toured the mansions of Summer Street - including the Wedding Cake House (so named by a local promoter to attract tourists). We covered the different types of beach goers over the years along Mother’s and Gooch’s Beaches, the growth and evolution of the resort hotels, Dock Square and the West Indies trade that propelled shippping in the early 19th century, and of course Walker’s Point and the Bush home, finishing at the Seashore Trolley Museum.

An audience member at the book talk told me a good story. I had asked him for some local color to sprinkle in during the tour, and he obliged. He said in George HW Bush became VP in the early 1980s, the Secret Service pulled the local lobstermen together for a meeting about the new do’s and don’ts when pulling traps in the water near Walker’s Point. The new rules were so restrictive that one lobsterman attending the meeting blurted out defensively, “I may not have voted for him, but I don’t want to kill him!” I was able to share that anecdote with my tour group and that is why, ladies and gentlemen, Artificial Intelligence will never fully replace a real live human tour guide! We hope you join us in Bath for one of our guided walking tours, for more history and, of course, local color.