Mr. Flores, who has visited all but three state capitals, said he was also impressed with pancakes in an Augusta restaurant and margaritas served up by a local Mexican restaurant. Across the street, the Governor's Mansion is open for tours. Among the artifacts on display in the restored, Classical Revival-style home is a silver tea service salvaged from the sunken remains of the USS Maine after it exploded in Havana harbor in 1898. His study sits as undisturbed as if he left it five minutes ago. On the other side of the State House is the Maine State Museum, which has won national acclaim for its continuing exhibit showing home, shop and mill settings amid displays of Maine-made products.
Admission is free and the museum is open seven days a week.
A side attraction just outside the museum is a statue of Samantha Smith, a schoolgirl from a neighboring town who won the world's affection in 1982 with her written appeal for peace to the Soviet Union's leader, Yuri Andropov. Within a short walk is Capitol Park, a botanical garden and lawn spread over 20 acres in front of the State House. It features a Vietnam Veterans Memorial showing the silhouettes of soldiers cut into steel, their images eerily reflecting on a triangular metal background. Nearly hidden among the trees, and all but forgotten, is a crypt for an 1820s governor, Enoch Lincoln, whose bones disappeared more than a century later. The mystery remains unsolved.