Miles the Turnpike Moose – the official mascot of the Maine Turnpike Authority – gave tourists leaving Maine on Labor Day a memorable end-of-summer goodbye at the York tollbooths.
On a humid 80-degree day, Miles endured a furry suit and several hunting season jokes to hand out free Farmers’ Almanacs to thousands of drivers heading home to Massachusetts, New York and other points south. Nearly 30,000 vehicles had passed through the York tollbooths by 7 p.m. Monday, with no major backups reported.
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Barry Dolan, 42, of Pownal donned the costume this year, made bearable by an interior vest lined with freezer packs. Still, 30 minutes of jumping around, exaggerated hand motions, posing for pictures, high-fives and fist-to-hoof bumps was about all he could take before needing to drink water and cool off in an air-conditioned office.
“It did get pretty hot under that costume,” said Dolan, a janitor with the turnpike authority who greeted tourists for nearly five hours in the mid- to late afternoon. “It was a lot of fun, and we made a lot of kids smile.”
Dolan said tourists offered him water and doughnuts, but he politely declined because he couldn’t eat or drink through the “giant moose head.”
Miles has been waving goodbye to tourists for several years. The mascot was made popular by the late turnpike spokesman Dan Paradee.
“It’s something you don’t see anywhere else,” said turnpike authority spokeswoman Erin Courtney.
Declawed, the authority’s lobster mascot, has occasionally joined Miles, but a yet-to-be-repaired rip in the costume left the lobster on the sidelines this year, Courtney said.
Peter Mills, the turnpike authority’s executive director, said it’s too early to tell whether the Labor Day traffic was higher than normal. But he said traffic overall for the summer tourist season is trending about 2 percent higher than last year, part of the slow recovery from the recession.
“We’re not quite back at 2006 or 2007 levels, but we’re climbing,” Mills said.
Mills said it’s difficult to know the reasons why, but tourists left at a more even pace throughout the late morning and afternoon Monday, rather than everyone trying to depart Maine in midafternoon, which can cause major backups.
“Maybe it was predictions of afternoon showers, I don’t know,” Mills said. “We had an orderly departure.”
The turnpike can handle up to about 4,000 vehicles per hour without a major slowdown, and on Labor Day, none of the hourly measurements reached 4,000 vehicles. The southbound peak was 3,858 vehicles between 10 and 11 a.m.
On Friday, 35,466 northbound vehicles passed through the tollbooths in York.
The turnpike authority has handed out Maine-themed items in years past, including refrigerator magnets and mouse pads, but this is the first year it has distributed the Farmers’ Almanac, a Maine-based annual publication that predicts weather patterns and gives advice on cooking, gardening and farming.
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