The Lonely Planet has included Maine’s midcoast on its top 10 list of “Best in the U.S.” destinations for 2018.

The popular travel guidebook and website ranked the midcoast at No. 6, citing the region’s “superb maritime museums and exploding foodie scene of craft breweries, local vineyards and gourmet farm-to-table restaurants” and declares the region “not the quiet backwoods it once was.”

The midcoast region extends from Brunswick to Searsport and includes the coastal towns of Belfast, Camden, Rockland, Wiscasset, Bath and Damariscotta.

California’s Redwood Coast – a place to “lose all track of time” along with your cellphone signals – topped the list at No. 1.

Second was Boise, Idaho, which Lonely Planet described as epitomizing “what cool looks like before the rest of the world has figured it out.”

Filling out the rest of the list were 3) Chattanooga, Tennessee; 4) Florida’s Space Coast, which includes NASA’s Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral; 5) Cincinnati; 7) Richmond, Virginia; 8) Kentucky bourbon country; 9) Minneapolis and 10) southeastern Utah.

The Lonely Planet says its best destinations list often includes places that its travel experts consider overlooked and underrated, and recommend travelers visit them before the crowds do.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.


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