Living in Maine is like listening to a tale of two peoples. Half of Maine’s residents despise the cold, yet they continue to live in the state, and the other half deplore the heat, yet they continue to live in the state. Granted, Maine’s “heat” is much less hot than the heat found in other states. I’ll tell you though, it sure feels hot when a guy is trying to sleep while stuck to his bed sheets. Sweat. That’s all I can say. And lots of humidity.

June in Maine is generally a fine month. It’s one of the better ones. It only has a few drawbacks, one of which I just mentioned above. As the relatively cooler air of May fades away, June can get quite sticky. As far as shoulder seasons go, Maine doesn’t see them very much. In general, it’s either winter or summer, with summer beginning in earnest in June.

This past June was fair with just one hiccup. We experienced a heatwave that brought temperatures well into the upper 90s and humidity that made the temperature feel as if it were over 100°. June is the month when I find myself reinstalling our two air conditioners in the downstairs windows and fans in the upstairs. It’s such a shame – June has the potential for being an utterly delightful month, yet so often becomes miserable because of what it brings – heat, humidity, and insects. I will say this though – it’s all relative. I’ve lived in places where the temperature reached 80° at night. In Maine, in general, the temps fall to something between the mid-50s to the mid-60s. We rarely see 70° nighttime temperatures during the summer.

While the second half of May offers the dreaded black fly, they tend to die off sometime in early June. The wonder that June brings is the deer fly, an insect that’s shaped like a fighter jet and one that has the inclination for bothering a person into oblivion. Luckily, I wear a hat when outdoors that has sticky paper attached to it. When a fly lands on my head, it sticks to the paper never to bother me again. Think I’m kidding? I’m not.

I will say that the sun shines in June a heck of a lot and the mud has all but disappeared. The dirt roads are graded so they’re much more drivable, which is a good thing. People don’t worry so much about the weather and vacationers and tourists arrive to the state in droves. If it weren’t for summer in Maine, it’d be a lonely place.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that June also bring the mosquito in full effect. If you plan on visiting, be prepared to deal with them. There’s no way around their existence. They’re in the air for the entirety of the month and if a person were to go camping without consideration of some sort of repellant or physical barrier, that person would surely find themselves sleeping in their car.