Kennebunkport to set limits on traffic near Bush home

KENNEBUNKPORT – Officials in the town that George Bush put on the map are preparing for heavy tourist traffic now that his son is headed to the White House.

Kennebunkport police are making plans to limit the number of vehicles that can drive by the Bush family’s Walker’s Point estate – at least when President-to-be George W. Bush is there.

Tour buses will also be forbidden from stopping outside the house so passengers can snap pictures.

“We still have the signs in place since his father was there, such as “no parking’ along Ocean Avenue,” said Selectman Kevin Campbell. “And we might have to close the road at certain times, like we did before.”

The younger Bush has said he will spend most of his vacation time at his new ranch in Crawford, Texas. But he is also expected to visit Walker’s Point each summer.

He typically has spent a couple of weeks each summer at the three-story, stone-and-shingle home that has been in the family since the early 1900s. His father has spent every summer since boyhood there, except when he served as a Navy aviator during World War II.

For ex-President Bush, Kennebunkport became known as the place where he took his famous “power walks” along the beach, and his whirlwind fishing trips in his speed boat.

Bob Boilard of Biddeford, a retired Portsmouth Naval Shipyard worker who often goes fishing with the elder Bush, said he expects to do some fishing this summer in Saco Bay with the “two presidents.”