John & repete....tears of laughter are running down my face, thanks for the laugh this morning! :-D

It's really hard to choose a specific scent for New England. Each area smells different, at different times of the year under different weather conditions.
Oddly enough, we found Alaska very fragrant in late June this year. I traced the smell to large patches of Cow Parsnip. Awful name but picture huge Queen Anne's Lace type of flowers.

Scarlett, I too lived in Jax & still visit. Haven't you gotten a whiff of the paper mill yet? It is not too often but a distinctive smell from time to time.

In NO the scent on Bourbon St is Pine Sol cleaner & alcohol. My favorite smell is across the lake in St Tammany Parish after the road crews have mowed. The fresh cut grass smells great.

Painted Desert = smells of dusty tea, think : chapparal.

Sierra Nevada = smells like crisp pine and diesel haze, depending on your footing.

Thousand Lakes = standing water & deerflies.

...and in Montana, the smell of Kalispell is downwind of Whitefish.

C'mon Tim Milne, what's up your sleeve?

I used to live in Jacksonville, FL, and remember the awful paper mill smell very well, and not fondly -- UGHH! Scarlett, you must not have been in Jax very long yet...or could you somehow be upwind?

However, sometimes the "good smell" was present; I thought it smelled like fresh toast, but was told it was coming from a coffee factory.

Here in Milwaukee, there is a strong odor of hops and barley roasting at the Miller Brewery as you travel west of downtown along I-94. Some days the smell is really strong!

Johanna, there are paper mills on Amelia Island, which is at least 45 minutes North from downtown Jax, so we never smell anything from there. If anyone else smells it, it might be Georgia.

If one is close to downtown/the river and Riverwalk, you will smell coffee :)
There is a huge Maxwell house coffee plant there..smells great!

Where I live, about 10 mintes from downtown, it smells like flowers mostly :)

Timmilne, this is your first and only post on Fodors and I "sniff" a bit of armchair product development or market research. Do we get a cut if you come up with just the right scents to sell to gifte shoppes in those palces you name?

Bunch? Is that you hiding in Timmy's screen name?

Something smells fishy. Post about a scent, the nerve.

As I remember Maine smells with lobster. Sometimes fresh, sometimes rotten. You know it crawls out of not properly closed cooking pots. So add the smell of burning lobster trying to escape. Nice bouquet, huh?

Boston has a socks smell all the time after the red sox won. Get a gas mask :)

Adirondacks: Wonderful pine scent in the summer. Snowmobile exhaust in the winter.