Current location: Ellsworth, ME N 44 32.117', W 068 24.601'

Today I made the long journey from Fort Kent, ME to Ellsworth, ME, along Route 1 the whole way. This part of Route 1 travels along about 200 miles of the longest undefended border in the world TM. Today was mostly rainy and overcast the whole time, just generally gloomy. I left Fort Kent with a watchful eye for the Maine solar system model, a scale model of the solar system, which supposedly spans 50 miles. I was driving for about two hours before I finally saw my first planet, Jupiter.



I got out in the middle of a rain storm, and trudged across a really wet, cold, knee high field of grass in shorts and flip flops to get this photo. Since Jupiter is smack dab in the middle of the solar system, I decided to double back, to see if I could find the asteroid belt, Mars or Saturn (since I wasn't sure which direction the model was headed.) I drove north on route 1 for about 25 minutes, and didn't find Mars or Saturn (Earth, Venus, Mercury or the Sun for that matter), so once again, I turned around. I drove past Jupiter again, and some ways down the road (maybe 10 miles), I found Saturn.



Here it is in all its ringy glory.

Saturn was a much easier planet to photograph, it had a dirt road leading up to it. Even though it is supposedly a scale model of the solar system, Saturn was about the same size as Jupiter.

Continuing down route 1, I was unable to find Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, or any Kuiper Belt objects, leading me to conclude that the model is actually set 5 billion years in the future. In this future, the sun has turned into a black hole and swallowed all the objects in the solar system smaller than Saturn, Jupiter, and their largest moons. Trust me, this is the only logical conclusion.

A while later as I was getting close to Calais, ME, I did come across this compromise.



This Earth model photo is from a gift shop marking the 45th parallel, the mid way point between the equator and the north pole. This Earth is about the same size as Jupiter and Saturn, which really throws a nick into my black hole theory.

About an hour after lunch time, I passed through Calais, ME N 45 11.323', W 067 16.696', the easternmost border crossing in the US. I was surprised to see the Canadian, Maine and US flags flying at the same height at a government building in Calais. I was also surprised to learn Calais was settled in 1604, (by the French) earlier than 1607 and 1620. In middle school and high school history classes, you always learn about early settlements at St. Augustine, Roanoke, Jamestown, and of course, Plymouth, but it seems you never learn about the early French settlements in North America.

On the way out of town, I saw my first hitchhiker for the trip. He had a sign for his destination, but the print was too small, I couldn't read it. I drove by him really slow, and was actually a bit tempted to pick him up, just for the adventure and the story, and to be able to say I picked up a hitchhiker. But, my car would have been a little cramped, because he had a huge bag, and I have all my stuff as well. Plus, he looked a little too seedy for my tastes. Unfortunately, because I drove by him slow, and because I had out of state license plates, I probably got his hopes way up that I was actually stopping for him. Oh well, I'm sure I'll have another opportunity.

After Calais, I veered off Rt. 1 for a little while onto Maine Rt. 190, which goes out to Eastport, ME N 44 54.242', W 066 59.866', which I believe is the easternmost point of the US. The weather actually cleared up a little here, so I was able to get some good views out to the ocean and across to New Brunswick. Much to my dismay, my atlas shows Rt. 190 practically meeting up with Rt. 189 and back out to Rt. 1, but in actuality, a bay separates them, so I had to double back on 190 out to Rt. 1 again.

The final part of the day was the journey from Eastport to Ellsworth ME. Ellsworth is the Crossroads of Down East Maine as you have to go through Ellsworth if you are traveling to Acadia/Bar Harbor, Calais, or Bangor from the south. I found a cheap motel in Ellsworth where I settled in for the night at about 7 PM. Unfortunately, I am not able to get WiFi at this motel, nor can I connect to Verizon through my Bluetooth dial-up, because I am on the extended network here, so I'll have to find some WiFI on tuesday in order to post this.

One thing I noticed today is that about 90% of the Maine homes along Route 1 had at least 2 strategically placed lawn ornaments. Most of them were of the bear family black silhouette variety, but I just find this phenomena a little weird. I would roll trough a town, and see these figurines in every yard, and on every farm house stoop. If I were to own a house along Route 1 in Maine, rather than bear or moose silhouettes, my lawn would be host to my own little scale model of the solar system, the Jon Sheldon version.