A day of travels and scares

It seems that my photos don't post in the same order that I place them - sorry about that. Hope you can work them out.

So, today I left the coast of Maine for the far north. See the picture of me looking longingly out at the morning fog before I leave Mount Desert Island.

Our first stop was Stephen King's house in Bangor. That's the picture of the red house. In the second closer picture of the house, if you can blow it up, you will see that the gate on the fence has the shape of a spider web in the center and the columns have bats. Spooky, huh?

Our next stop was the campus of the University of Maine at Orono where knucklehead claims to have received a BS in Chemical Engineering. I'd guess it was about 1908. As we were walking around campus, we came across a black bear! So I kicked its butt and bronzed him.

What? Yes I did. That wasn't a statue there before! Well, anyway, there is a picture there of the full bear (I am at the very bottom by his feet, if you can blow it up), a picture of some stupid sign that I swear wasn't there when I found the beast, and a picture of his face. I know. Scary, right.

Oh, and there is a picture of the Folger Library on campus from the mall. It turns out that Stephen King has donated all of his papers to the library - he is also an alumnus. King is also a very large philanthropist in the area. Knucklehead says King is probably the second most famous graduate, whatever that means.

Finally, we continued our interminable drive north to Presque Isle, Maine. I've included a photo of the highway so you could see the traffic.

What's that? You ask "Where are the cars on the highway?" THAT'S WHAT I SAID! If this Presque Isle is indeed (a) the "Star City of the Northeast" and (b) the largest city in the largest county east of the Mississippi, where in the heck is everybody?

There is nobody on the road! We set the GPS (not that there are any turns) and it says "drive 110 miles on US 95 north". OMG! 110 miles of empty road and trees! There were more cars at the MacDonalds we stopped at in Houlton (the northern end of US 95) than we saw on that entire ride! And when that ends, it's another 50 miles north on US Route 1! And people live up here? Apparently not. The place is referred to as "The County" and "God's country". I guess nobody else wants to live here.

I will admit that the area has a kind of open beauty. There are fields and fields of potatoes and many are in blossom. Different potato varieties have different color blossoms so some fields have white and others have pink or light purple. It's kind of nice - I will try to get you a picture while they are in blossom; I'll bet not many of you have seen fields of potatoes in blossom.