This was a fantastic part of my wife and my drive through northern Maine last fall during our roadtrip celebrating our wedding. I was unaware of the Yelp listing til now though. It gave us a fun task of stopping and seeing each planet and especially enjoyed the to scale size differences. Going north bound on our trip the first stop for us was Pluto which may be the hardest to find! Every other stop will be found outdoors while Pluto will be found inside the Houlton Maine State Visitor Information building so make sure you stop there during open hours. It was a funny moment walking in there and once we found the Pluto display my wife said "wait that's it!" so it gave both of us as well as the visitor information staff member a laugh.
From there you continue north with stops for all the planets in an absurd scale of 1:93 million. Basically you start with Pluto in Houlton and end in Presque Isle with the sun! It's honestly a perfect way to add some stops and excitement to your route 1 trip for this range of driving. While it was mostly stopping, getting out for photos and then talking about how crazy the sizes varied. As expected Jupiter was huge while Ceres at the asteroid belt stop was absurdly small. Each stop has some scientific information available as well so could be a great science lesson for the kids if you have any. I think the only disappointment for us was how they decided to display the earth. I was hoping for more of a Eartha (for those unaware it's the world's largest rotating and revolving globe in Yarmouth Maine). But unfortunately it looks more like an unfinished jungle gym dome. Sure the size was massive compared to everything else just not quite what we expected.
If you find yourself in this neck of the woods though I highly recommend making the stops. Fun little way to break up the drive and it cost nothing but time for stopping! read more