We are in up Maine's tippy top--what is referred to as The County. Aroostoock County encompasses 6,672 square miles--larger than the states of Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware.
Aroostock County is known for its potato harvest. Up here school starts in early August so that the kids can take a few weeks off for the harvest in the Fall. It is also known for housing the facility for the U.S. Biathlon team. The County has a strong Nordic heritage which is why we are here. C is racing in a nordic race this afternoon in Caribou.
As we drove north on Route 1 and passed through the town of Mars Hill we got a good view of the wind farm on top of the ski mountain. The 28 wind turbines furnsh enough electricity to power 45,000 average Maine homes when it is operating at capacity. It doesn't do any harm to the landscape--it's already a ski resort which isn't exactly natural. I looked at the mountain and the turbines and imagined pieces of glaciers coming back out of the ocean and re-attaching to the ice shelves from which they had fallen--I imagined polar bears and penguins.
6 comments:
The turbines can be scary looking up close! I can imagine that the polar bears and penguins didn't show up! LOL
I don't know about penguins, but polar bears are pretty scary. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want one to show up where I was. Probably easier to escape a wind-turbine.
Beth, Gus and I lived in Presque Isle for 3 years while we attended UMPI. Gus got his bachelor's there and I got an Associates degree. I finished up my bachelor's in Utah where we moved to after Gus graduated. We were non-traditonal students and my son still lives up there. He works in one of the potato factories! Gus worked the potato harvest the first autumn after we moved there. It always cracks me up that in spite of how large the County is their phone book is only 1/2 inch thick and that's for the whole County! Hope you had fun!
Kathie, What a small world! From Presque Isle to Tuscon.
p.s. I could see Mars Hill from the house we rented in Westfield, Maine. It didn't have wind turbines at the time. Those just went up a couple of years ago. For me it is strange to see them there. I like the idea of wind power but there has been some contravesy due to migrating birds smacking into them.
Yeah, talk about extremes! I experienced -35 degrees with windchills of -50F while we lived up there. Now I get to experience 115F in the summer. I have family in FL and Washington State, so we are literally scattered to the four corners of the USA!
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