T Minus 8 Days and Counting

In the final weeks leading up to the Maine Fall Fling I have had some awesome developments.  I have secured lodging for the first night of the trip: a campsite in Acadia National Park (did you know that Maine has a fjord?!  It's true.  Somes Sound fits the description...and I'm going to see it).  I've also found a spot for later in the trip (I'm intentionally keeping this leg of the journey a bit more fluid).  Herring Cove Provincial Park (actually in Canada--not sure if it's New Brunswick or Novia Scotia, but up there.  And actually, it's in the Atlantic.) closes this coming Saturday.  But the lovely woman I spoke with told me I could stay there anyway, and that she would try to arrange for a fire pit and some fire wood to be left for me.  And the best part?  Chances are good that I'll be the only one in the whole park.  How awesome is that?
Other things seemed promising, but did not materialize.  Machias Seal Island is the summer nesting ground for Atlantic Puffins...but they're already long gone.  I was so excited to see a puffin, but alas, for this trip it is not to be.  I'm starting to feel like this is a place I might like to visit again in the future, though, so I'm tucking it away for later.

The Herring Cove campsite got me thinking: could this be the north-eastern-most extreme I've traveled to in the United States?  So I looked it up.  Eastern: yes; Northern: not even close.  So I charted out my travels to America's perimeter and this is what I've found.
Farthest North (in ascending order):
Calais, ME: 45.1889 degrees N
Duluth, MN: 46.7833 degrees N
and the winner...
Seattle, WA: 47.6097 degrees N
(If I include international travels the list continues:)
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: 49.883 degrees N
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: 52.3700 degrees N
and at the top of my world travels (literally)
Laide, Scotland: 57.850 degrees N

Curious about my eastern travels?  I was.
New York, NY: 74.0064 degrees W
Boston, MA: 71.0603 degrees W
Manchester, NH: 71.4553 degrees W
and the eastern champ (soon to be declared)...
Calais, ME: 67.2792 degrees W
(here again Laide would win if international travel was being weighed: it's just 5.5420 degrees W of the Prime Meridian.)

Since I was on a roll, I went onto south and west.
Farthest South:
San Antonio, TX: 29.4239 degrees N
Siesta Key, FL: 27.3017 degrees N
(I didn't dwell on the south too much.  I am, after all, a northerner at heart.)

Farthest West:
San Diego, CA: 117.1564 degrees W
Los Angeles, CA: 118.2428 degrees W
Portland, OR: 122.6750 degrees W
and just edging out Portland for the victory...
Seattle, WA: 122.3331 degrees W

So I've been to the south-western corner of the country, lived for a summer at it's northern-most point (St. John, ND),  and will now see the north-eastern tip.  How cool to remember all those trips and the great memories associated with them.  How blessed to continue to have more travels and stick more far-flung pins into the map!