While driving through the little town of Liberty on our annual visit to Maine I happened upon the Liberty Tool Company, a jewel of a hardware store that claims it's Maine's largest secondhand store. If you can trace a culture's history by its tools, as the owners claim, Liberty Tool would be the place to start. We marveled at the tools stashed to the ceiling, aisle after crowded aisle.

Maps from the DeLorme Company helped us navigate countless backroads. So when we needed new ones, we headed for their headquarters in Yarmouth, Maine.

We'd only heard a little about Eartha, the world's largest rotating globe, which stands in DeLorme's lobby. But what an impressive sight to watch this 41-foot, 5,600-pound globe, tilted at the same angle as the planet, slowly rotate. The detail is phenomenal; the globe's 792 panels detail ocean depths, mountain ranges, road networks and urban areas–it's fascinating! Read the rest of this entry »