U.S Route 64 is a mostly-unexciting 2,326 mile-long highway that we join as it travels from Taos to Farmington in New Mexico.

As we drive through the barren desert, with nothing for miles around, the monotony is broken by the sight of a hitchhiker, who optimistically sticks his thumb out for the passing camera car.

But our cruel driver cruises on past, while heartlessly documenting this man’s plight from all angles.

As we drive off into the distance, with no other cars to be seen for miles, the man doubtless vows that he’ll only ever use Live Search from now on…

Thanks to Rob.

The world’s largest weather vane can be found in Yukon, alongside the runway at Whitehorse airport, in the unusual form of a DC-3 plane.

After 28 years of service, mostly among Canada’s northern communities, the plane was retired in 1970 and lay idle for a while. Volunteer effort led to its restoration and it was mounted on a carefully designed pedestal in 1981. The plane is so well balanced that a wind of only 5 knots will cause it to turn. According to Wikipedia, the DC-3 is almost 20m long, 5m high and weighs over 8000kg.

I should mention that, from what I can tell, the plane has not been officially recognised, with the Guinness World Record currently being held by a weather vane atop the Tio Pepe facility in Jerez, Spain. However, as it’s somewhat smaller than a plane, and the Google images are not great, it’s hard to spot. Live Maps has a clearer view.

It’s difficult to find much information about the Tio Pepe weather vane – this site describes it as standing almost 40m tall (but judging from the pictures that height must includes the building it is atop) and weighing 2700kg.

In addition, there is a weather vane in Montague, MI staking a claim to be the largest, though again – at 14m tall and 8m long – it may be taller than a DC-3, but is not quite as big! The Google imagery of the town is very low resolution, but Live Maps has a pretty good bird’s eye view.

Update: As expected, GeoEye has released the satellite image they took of the inauguration today. You can directly download a higher resolution [698KB] version too.

Today, the 20th of January 2009, the USA inaugurates its 44th President: Mr Barack Obama.

To mark the event, Google has brought many image updates to the city of Washington DC (which has unsurprisingly never suffered from poor quality or infrequent imagery updates)¹.

The update also removes the obscuring “blur” that previously covered the Whitehouse and Naval Observatory, albeit through some clever blending of new aerial and older satellite images. Read more about this on Ogle Earth blog.

Obama’s inauguration ceremony will take place to the west of the Capitol Building. Then a parade is held from the Capitol Building to the White House. Google Maps Mania has a summary of several useful maps for viewing the inauguration details and news.com.au have produced a Street View tour of the parade.

The most exciting news however might be that the Google-sponsored imaging satellite, GeoEye-1, will be covering of the event. The satellite will passing over Washington DC at precisely 11:19am, taking unique pictures of the inauguration from its 423 mile-up viewpoint.

These images are likely to be particularly fascinating as the inauguration is expected to draw a record-breaking crowd of over two million people². Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that these images will be included in Google Earth (as they’re lower resolution than the current aerial imagery), but they will be visible on the GeoEye website just a couple of hours after being taken.

For more on the inauguration, Google Latlong have collated some of the best mash-ups, Jason Kottke links to where you can watch it online and finally, if you just want the basic fact of it all, isobamapresidentyet.com answers your burning question.

It’s been a little while since we looked at mazes here on Google Sightseeing, so here’s a collection of some of the latest finds.

While there are several claims to be the world’s largest maze, the most legitimate seems to be the Peace Maze, in Northern Ireland – which is officially recognised by the Guinness book as the largest permanent hedge maze in the world.

The path of the Peace Maze is 3.15 kilometres (2 miles) long, and contains many features symbolic of The Troubles; most notably a divide which has to be crossed to get to the end.

There are many non-permanent mazes, often created from corn or other plants. This one outside York claimed to be the largest when it opened with a Star Trek theme in 2006, but in the current view it is somewhat smaller.

At Temple Hall Farm Regional Park near Leesville, Virginia, there’s a maze celebrating 100 years of flight.

Across the country near Olympia, Washington, a TV fan has clearly paid homage to his favourite series by creating this CSI themed maze.

Back in England, we have a Monster Maze at Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in North Somerset. Like many maze owners, the people in charge here make grand claims about their maze’s importance – but in truth this is just one of many attractions that claim to be the world’s longest hedge maze.

Finally here in Conholt Park, Wiltshire, we find what might be the most bizarrely shaped maze ever – a giant foot! (Perhaps this is related to the World’s Largest Fingerprint?)

See our Maze category for loads more interesting mazes!

Thanks to Marc Armstrong, DJ Swammi, Kel, Jim Culp, john and Chris Branagan.

The New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia is the highest road bridge in the Americas and (until Google updates their French imagery), is the tallest road bridge visible on Google Earth.

The bridge is a spectacular steel-arch construction which carries Highway 19 at a height of 267 metres over the New River. Completed in 1977, the New River Gorge Bridge was the highest road bridge in the world for the next 27 years, until it was finally surpassed in height by the Millau Viaduct in 2004.

The old bridge that it replaced is still visible way down at the bottom of the gorge. Locals apparently say that the new bridge cut the travel time from one side of the gorge to the other from 45 minutes, right down to 45 seconds.

The Street View car has paid the bridge a visit too, and the view on approach gives you an idea of just how massive a structure it is, spanning some 924 metres.

Halfway across there’s a rather nice view, but only from one side unfortunately. Although Wikipedia reckons an average of more than 16,000 cars cross the bridge each day, these images were obviously taken in the very early morning, as there’s hardly a soul to be seen.

What neither the satellite shots or the street view images show is how incredibly impressive this bridge looks from either side – so for that, we’ll have to refer you to Flickr instead.

There’s more on the New River Gorge Bridge at Wikipedia.

Thanks to SteveH and Loren.