Go while it's still winter.  Or go on a hot day in summer to think about cool.

The Peary-McMillan Arctic Museum, at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, has lots of neat things  (such as an oak-and-rawhide sledge, furry and leathery clothing for surviving Arctic weather and entries from an expedition journal) from the polar expeditions of Robert Peary and Donald MacMillan

Peary claimed to have been the first person to have reached the North Pole, in 1909, although that has been disputed. He was a hell of a promoter. It paid off. See his Eagle Island home in Maine's Casco Bay immediately below.

Most of the Bowdoin campus is lovely, with the Charles McKim-designed college art museum, below, the high point.