Geographic Quirks

From the Big Island to the north of Alaska, Doug McConnell has been there, seen that

As much as I love exploring California, the West and the nation, I love traveling far and wide in hopes of seeing everything and every place the planet has to offer. Of course, I'll never see it all, but I continue to pretend.

Wherever I go, near or far, I very much enjoy finding geographic quirks. I've spent quite a bit of time on the Big Island of Hawaii, from its base to its summit the tallest mountain on earth and the southernmost piece of the United States.  The northernmost, westernmost and easternmost state in the union is Alaska.  I lived there a long time and always got a big kick out of its many geographic wonders.  More coastline than the rest of the US combined, the highest peak in North America, of course (please call it Denali, not McKinley, unless you're from Ohio,) an island just one mile from Russia (yes, Sarah, you really can see Russia from Alaska,) the only state capital you can't drive to, and the furthest north Mexican restaurant in the Americas (on the shores of the Arctic Ocean in Barrow.)  Just to name a few.

A few years back, I had a fine old time on an equinox in March in a place called Medio del Mundo in Ecuador. It was a little tourist spot right on the equator near Quito.   I could straddle a painted line with one foot in the Northern Hemisphere and the other in the Southern Hemisphere. Then, at the precise moment that the Northern Hemisphere changed from winter to spring and the Southern Hemisphere left summer for fall......I experienced four seasons at once. That's hard to beat.

But my favorite, perhaps, was a remote Samoan village I visited in the late '90s.  Heading west, this was the final community before crossing the International Dateline.   I thought about returning there for the millennium change in 2000. It would be the last inhabited place on earth to say goodbye to a 20th century sunset.  Turns out, I didn't make it.  Now I'll have to wait another 91 years to bid a final farewell there to the 21st century. It's on my calendar.

To read more about travel in the West got ot Doug McConnell's web site at www.OpenRoad.tv.
 

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