Category: Nature
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Hurricane Katrina: Family Memories 5 Years Later
Has it really been five years already? The memories are starting to fade but they come back to life in ghostly form on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, when the news media forces me to pay attention to them. Our family was one of the lucky ones. I can’t and won’t compare our story to…
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Birch Syrup Geography
I wandered into a shop in Talkeetna, a town of a few hundred souls in the interior of south central Alaskan (map). There I discovered an assortment of small plastic jugs with a strange and rare substance offered for sale: birch syrup. I’d never heard of this particular agricultural product before. Sure, I’ve consumed more…
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Kenai Adventure, Part 4
The visit to the Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula is winding down. Unfortunately I will be making my way back home over the next couple of days. Those of you who follow Twelve Mile Circle for its odd geography can rejoice. I’ll return to a regular schedule of useless trivia that only we enjoy. Well, unless something…
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Kenai Adventure, Part 3 – Wildlife
Most people probably drive down to Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula for the scenery and the wildlife, and that’s also true for me. Sure, I enjoyed poking around some of the more unusual aspects of Kenai geography but that doesn’t mean I haven’t taken advantage of opportunities to marvel at the natural beauty that attracts every other…
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Kenai Adventure, Part 1
I resolved my Internet dilemma. A park set aside for recreational vehicles sits just downhill from us although out of our line of site. Apparently there’s a company that specializes in providing Internet access to RV parks, allowing visitors to rent by the day, week or month. I’m close enough to tap into that so…
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100th Meridian Initiative
The meridian line 100° west of Greenwich, England, often called simply the 100th Meridian, divides roughly the eastern side of North America from the west. This happens both geographically and culturally. So it cuts directly through the Great Plains in the United States. It goes down the middle of North and South Dakota, through Nebraska,…
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Shack at the End of the Road
I strolled vicariously through Street View images leading to the northernmost coverage area of Canada, all the way to the town of Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. I pushed further north and further north at the tap of a trackpad until I could move no further on my laptop. Then I arrived right here at…
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Street View Roadkill
This is a bit macabre. Squeamish readers might want to skip directly past this entry. Maybe check back in a couple of days when I post a new article? Anyway, I received some great input from reader Ethan recently. He was kind enough to post another example of a state highway trespassing on the territory…
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What’s Up With the Volcano?
Every geo-blogger on the planet is covering the Eyjafjallajökull eruption. Well I’m not going to do that, or rather, I’m taking an entirely different approach because you know it’s happening and there are others who can cover this event a whole lot more eloquently than I can. By now everyone is aware of the location…