Geography Lesson

My blog post from August 12th describes my 29 hour road trip across the country with Travis and the boys. What it doesn't describe is something that I thought was really cool about the trip. As we drove through Wyoming we crossed the Continental Divide, which is the dividing line separating waters that flow to the Pacific Ocean from waters that flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Now we've crossed this line so many times over the years it has become kind of old, but it was fun to explain it to the boys. But what was really cool was that as we drove through Oregon we crossed the 45th Parallel, which is the line that is half way between the Equator and the North Pole. To cross both these lines within 24 hours was kind of unusual and presented an opportunity for a mini geography lesson. Here's something you might not know about the 45th Parallel. At this latitude the sun is visible for 15 hours and 37 minutes during the summer solstice. That's a whole lot of daylight. We lived in Oregon one summer when I was eight and the thing my dad talked about for years was that you could read a newspaper outside at ten o'clock at night. On the other hand, in winter you only see the sun for less than 9 hours. Not good.