If I had a car/boat capable of going anywhere in the world, would there exist a path I could follow across the globe so that each day I was always in a place where sunrise was approximately at 6 a.m. and sunset was approximately at 8 or 9 p.m.?
Hmm… I think so…
In the range between the top of the northern temperate zone and the equator (to avoid complications near the pole), going North makes the day shorter, South makes it longer, going East makes the day start and end earlier, going west makes it start and end later.
But go too far east or west and you find yourself in a new timezone and because of the tilt of the Earth, the rate at which dawn and dusk draw in and out is not equal throughout the year.
Nonetheless, it sounds possible - ignoring the timezone complications (and declaring your own personal timezone), it would certainly be possible to move so that the daylength you experience remains constant.
Forgetting the clock times, your ideal day there is 14-15 hours long. However, there are two days every year (the equinoxes) when the day is 12 hours long for everybody on earth.
So no, there is no such path. Moreover, I’m not sure there’s any place on earth where the daylight hours are so asymmetrically situated around noon — even when considering Daylight Saving Time, and those “peculiar” time zones (like in India and Australia) that are offset by 90 minutes from their neighbors.
(Come to think of it though, maybe China — which insists on being all one time zone even though it warrants three or four — might have a day when the sun rises around 6 AM and sets around 8 PM. Can someone confirm?)
But, you could almost fulfill your (peculiar) fantasy, with some effort. If you start somewhere just south of the Arctic Circle, then soon after the March equinox the day will be 14 hours long. Then, sailing south every day to just the right latitude, you could keep yourself in 14 hours of daylight. After reaching some limit on the June solstice (I don’t know the latitude offhand, but it would still be north of the equator), you would begin heading back north, retracing your steps in reverse. Up until just before the September equinox that is, when your 14-hour days would come to an end.
You could use the interruption though to pack up your boat and fly south, to a spot near the Antarctic Circle, where soon after the September equinox there will be a 14-hour day. Then, you’d spend the next six months following the mirror image of your northern travels, only this time in the southern latitudes. When the March equinox arrived, you’d fly back north to the Arctic Circle and start the process all over again.
Doesn’t sound like the life for me, but I suppose it beats office work.
Thanks, guys. It’s just something to fantasize about during these awful days when it starts getting dark at 4 p.m. Ugh.