Oops, my bad! Should have proofread my post before submitting it!
BTW, not all of Iowa is west of the Mississippi. Some of it is IN the Mississippi.
And what’s the closest US state to Africa?
Answer: Maine.
Look on a globe, not a flat map 
Funny enough, it actually seems to work with a flat map, as well. (Using this map and the ruler measurement tool in Photoshop, I can’t get a linear distance that is closer than Maine to Morocco, whether I include those little islands to the west or not.)
We went for a walk around the hotel looking for frogs and I heard rustling in a tree. I shined my flashlight up and there were 5 or 6 monkeys staring down at us looking both offended and curious.
And the westernmost point in the US is in Alaska, not Hawaii like most people assume.
It can also be surprising when you map North American cities onto Europe in terms of latitude. How many folks would intuitively realize that London is north of all of the continental US, and north of Winnepeg and Calgary? Or that Chicago lines up pretty much with Rome?
Questions!
What is the story of Misery Bay, that’s gotta be a story?
Is the desert part of Lac Vieux Desert some sort of French word for lake?
Is Duck Island named for the fact it looks like a dead duck?
Inquiring minds…
West Virginia is usually considered a southern state, but Wheeling, WV is about 60 miles from Canada. Or so I’ve heard.
The best I’m getting from measuring on Google Maps is about 140. miles from Wheeling to the middle of Lake Erie where the border flips. To “mainland Canada” (so not counting Pelee Island), it’s more like 170 miles. Still, by US distances, that’s pretty close. If you get to the very northernmost tip of W. Virginia, you can decrease both those distances by 20 miles.
Not even close. More like 155 miles to the nearest Canadian border, which is in the middle of Lake Erie, and closer to 175 to the nearest Canadian land.
Revised to say 150 to nearest Canadian land, a deserted island in Lake Erie. And a little less distance to the nearest Canadian water border
Wiki sez:
Misery Bay may be named that because of all the mosquitoes. Nearby Rice Bay is called that due to the wild rice found there, a stable of the aforementioned Ojibwe, who still have a village on that bay and still harvest the wild rice the traditional way.
Traverse City MI’s busiest intersection is where West South Airport Road crosses North US 31 South.
Moncton also has a river that alternately flows north or south,
depending the tide.
In New Orleans, Downtown is north of Canal Street, and Uptown is south. Both bridges to the West Bank go almost due east.
Similarly, Most people don’t realize that near!y all of South America is more easterly than the US.
And the distance between Brazil and Africa is less than half the distance between New York and London.
:smack:
The next town over from me has a lot of streets with names like 3rd Street Court, 4th Avenue A (and B, and C), 2nd Court B, etc. Yeah, it’s confusing.
Well, duh, there IS a bridge between Senegal and Brazil… or was that the game Risk?
Many so-called “geographic” anomalies are mere political artifacts, debris of line-drawing by cartographers and their masters, leaving jurisdictions with odd geometries. I’m more amused by a lake in an island in a lake in an island in a lake, and rivers and lakes atop watershed divides, flowing into multiple seas. But I note boundaries, too.
A fairly short drive from Grand Canyon NP via Tuba City, Hopi mesas, and Keams Canyon to Petrified Forest NP sees Arizona (no DST), Navajo (DST), Hopi (no DST), a pocket of Navajo again, Hopi again, Navajo again, then Arizona again. Oh wait, I forgot about Moenkopi (Hopi) so there’s another Navajo-Hopi-Navajo skip, seven total. We lacked GPS last time we made that trip. Will the GPS clock go crazy in June?
I do get people on Sundays of time changes sprinting (sometimes literally) towards me, cell phone facing me as they ask “is this the correct time?”