That is true, but I wasn’t on land, just on an Air Craft Carrier.
In all seriousness, why?
I was from NJ, my base was San Diego, we traveled West a long way to get near Ethiopia. That was the furthest west I’ve been. On land, it was Bangkok as stated above. Not being on watch in #7 electrical generator switchboard as we crossed the 180° line. Going East, I still haven’t made it past France.
So what are the furthest West or East lands?
It looks like Cape Wrangell on Attu Island in Alaska’s Aleutian Chain is westernmost point of land at 52.55 by 172.28. Caroline Island, Kiribati is generally accepted as Eastern most at 150°
An argument could be made that longitude doesn’t even matter if your travels span the globe since longitude is arbitrary.
On the other hand if your travels have only spanned half the globe, then the furthest east or west is easily determinable, from a certain point of view, even if you have technically crossed 180 or 0 degrees.
All three ways off looking at longitude make sense, and thankfully, it is not an existential issue if there is a miscommunication, so there is room for a healthy disagreement on the topic.
East: the Tower of London. Never went to Greenwich, so in both an absolute sense and in a relative sense (since I’ve only been to North America and western Europe), that’s the easternmost I’ve gotten.
South: The Furthest South buoy at Key West. It technically isn’t the furthest south the key itself goes, but that’s the farthest I’ve personally went.
North: Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), AK
South: Johannesburg, SA
East: Guam? The meridian thing gets me confused.
West: Adak, AK (in the Aleutian Islands)
N: probably northern Skye, maybe Inverness
W: Waimea, Kauai on land; off the shore of Na Pali on a catamaran
E: Mt. Asahidake on Hokkaido
S: Probably Isla Floreana (I don’t think we went to Española) in the Galapagos; I guess technically Guayaquil, but we didn’t get off the plane. Alternatively, some classified latitude and longitude under the Atlantic, but I don’t remember how far south and couldn’t tell you if I did.
I’m not nearly as well traveled as most of youse, but I made up for it by being in a job for about 5 years that sent me all over North America at least once or twice a week, sometimes more. With the exception of Newfoundland, the one province I’ve never been to, I’ve been to every province and every major city in Canada and most major US cities.
North: A one-day business trip to a small town in the Northwest Territories whose name I don’t recall. All I remember is arriving in a small plane on an unpaved runway.
South: Many Caribbean islands – I think Barbados was the furthest south.
East: Halifax, Nova Scotia
West: Honolulu, Hawaii. Other than that, either Vancouver or San Francisco.
Your method (how far traveled in a given direction, presumably in a single trip) would be another interesting question, but if doing so, then you’d have to name the starting point.
For instance, my two longest trips were from Maryland west to Singapore via Hawaii and New Zealand, and from Maryland east and south to Kuching, Malaysia, on the island fo Borneo. The first was about 14,500 miles (23,200 km) and the second was almost 11,000 miles (17,600 km).
In both cases, I traveled at least 180 degrees of longitude away from my starting point. The trip to Borneo, even though it was shorter, went further around the world by seven degrees. The Singapore trip was almost exactly 180 degrees, but was longer because of the diversion to the South for NZ.
Full disclosure: on the way to Singapore I stopped for a few days each in Hawaii and NZ, but on the way back I didn’t.
ETA: partly ninjaed by the several posts that appeared between here and @What_Exit’s post I’m replying to.
Why? Mostly just because that’s what I think the OP asked. If they’d asked for farthest from home I’d be defending your version of our personal bests in each direction.
I’ll also point out a difference in emphasis: from home is about distance traveled. Lat / Long is about where on Earth. It’s also interesting to contrast how the two questions change depending on where on Earth you were born / now live.
The Aleutian chain is tough to beat. Although the few farthest islands with east longitudes are uninhabited. Adak at 177.5W is an actual town you can visit.
Vanua Levu next to Fiji and its offshore islets actually straddle the ±180 longitude. Fiji itself and New Zealand’s North island are the runners-up at about 178.5E. Any of those would be more pleasant than Adak.
And of course Antarctica has land at every meridian. Although at the ±180 meridian the open ocean ends at the Ross ice shelf and the actual rock shoreline is on the order of 430 statute miles farther south. Bit of a hike.
Maybe latitude and the equator have a bit more meaning, but y’know, we’re a bunch of apes flopping around on a spinning wet rock drawing lines in the sand… it’s all a little arbitrary, lol. It didn’t HAVE to end up with this particular grid or these particular cardinal directions.
That would imply there’s anywhere not weird in Oregon, which as a resident I’d have to disagree with…
Now, my mom would have all of us beat. I think her furthest north is Iceland, her furthest south is Antarctica, and her east-west travels have included New Zealand and Alaska (as well as, I’m pretty sure, every integer time zone).
It’s possible. Damn I wish I could remember! Inuvik has only a single runway, which is consistent with my recollection. I seem to remember an unpaved runway, but my memory may be wrong or it may have been paved when it was extended and modernized a few years later. We flew to someplace in Alberta (possibly Edmonton) and took a small plane from there.
