Traveling to the Extreme Points of the United States

Today we got the brilliant idea that we were going to travel to all four “Extreme Points” of the United States while we’re Out There on our two-year road-trip.  We got the idea because we are in Key West, and we got our photo taken next to the buoy marking the southernmost point in the US.  So far, so good; three more places to go….

As we thought this goal through a little bit, we decided we needed to change the parameters slightly – we would limit our trekking to the contiguous 48 states in the US because we figured there’d be some place way at the tippy top part of Alaska above the Arctic Circle that we couldn’t get to without sled dogs or a private plane.  [Not that we’re opposed to a sled dog trip, but the expense may be a bit prohibitive!]  So there – goal more defined and more reasonably attained:  contiguous US.

So here are the four points to which we will journey in our quest to travel to these Extremes:

  • NORTH:  Northwest Angle Inlet in Lake of the Woods, Minnesota
  • SOUTH:  Key West, Florida
  • EAST:  West Quoddy Head, Maine
  • WEST:  Cape Alava, Washington

As listed in Wikipedia, there are many other ways to define the most extreme place.  For example, “southernmost” – Western Dry Rocks, Florida in the Florida Keys is the “southernmost point in the 48 contiguous states occasionally above water at low tide.”  Forget that; we need to keep this sane!

Extreme South - Key West

So here we go —

one Extreme down (photo above); we’ll hit Northwest Angle Inlet this July (2014), West Quoddy Head in September, and Cape Alava sometime in late spring 2015.

2 thoughts on “Traveling to the Extreme Points of the United States”

  1. Curtis Gruninger

    Great place to start!!!! Been there more than a few times over the years. Safe travels you two.

    1. Hey Curtis G – We’ll be sure to look you up when in AZ – not an extreme point but a great place to visit! Still remembering when you took your road trips and you visited me in Pittsburgh in the late ’90’s…. xo –Laura

Comments are closed.