With our hike out to Cape Alava in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington on Sunday afternoon we’ve now made it to all four Extreme Points in the contiguous United States. You may recall from my previous post [Traveling to the Extreme Points of the U.S.] that as we’re traveling to all 59 of our U.S. national parks and all 50 states, we decided that we would make it another goal to travel to the farthest points north and south and east and west, as well.
As a reminder, here are the four Extreme Points, as defined by Wikipedia. While there are discrepancies as to what actually counts as the farthest point, these were named as the extreme points for the contiguous U.S., and so we went with these:
NORTH: Northwest Angle Inlet in Lake of the Woods, Minnesota
SOUTH: Key West, Florida
EAST: West Quoddy Head, Maine
WEST: Cape Alava, Washington
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This is it, the westernmost edge of the Contiguous U.S. – see Fred standing on the right side of the photo
We hit the southernmost point first — I’m sure many of you have this photo from Key West:
In July 2014 we visited the northernmost point which was a lot of fun because we had to travel into Canada, then back into a little enclave of Minnesota to reach it. It seems that some error in mapping back in 1783 left a little piece of land in U.S. hands even though it is surrounded on all sides by either water or Canada. [See Northwest Angle Inlet post.]
Then came the easternmost point in September 2014 — East Quoddy Head, Maine — where a lighthouse stands as a marker at the edge of the channel. [See East Quoddy Head post.]
Then came the easternmost point in September 2014 — East Quoddy Head, Maine — where a lighthouse stands as a marker at the edge of the channel. [See East Quoddy Head post.]
So now here we are at the westernmost point. Truth be told, the island in the picture below is the actual westernmost point, but short of swimming out there, we decided that this was good enough for us. After all, we had hiked 3.1 miles from where the road ends to get to this point. This is Cape Alava.
So now we have done it — traveled to all four extreme points in the contiguous United States! And gratefully the Jolly adventures keep on continuing….
