60 Degrees of Separation

"In a bit over a year, our travels led us close to the top of the world, and then back to being close to the middle. Both offered sights and sounds which well worth going the distance."

Now we have all heard the phrase "six degrees of separation." It is an old theory which says no matter how big the world is, we are all six degrees (or steps) away from meeting everyone in the world. It is the old "I have a friend of a friend of a friend." Well, this article is not about that. It is about sixty degrees of separation. That is degrees as in latitude.

A year ago in August, we were in the northern part of Denali National Park. That just happens to be very close to the 65 parallel. And, just a stone's throw from the Arctic Circle. Living most of my life in the Twin Cities, we know all about the 45th parallel since it goes right through town. In fact, it runs smack dab in the middle of suburbs such as Golden Valley and Medicine Lake. So heading north by almost 20 degrees was a big deal indeed.

This November, we decided to do just the opposite. Well, more than the opposite really. If we were going to do the opposite from last year, we would have ventured only to the 25th parallel. And actually, that is where our journey started. The 25th parallel runs very close to Fort Lauderdale and Miami. And just to the south of that area by a smidge, runs the Tropic of Cancer.

But we were going further south than that. Our cruise ship started in Fort Lauderdale, went down to South America, and then through the Panama Canal. After making a day long transit through the canal, the ship needed to go south for just a bit before heading north towards Costa Rica. And that is where we hit the 5th parallel. Once we hit that milestone, we were then almost 60 degrees from where we were a year ago in Alaska. Now that is separation!

By the time we came home just over a week ago, we had logged about 6,500 miles via airplane or ship. We visited Aruba, Cartagena, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Cabo San Lucas. My wife and I had never been to any of these locations before. 

As much as we like to travel abroad, there is something about coming home to the good old US of A. Today, we started preliminary discussions on where our next sojourn might be. No matter where it is, we know that home, this country, is where we want to be at journey's end.