Lake Islands farthest from shore...

This is something I've been working on for awhile, as I don't believe this information is available online anywhere.

The answer to the question: What lake island is farthest from shore?

First, some clarification. I'll accept any lake including saline or endorheic lakes. By farthest from land I mean if you take the shortest distance between any point on that island to any point on the border of the lake, what is the longest resulting distance you might have? This would count against a large lake island whose far side was far from the lakeshore, but might have a near side very close by (e.g., Manitoulin for example). Secondly I do mean from the lake shore, not closest other land (which might well be another island of a chain).

Right off the batch I started looking for large, wide lakes, as opposed to long narrow ones. e.g., Lake Tanganyika is a very large lake, but you can't get that far from shore because it is a very long, relatively narrow lake.

The Caspian seemed a logical place to start, but its islands seem to be entirely coastal. Kulaly Island seems to be the farthest from shore I could find.

There are two other logical locations to search: The Great Lakes of North America... and Lake Victoria in Africa.

First, the Great Lakes. Glancing at a map there are a few large islands that jump out immediately, Isle Royale in Lake Superior... and the Beaver Island Archipelago in Lake Michigan. Isle Royale is a little to close to shore, the others looks a little more interesting. There are a number of islands surrounding Beaver Island, and trying to determine which is farthest from land is a bit tricky. Actually the nearby Fox Islands might be better.

However, my candidate for lake island farthest from shore in the great lakes is Caribou Island in Lake Superior. There are actually several islands with that name including at least one other in Lake Superior, in the Thunder Bay area. But the one I mean is located at 47° 21′ 33″ N, 85° 48′ 36″ W.

Caribou Island appears to be about 30 miles from the closest shoreline of Lake Superior, which is to the East-Northeast in Superior Provincial Park in Ontario. There is a closer shoreline in the form of Michipicoten Island, but as I noted we're not counting other islands.

Now as for Lake Victoria... it is a very large lake (as well as generally acknowledged as the source of the White Nile). There are many islands in the lake... At first glance closest to the center appears to be Nabuyongo Island. At second glance it seems a peninsula from the southeastern end of the lake extends towards it reducing its distance... but looking closely you see the end of that peninsula is actually an island itself (named Ukerewe), separated by a narrow channel. A quick eyeball test puts it at between 50 and 60 miles from the closest point on that peninsula.... and about the same distance to the western shore of the lake.

Anyway this is my candidate for lake island farthest from shore in the world. I havent' gone and calculated actual distances via GPS coords or anything, the difference seems to be large enough to justify it as nothing else I've found comes close. Anyone have another candidate worthy of consideration?

FWIW Nabuyogo Island was the site of a naval battle that took place on Lake Victoria during World War II.

US State Capitals

This is another US-based one, based on US state capitals. A short quiz

We'll do state capitals today.

1. What is the smallest state capital, population-wise?

2. Most state capitals are relatively central to their state. Only three are actually adjacent to the state border. Two of those border another state, one actually borders another country. Which are they?

3. What river (or rivers) has the most state capital on its banks?

4. Six state capitals are on the sea (I'm not counting ones on navigable rivers that can allow ocean ships to reach them, it must border on actual salt water. (e.g., Albany does not count).

5. What state capital has the highest elevation inside its city limits?

6. Five state capitals do not currently have an interstate highway within their city limits. Which are they?

#2 quiz

Finding superlatives is easy with google. Want to know what the longest river in California? It is easy to find that.

Hopefully these types of questions prove a little more challenging. I mean by all means use google (or whatever your search engine of choice may be). But some of these things take a bit of digging, and the end result is more geography knowledge.

So, anyway, here we go. I'm not getting any responses on these yet but hopefully one day we will then these will still be here for people to take... sticking to North America and mostly the US for this quiz. Don't worry, will cover most of the planet in others.

1. What is the second highest mountain in the United States?

2. What is the second highest mountain in North America?

3. What is the second highest mountain in the 48 contiguous states?

4. What is the second largest island in the United States?

5. What is the second largest island in North America?

6. What ist the second largest island in the 48 contiguous (well apart from being an island of one of them) states?

7. What is the second longest river in the United States? (to qualify it must be entirely inside the US)

8. ditto for North America

9. What is the second largest lake in the United States? (must exist entirely in the US to qualify)

10. What is the second longest river to exist entirely inside one state?

For bonus points, answer #9 hydrologically. (it is not the same answer if you do).

Limpopo River

A friend of mine named Angrist related a somewhat lengthy pun that goes as follows:

One day, Henry Stanley was going through the jungle, looking for Dr. Livingston. He came to a clearing and there was Tarzan, Lord of the Apes painting lines on everything, the tree's, animals, what have you. "What a strange thing" he thought to himself and continued on.

10 years later, Stanley was again touring darkest Africa looking for the source of the Great Gray-Green Greasy Limpopo River. He came to the same clearing, and there was Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, painting lines on everything. "Ok, that's a bit off" he thought to himself. But again carried on because progress waits for no man.

30 years later, Stanley was nearing death and he wanted to die in the jungle, exploring. He came to the same clearing he had visited in the past. There again was Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, painting lines on everything. Finally, he had enough curiosity and called over one of his native porters. "I don't understand. When I came looking for Dr. Livingston, Tarzan was painting lines on everything. I came back looking for the source of the Great Gray-Green Greasy Limpopo River, and again I find Tarzan painting lines on everything. Here I am, 50 years later, and I find him once again painting stripes on everything. I don't understand.

His porter looked at him quizzically and says "You mean you've never heard Tarzan stripes forever?"

Rather than acknowledge the pun, I felt the appropriate response was to conduct what I call a "geography check":

The Limpopo (which is indeed known as "great grey-green greasy limpopo river" in the story The Elephant's Child by Kipling) is a river in southern africa, and it forms the border between South Africa and both Zimbabwe and Botswana. Its lower basin is navigable, but once you move beyond that (moving towards its source) it flows through increasingly arid land and eventually the Kalahari desert. The upper reaches do not flow most of the time during dry years.

The Limpopo River Basin

Area map with national boundaries for reference

This is not the kind of area that Tarzan, Lord of the Apes would have been found. Tarzan, whose was raised by gorillas, would either have been in an area of Gorillas. Gorillas are found in central africa, in two areas, the mountain ones (as in the Sigourney Weaver / mist movie) and an area along the western coast of the congo. It was almost certainly the latter as the tarzan stories begin with the Greystokes being marooned on the west coast of africa by mutineers.

Gorilla Habitats (lowland in orange, mountain in yellow)

I should point out that Burroughs mentions the species of Apes that raised tarzan were a fictional third species called the "mangani", but the rest of it with marooned off west africa would put him nowhere near the Limpopo. Even if he were that far south and they were apes that died out, there were never any jungles at the latitude of the Limpopo. The southernmost african rain forest (even allowing for areas that have been lost since that time) was found in Madagascar (and much of that is gone). The bulk of it is up in the Congo (kinshasa). And the pun does say he was in "the jungle" and "darkest africa" (which is a title Stanley used for his account of his epic mission to rescue Emin Pasha (epic catastrophe in most accounts other than Stanley's) in which he travelled up the Congo river and then cut across to Equatoria).

Rain Forests of Africa (present day)

Thus we must conclude that if this story is accurate, Stanley was hopelessly lost. ;)

Game of Thrones Map Problems

As I mentioned in the intro I also like to do analsys of maps from fantasy, places that never were. One problem is that they could probably have never existed drawn up as they are.

Yes, this is a nitpick. Let me state that I did like Game of Thrones, and I quite liked the first episode of the adaptation being shown on HBO (only one thus far as I write this).

Alright. The maps of westeros are... somewhat problematic. They look like something someone drew up on two dimensions without thinking things through fully in three-dimensional or hydrological terms. Specifically the map has a tendency to have rivers that cross like 95% of the landmass (still don't think it is quite continent-sized) to get close to the other shore. Now while that does indeed happen in places (e.g., the Amazon's source is near the Pacific Ocean... but this means there must be sufficient elevation as rivers do not flow uphill. The Andes Mountains provide this. This is a key point in my issue.

Starting with the Southern section of Westeros:

Click on image for a larger version

okay, so the Mander River which flows out in to the west, crosses most of the reach and rises in the woods near Storm's End near the Blackwater Rush. This means, therefore the divide between the east and west coasts must pass between here. THis also means that this particular location must be higher in elevation than any point further downstream on the Mander... despite it being so close to the other coast. One would expect hills or even mountains (ala the Andes for the Amazon) but there are none depicted. Therefore we must conclude that the reach of westeros is rather flat, so the difference in elevation, while significant, is not great. This would suggest a slow-moving river.. and indeed the name, "Mander" suggests this might be the case, as in "meander".

Okay, but we're just starting. The Blackwater Rush one might imagine to be a swifter-flowing river, with a greater elevation change resulting in a swifter river. It at least is shown to rise near mountains. So our divide must make a sharp turn west to get around the Blackwater (I write it as if it is the divide, moving to accommodate the rivers, but of course it is the other way around). Moving north, that brings us to the rivers of the trident. The Red Fork and Tumblestone are shown having headwaters in mountains, all good. But then we get the Blue and Green Forks, and here it gets bad. Both of them almost reach the other coast. Both of them are shown as rising in swamps. If we are to accept this... then we must surmise high sea cliffs, with swamps atop them, all so our rivers can descend from these high swamps and flow eastward. Our continental divide thus must hug the west coast all the way up the neck. We are told that these coasts are ones raided the viking-like folk from the Iron Islands, however, to the point of having a bay named after them ("Ironman's Bay"). Its either that or a reference to a long-lost Stark brother named Tony.

If we proceed to the north, we see that the very same swamp the Green Fork rises in also gives rise to a river which flows into the western coast, into a bay named Saltspear. I presume this to be a fjord, because of the cliffs (and because vikings and fjords go together. as to why vikings and iron do... well, descendants of vikings settled in Minnesota, which has a lot of iron. but I digress). So this swamp must somehow encompass both sides of our subcontinental divide. Whatever change in elevation is taken by the Green Fork, it is duplicated by this short, unnamed river flowing into the Saltspear, albeit in maybe one fiftieth of the distance. Its not a river, it is a waterfall.

This problem is hardly unique... if you look at the world of greyhawk you'll see a three rivers, the Dulsii, the Black Water and the Opicm that all rise in the Cold Marshes that border the Icy Sea. The waters of these marshes, rather than flow into the icy sea, instead takes a marathon route into Whysetil Lake, down another river into the Nyr Dyv, and finally down another two rivers (the Nyr Div having two completely different outlets to the sea is hard enough to accept as it is) to the sea. So this means these cold marshes are higher than any of these points in this southerly route. And from there it has to somehow descend down to sea level.

Islands Quiz

Today's topic: Islands that belong to one political entity but are closer to another.

1. This island is just off the coast of Connecticut yet belongs to New York. Its name suggests it might be used by fishermen, but these days primarily it is used for vacation homes and summer estates.

2. This island is far closer to Sweden yet belongs to Denmark. Once in a treaty Denmark gave it to Sweden, only to have the islanders revolt and expel the swedes. They then sent a delegation to Denmark offering the Danish King the island on the condition that he never give it away again.

3. This "colossal" island is far just off the shore of Turkey, yet belongs to Greece. It does not lead to Rome.

4. This regal island is closer to Minnesota, yet belongs to Michigan.

5. This large island is just off the shore of Ontario (only 12 miles) yet belongs to Nunavut, whose mainland is over 600 miles away.

6. This island belongs to Equatorial Guinea, despite being far closer to São Tomé and Príncipe. A good year could be spent explaining that.

7. This festive island is far closer to Indonesia (about 360 km) yet it belongs to Australia, around 2000 km distant.

8. This island is far closer to somalia, yet belongs to Yemen. Actually there are a couple of islands that fit this description, including one much larger than this one. But this one is closer to Somalia.

Welcome...

Not sure if anyone will read this. But basically the idea from this stems that I frequently make geography-related posts on a website I frequent, Electric Samurai, and I thought I would like to have them collected for my own sake if nothing else. They are a mix of things related to geography trivia (many quizzes based on themes usually), geography checks on what other people mistakenly post or even say in the news... and just random musings.

This is not entirely listed to real-world maps, as I also frequently comment on fantasy maps from stuff like Tolkien, Donaldson, Martin, Kurtz, etc., basically anything that bothers to have a map in it that I can look at.

BTW, in case I didn't mention it, I really like maps. I collect maps, have tons of them in my home where I sometimes treat them almost like wallpaper. Some of them are your standard National Geographic type, some form a Rand McNally store, some from obscure sources (nautical charts, foreign universities, whatever). I spent a lot of time in the Republic of Panama so I have a particular fondness for maps of that area, including my prize, which is a raised relief map of the entire country that measures about four feet across (exaggerated relief, so Volcan Baru is somewhere over an inch higher than the surface of the map).

Anyway, enough about me.