Potpourri

The virtual file folder is bulging at the seams but none of the topics I’ve collected for today are large enough to merit a standalone article. There should be something for just about everyone here today, something new, or old, or refurbished or random.

Haines Shoe House

Wouldn’t you visit the Haines Shoe House if you were up in York Pennsylvania over the weekend? What could possibly be more entertaining than visiting a house shaped like a shoe? Well, plenty of things if you ask my family but that still didn’t deter me. Arriving at the shoe and finding it CLOSED certainly deterred me though. That’s why I have only a single image of this roadside oddity rather than an entire article and photo montage devoted to it.

Incidentally, how does one close a shoe? I discovered it’s apparently not by tying a knot in the laces. No, it’s accomplished by placing thick chains across the driveways. My disappointment dissipated when we arrived at Mount Joy about twenty minutes later for dinner at Bube’s Brewery. They had a great biergarten out back with live music and great beverages on a perfect springtime evening. Shoe House? What Shoe House?

That Horribly-Named Andean Bear

"They" say a bad name will haunt you forever, and Chaska is a really bad name. Recall about a week ago when we had an opportunity to name an Andean bear after a geo-oddity. The polls closed, the votes were tallied, and the National Zoo reports that "Chaska had edged out Paqarina by merely 72 votes (garnering 1,799 votes, or 37 percent of the total). Chaska, meaning the ‘dawn star,’ was submitted by the Embassy of Peru."

Wait a minute — Roraima didn’t even make it into the top two?!? Don’t people realize that she would have been named after the mountain that hosts the Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana tripoint? Punks. I weep at the state of geographic education in public schools today.

Incidentally, it turns out that Chaska is also a town in Minnesota. Maybe the name isn’t so bad after all.

Random Entertaining Street View Images

New reader Joah stumbled across my recent Inuvik post and he decided to share a related image. Apparently there isn’t much to do way up north because look what they’ve done to the roadside along the Dempster Highway

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You can find a bunch more graffiti that’s similar to this set along other roadcuts just to the north.

He also shared a random odd image that will likely change in the future so I’m provide this as a screen print. For now the error continues to appear in Street View but it will likely be erased the next time a camera car rolls through town. Either that or there’s a sideways house built on a really steep hill outside of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Then I got a message from loyal reader Steve from CMTQ with another Street View anomaly. It was quite the exciting day with all these great Street View images rolling in. Here Google forgot to erase one of the car’s windows when it processed the image. It will disappear someday so enjoy it for now.

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I’ll Never Mention a Certain Radio Show Again

We had a fun time discussing a rather lamely written trivia question, but apparently every spammer on the planet searches rss feeds looking for the name of the show that generated the question. I’ve gotten hundreds of attempted spam comments on the blog, almost all deflected prior to reaching to the moderation queue, and dozens of junk links from fake blogs that I’ve deflected via moderation ever since we mentioned that show in the comments. That show must generate absolutely amazing amounts of traffic if spammers target ferocious intensity on those who merely mention it.

Northernmost Ferry in Canada

The northernmost Ferry in Canada, and indeed for all of North America, is the Arctic Red River Ferry near the Gwich’in settlement of Tsiigehtchic in the Northwest Territories. It is located so far north that it’s actually above the Arctic Circle.

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The ferry provides a vital link in the continuity of the Dempster Highway at the confluence of the Mackenzie and Arctic Red Rivers. It allows vehicles to either cross the Mackenzie and continue their journey on the Dempster or, at their request, cross over the Arctic Red River to access Tsiigehtchic. With stopping points along the highway being rather sparse and far between, a brief detour to Tsiigehtchic for fuel and supplies becomes a welcome opportunity. On this image the Dempster Highway runs along the left, and Tsiigehtchic is the settlement on the right on the other side of the smaller river.

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The Google Maps resolution for such a remote area is amazing. Drill down and the ferryboat itself becomes clearly visible. Drill back up and one can get an appreciation for just how far north the government of Canada has located this ferry service. The effort to keep it operational must be daunting.

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There is another ferry about 70 km. further down the Dempster Highway, called the Peel Ferry. This section of the road runs mostly east-west so it is only slightly further south than the Arctic Red River Ferry. It’s an extremely close “second place” for the northernmost title and no other ferries in North America even come close. It is found outside the community of Fort McPherson, providing a point of crossing over the Peel River. Both ferries are seasonal and an ice bridge replaces them as soon as weather permits.

These interesting locations are intended to introduce my newly-created Interactive Map of Canadian Ferries, which is the most comprehensive resource of its type on the Web. There are nearly 200 ferry routes in Canada. Who knew? Each of them has been mapped and tagged on the page, with links to their respective government or corporate websites.