Category: Places & Travel

At 1:19 PM EST the temperature on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, was -14.6°F with a windspeed of 53 MPH, gusting to 61.

Resultant wind chill: minus 52°F.

Visibility, however, was 100 miles.

windchill readings 10-20 below zero.

Blaine Harden writes in The Washington Post that In Mont., It’s Home, Home at the Saloon

The rhythms of small-town Montana bar life go something like this: Bars are often open at 8 a.m. with farmers and ranchers coming in to drink black coffee, complain about the weather and argue about things they have been arguing about for decades. Drinking usually doesn’t commence until about 3 in the afternoon. Because Montanans, especially in small towns, tend to get up early, most people go home by 9.

Here in the Big Hole Valley of southwest Montana, children often come into bars after school, especially on cold winter afternoons.

“We give ’em candy and watch out for them, until their parents get off work,” said Charlie Beck, owner of the H Bar J Saloon in Wise River, about five miles from Dewey.

Also from Wired News: Furthermore

A year after the rural town of Bridgeville was ostensibly snapped up in a frenzied online auction for nearly $2 million, the town is up for bid again — this time at half the price and not on eBay. The supposed buyer, who was only ever identified as a nameless West Coast developer, disappeared soon after making the winning $1.78 million bid last December on auction site eBay. No check ever arrived. That prompted real estate broker Denise Stuart to offer the property to another bidder. And another. And another. After a dozen potential deals fell through, Stuart posted the property last week on the more standard listings that brokers routinely share. The town’s owner, Elizabeth Lapple, is now asking $850,000 for the 82-acre property, set among redwoods about 270 miles northwest of San Francisco and about 30 miles from the Pacific Ocean. The town, which dates to the early 1900s, includes a post office, a mile and a half of riverbank, a cemetery and more than a dozen cabins and houses. It needs a new well and several buildings need to be renovated. Last year’s online auction generated national attention and nearly 250 would-be buyers, even though bidding opened at $775,000. “It was such a fiasco last time,” said Stuart, who owns California Real Estate in Eureka. “You have no idea who (buyers) are, if they’re for real or they’re bogus.” That hasn’t stopped other property owners and real estate agents from listing their properties on eBay. At least eight towns have been offered on the Web site since Bridgeville’s listing.

NewMexiKen is thinking $850,000 for an “82-acre property, set among redwoods about 270 miles northwest of San Francisco and about 30 miles from the Pacific Ocean” with “a post office, a mile and a half of riverbank, a cemetery and more than a dozen cabins and houses” sounds like a heckuva deal.

From The Washington Post

Expecting a little roadside diversion, I’d stumbled onto what Guinness has called the biggest model railroad on the planet — and we were only a quarter of the way through it! Yet the spectacle of the thing kept me, my son and his grandfather enraptured. For Northlandz is an awe-inspiring world unto itself, a monument to one man’s obsession with trains. Forget any notion of shopping mall Christmas displays, or anything your uncle labored over in his basement: Northlandz makes a claim for wonder-of-the-world status….

And what a world. Room after room features enormous train displays that run nearly floor to ceiling. And everywhere you look there are intricately wrought scenes of small-town life, farm life, city life and railroad life. There are more than 100 trains — many running all day long — eight miles of track, 4,000 buildings, 400 bridges (one of them 40 feet long), a half-million “lichen trees,” a 30-foot mountain. Northlandz also features a 94-room dollhouse, a doll museum, a 2,000-pipe organ and a three-quarter scale replica of a steam engine that takes passengers on pleasant sojourns through the woods.

eBay: Historic Town of Tortilla Flat, Arizona

This is your chance to own your own historic town. Tortilla Flat is one of the last remnants of the old west. The school, general store, restaurant, old time ice cream & candy store and the post office have been restored or rebuilt. Tortilla Flat is located 18 miles north-east of Apache Junction, Arizona on highway 88 and is the only settlement between the “Junction” and Roosevelt Dam, a distance of 47 miles. The settlement is situated in the valley along Tortilla Creek surrounded by the mysterious Superstition Mountains, the legendary location of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine. To drive to Tortilla Flat is to pass through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. Tortilla Flat’s fine restaurant, the Superstition Saloon, is famous for its killer chili, huge half-pound cowboy burgers and home-cooked Mexican food. It’s known throughout the world and regularly visited not only by local ranchers, cowboys and prospectors, but also by people from surrounding towns and travelers from all over the United States as well as the world. It is a destination place for Arizona. You are purchasing all the buildings/land is leased from the Tonto National Forest service call 1-888-299-6792 ask for Sherri Pack exclusive agent to request additional information.

Price: $5,550,000.

From The Volokh Conspiracy

Let’s call a country “landlocked” if it doesn’t border any ocean or sea, except the purely inland seas that have no substantial natural connection to the ocean (e.g., the Caspian Sea or the Aral Sea). This is more or less the standard definition: Paraguay, for instance, is landlocked; Turkey is not. Which countries in the world are double-landlocked, which means that all the countries that they border are themselves landlocked?

What is the northernmost national capital? What is the southernmost national capital? What is the westernmost national capital in the Americas?

Answers here.

The bronze Statue of Freedom by Thomas Crawford is the crowning feature of the dome of the United States Capitol. The statue is a classical female figure of Freedom wearing flowing draperies. Her right hand rests upon the hilt of a sheathed sword; her left holds a laurel wreath of victory and the shield of the United States with thirteen stripes. Her helmet is encircled by stars and features a crest composed of an eagle’s head, feathers, and talons, a reference to the costume of Native Americans. A brooch inscribed “U.S.” secures her fringed robes. She stands on a cast-iron globe encircled with the national motto, E Pluribus Unum. The lower part of the base is decorated with fasces and wreaths. Ten bronze points tipped with platinum are attached to her headdress, shoulders, and shield for protection from lightning. The bronze statue stands 19 feet 6 inches tall and weighs approximately 15,000 pounds. Her crest rises 288 feet above the east front plaza.

Source: Architect of the Capitol

[NewMexiKen photo, September 8, 2001]

was completed on this date in 1884 when workers placed the 3,300 pound marble capstone on the Washington Monument and topped it with a nine-inch pyramid of cast aluminum. Construction on the privately funded 555-foot monument had begun in 1848, but was suspended (at 156 feet) for 20 years due to lack of funds. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished the project. When completed it was the world’s tallest structure; today it is the world’s tallest freestanding masonry structure.

It was in the teens this morning at NewMexiKen’s and down to 30 in Tucson, but Denver wins the prize — 3 below zero.